Saccharin – a guide to artificial sweeteners

In our series ‘Guide to arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers’, we have come to sac­cha­rin, which has a dra­mat­ic sto­ry that could fit right into a movie. During its long his­to­ry, it has received much crit­i­cism and was even banned in the 1990s. The ques­tion is, is there any truth in President Roosevelt’s famous state­ment: ‘Anyone who says that sac­cha­rin is dan­ger­ous is an idiot!’

What is saccharin?

Saccharin is the world’s first arti­fi­cial sweet­en­er. It went on sale in Germany in 1885 and made a great impact dur­ing the First World War when the short­age of sug­ar was great.

Its sys­tem­at­ic name is 1,1-dioxo-1,2-benzothiazol-3-one. Its chem­i­cal name is C6H4SO2NHCO. Saccharin has an E-num­ber: 954.

Saccharin is 500 times sweet­er than sug­ar and is often used in com­bi­na­tion with aspar­tame or cycla­mate. It can with­stand heat and has a long shelf life. Saccharin is often used in baked goods, jams, jel­ly, chew­ing gum, canned fruit, can­dy, dessert top­pings, and sal­ad dress­ings. It can also be found in cos­met­ic prod­ucts, includ­ing tooth­paste and mouth­wash. Additionally, it’s a com­mon ingre­di­ent in med­i­cines, vit­a­mins, and pharmaceuticals.

Have you used sugar in the bread?

Saccharin was dis­cov­ered in 1879 by Constantin Fahlberg, who con­duct­ed research under the direc­tion of Ira Remsen. Fahlberg would become both rich and famous thanks to sac­cha­rine, while Remsen had to wait a long time for his recognition.

It all start­ed with an American com­pa­ny being accused of hav­ing coloured sug­ar brown (to get a low­er sug­ar tax due to poor­er qual­i­ty). The com­pa­ny hired the chemist Fahlberg as an expert wit­ness. The law­suit dragged on, and Remsen brought Fahlberg into his team.

One day when Fahlberg was hav­ing din­ner, he dis­cov­ered that the bread tast­ed sweet. He accused his house­keep­er of bak­ing bread with sug­ar. The house­keep­er, for her part, accused Fahlberg of being an unscrupu­lous employ­er. After a brief alter­ca­tion, Fahlberg had to admit the house­keep­er was right because it was not the bread that was sweet, but his hands. And not just the hands. Both his arms tast­ed sweet! How could that be?

He quit eat­ing and rushed back to the lab­o­ra­to­ry where he imme­di­ate­ly began lick­ing all the glass­es and bowls until he found the source of the sweetness.

Obtained a patent in his own name

After test­ing his ‘anhy­dro-ortho-sul­famine-ben­zoic acid’ (lat­er renamed by Fahlberg to Fahlberg’s sac­cha­rin) on some rab­bits who did not com­plain, Fahlberg trav­elled to Germany and took out a patent on the sweet­en­er in his own name and start­ed a fac­to­ry in 1885.

Remsen nev­er for­gave this betray­al. Shortly before his death, he said: ‘I did not want his mon­ey, but I did feel that I ought to have received a lit­tle cred­it for the discovery’.

Fahlberg became rich on his sac­cha­rine, which caught the eyes of the European sug­ar barons who saw their own sales fall. Politicians in Germany and oth­er European coun­tries also want­ed to keep up the price of sug­ar, as the tax on sug­ar was a major source of income dur­ing this time. Several laws and restric­tions were enforced. This led, among oth­er things, to sac­cha­rin only being sold in phar­ma­cies (to dia­bet­ics) and for the state to deter­mine the price. In prac­tice, sac­cha­rin was banned, and the price of sug­ar rose sharply.

This led to exten­sive smug­gling of sac­cha­rin. There was, in fact, one coun­try left where it remained free: in neu­tral Switzerland. They did not have a tax on sug­ar; it would be a dis­ad­van­tage to their choco­late pro­duc­tion. Therefore, they didn’t per­ceive sac­cha­rin as a threat that should be lim­it­ed. Among oth­er things, smug­glers melt­ed sac­cha­rin into wax and made can­dles of it, which they could then smug­gle across the bor­der to sweet-lov­ing neighbours.

Soon came World War I, and there was a short­age of sug­ar. Politicians who pre­vi­ous­ly want­ed to ban sac­cha­rin now hailed it as a gift from the gods. Saccharin was released ‘freely’ and expe­ri­enced a time of great­ness that last­ed until the end of World War II.

The roar of Roosevelt

In the United States, President Theodore Roosevelt played an impor­tant role in the sur­vival of sac­cha­rine. In the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, resis­tance to food addi­tives such as cocaine, opi­um and cannabis grew. The chemist Dr Harvey W. Wiley ran a cam­paign to cre­ate laws against addi­tives and espe­cial­ly want­ed to ban sac­cha­rin, which he con­sid­ered to be espe­cial­ly dangerous.

When he came to President Roosevelt, he made the mis­take of speak­ing before being addressed. It’s not a smart tac­tic when social­iz­ing with kings or pres­i­dents. Roosevelt became so angry that he final­ly shout­ed: ‘Anyone who says that sac­cha­rin is harm­ful to health is an idiot!’

The very next day, Roosevelt put togeth­er a ref­er­ee board by con­sult­ing sci­en­tif­ic experts to eval­u­ate once and for all the health risks asso­ci­at­ed with saccharin.

The leader of the group and who thus had the pow­er to ban sac­cha­rin was Remsen, the man who didn’t get the cred­it for his dis­cov­ery. He now had an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to take revenge on his old col­league Fahlberg.

But Remsen was always on the side of sci­ence. He didn’t let his emo­tions con­trol him. He went through all the research that was avail­able and came to the con­clu­sion that sac­cha­rin was safe. Remsen’s old col­league Fahlberg got a green light to sell sac­cha­rin in the USA and became – if pos­si­ble – even rich­er. In 1959, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) ruled that sac­cha­rin should be viewed as GRAS (Generally Recognised as Safe).

Is saccharin safe?

In 1997, the Canadian Minister of Health told the WHO that Canada would ban sac­cha­rin due to test rats hav­ing blad­der can­cer. Among oth­er things, this led to Coca-Cola and Pepsi see­ing their light prod­ucts banned. The research to which the Minister of Health referred was not com­plete and the researchers dis­tanced them­selves from his state­ment. However, the news spread wide­ly, and the United States also decid­ed to ban sac­cha­rin until the mat­ter was investigated.

The FDA even­tu­al­ly launched a press release that showed that peo­ple would have to drink 800 bot­tles of sug­ar-sweet­ened soda every day dur­ing a life­time to get as much as the rats in the Canadian study.

After 18 months, the United States released its ban, but by then the dam­age had already been done. Saccharin got a bad rep­u­ta­tion that it did not man­age to shake off.

Does saccharin affect the intestinal flora?

An Israeli study pub­lished in 2014 in the sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal Nature showed stud­ies on rats that sac­cha­rin, sucralose and aspar­tame can affect the intesti­nal flo­ra, which in turn can raise the lev­els of glu­cose in the blood. The same study was done on sev­en peo­ple. Four of them had poor­er glu­cose sen­si­tiv­i­ty. There is too lit­tle evi­dence to draw any def­i­nite con­clu­sions. More stud­ies are need­ed, the researchers say. It is worth keep­ing an eye on future research.

What ADI does saccharin have?

ADI stands for accept­able dai­ly intake and shows an upper rec­om­mend­ed lev­el for how much to eat of a cer­tain sub­stance. The ADI for sac­cha­rin is 5 mg per kilo­gram body weight. The ADI for cycla­mate is 7 mg. For aspar­tame, it is 40 mg.

Benefits of Saccharine

• It is 500 times sweet­er than sugar.
• Saccharin is sta­ble when heat­ed and in an acidic environment.
• It has a long shelf life.
• It con­tains no calories.
• It has been around for a long time and has been test­ed in many studies.

Disadvantages of saccharin

• It has a bit­ter or metal­lic after­taste, espe­cial­ly at high concentrations.
• Although it is clas­si­fied as safe, many orga­ni­za­tions rec­om­mend that chil­dren and preg­nant women should not eat it.
• It can cause aller­gic reac­tions such as headaches, dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing, diar­rhoea and skin problems.
• For peri­ods, it has only been sold with a warn­ing label.
• Sackarin has a half-baked rep­u­ta­tion and has at times only been sold with a warn­ing label.

A Summary

Saccharin was dis­cov­ered in 1879 and is the world’s first arti­fi­cial sweet­en­er. It had its hey­day dur­ing the First and Second World Wars when there was rationing on sug­ar. It was also pop­u­lar in the 1960s and 1970s when light bev­er­ages had its break­through. Since then, its star has fall­en due to bad pub­lic­i­ty, manda­to­ry warn­ing texts and bans.

The future is natural

Steviol gly­co­sides (col­lo­qui­al­ly called ste­via) are nat­u­ral­ly sweet sub­stances found in the ste­via plant.

Steviol gly­co­sides are extract­ed from the ste­via plant in much the same way that sug­ar is extract­ed from sug­ar beets and sug­ar cane.

Stevia has been used for cen­turies as a sweet­en­er by the indige­nous peo­ple of Paraguay and cen­tral South America.

Curious about stevia?

Are you curi­ous about ste­via and ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides? We devel­op ste­via extracts for dif­fer­ent sorts of food. Take a look at our range of ser­vices or con­tact us if you want to know more about how we can help you.