Sweetener saccharin shows surprise power against antibiotic resistance
123 comments
·April 5, 2025teslabox
Centigonal
One important thing to mention about the history of saccharin is that it was the subject of a big scare in the 70s and 80s because rat studies showed it caused cancer. Later research revealed that the link between saccharin and cancer was much more tenuous in humans than originally suggested, and the sweetener is generally considered safe today.
tasty_freeze
When I was a kid in the 70s, our pantry had a bottle of saccharine tablets that my folks would use to sweeten their coffee. They were tiny, not big tablets, more like round little pills. They had an uncanny resemblance to a popular breath mint product.
A common prank was to put some saccharine pills in one of those mint dispensers, walk up to a sibling and asked if they wanted one while putting a real mint in your mouth. They'd take one of the fake mints, put it in their mouth, and half a second later curse you as they ran to the sink to spit it out.
washadjeffmad
I still have a little bottle of those, sold under the brand "Aids".
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SoftTalker
All these artificial sweeteners taste terrible to me. A very "chemical" taste and especially smell to all of them, reminds me of insecticide. For carbonated beverages, I prefer plain carbonated water, though sometimes I will buy a flavored (but unsweetened) variety.
9283409232
I've settled on no sugar or under 3g of sugar for this reason. They all taste weird to me. Monk fruit, stevia, aspartame, saccharin, allulose, sucralose. All of them.
BobaFloutist
They taste weird to me too but I'm not convinced it's an absolute quality rather than just unfamiliarity
latchkey
My problem with monk fruit extracts is that they tend to be full of erythritol (even listing them as the first ingredient [0]), which tends to wreck my stomach. I was in a super market once and not a single product on the shelf was pure monk fruit.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/RAW-Natural-Sweetener-Erythritol-Suga...
hinkley
I think they’re using erythritol because it’s not toxic to pets which some of the other sugar alcohols are, and disastrously so.
But all of the sugar alcohols can mess with your gut biome. Mine went nasty during the previous recession when I was chewing gum for TMJ related problems.
latchkey
I'm confused, google says monk fruit is ok for pets. Regardless, who's feeding this stuff to their pets?
I love fishermans friend, but I think the sorbitol is guaranteed excessive flatulence.
officeplant
- I was chewing gum for TMJ related problems.
Why the hell would you do that? My life time of chewing gum constantly until my 20s is what I assume to be the source of my TMJ.
analog31
I'm only quibbling here, and I agree with you, but an amusing factoid is that the ancient Romans used lead acetate as an artificial sweetener. It was made by boiling wine in a lead pot.
When I lived in Texas, it was practically universal to open up a cup of iced tea, grab several packs of Sweet'n'Low, rip the tops off all at once, and pour them in.
sorcerer-mar
With Sweet’n’Low?! Isn’t that considered blasphemy in sweet tea country?
analog31
That's a good question, and I'm culturally ignorant. When I lived in Texas, my impression was that "tea" was unsweetened iced tea, to which people added their own sweetener. Then when I visited Virginia, "tea" was heavily sweetened.
My friend told me that drinking coffee with a meal instantly identified me as a Midwesterner.
Llamamoe
> I think saccharin is probably the safest of all the artificial sweeteners. Stevia and monk fruit extracts (herbal sweeteners) are probably okay too, as long as you're not allergic to them.
No, isomaltulose(a.k.a Palatinose) is the best. Not very sweet, but it's literally just glucose and fructose connected differently, no other off-products or metabolic consequences, just a sweet carbohydrate with slow metabolism that doesn't cause cavities and is beneficial to the gut microbiota due to the slow release of sugar, just like a good resistant starch would.
It's not as sweet, low calorie, or inexpensive, but health-wise forget being harmless, it's outright better than almost all other carbs.
chasil
Google Gemini is telling me:
"Saccharin is absorbed primarily in the stomach, with about 85% to 95% of ingested saccharin absorbed and eliminated in the urine."
If this is the case, then why hasn't the antibiotic effect been previously observed in vivo?
Is the concentration too low?
majkinetor
Xylitol is probably safer, and it also kills smutans.
jader201
These days, about the only liquid you can consume without controversy is water.
Some say coffee is good for you (in moderation), some say it's bad for you.
Some say certain alcoholic drinks are good for you (in moderation), some say no amount of alcohol is good.
Some say some artificial sweeteners have benefits, some say all of them are toxic.
Some think fruit juices are good for you, because fruit. Some (most) say they're bad for you.
Some say fruit smoothies are good for you, because the fiber content outweighs the downside of fructose/natural sugars. But some say all fruit sugar is bad for you.
The only thing that we seem to agree on, is that any sort of beverage containing sucrose is bad for you. But maybe I missed some thread where sucrose in moderation actually has health benefits.
I guess I'll stick to drinking water. But I'm sure there's a reason why that's bad for me.
ender341341
> Some say certain alcoholic drinks are good for you (in moderation), some say no amount of alcohol is good.
From what I've read it seems likely that any amount of alcohol is bad for you, most of the studies that show moderate as good for you make the mistake of only have 'sober', 'moderate' & 'heavy' drinking, but if you look at the 'sober' folks there's a heavy mix of "I don't drink because I'm in recovery" or other health issues, so if you instead of 'sober by choice', 'sober by recovery/health issues', 'moderate' & 'heavy drinker' the benefit of moderation reverses to being worse than 'sober by choice'.
Almost any "this bad for you thing is actually good for you in moderation" basically seem to come down to:
People who can do common addictive things in moderation tend to also be good at moderating other bad factors too.
omnimus
Alcohol is bad for your body but can be quite good for your mood. Just like sugar or othe high calory food.
whycome
Yeah this is a key part. If in small amounts it can reduce anxiety and increase sociability (if desired) then it could be a net positive. Good and bad is vague.
ashoeafoot
It depends ? Has your line adapted to alcohol, like other lines adapted to milk?
muongold
[dead]
stephen_g
Some of those are pretty easy to separate -
Alchohol isn't really good for you - statistically you will probably get away with reasonably low intake but the observational studies showing a benefit were most likely confounding variables - like studies where the 'non-drinkers' category contained those who had been alcoholics and were forced to stop drinking, or demographic distortions where moderate drinkers had much healthier lifestyles in other areas (exercise, access to healthcare, etc.) than heavy drinkers.
Coffee seems to be good for you, as long as it's only up to a few (3-4) a day, and as long as it's not affecting your sleep. But I have read the fines in methods like Turkish coffees could be somewhat harmful, whereas espresso is fine and paper filtered better. Sweetening it with sugar isn't great for you of course.
One that gets me is dairy and milk, I get the ethical concerns, and one can make an argument that it's not super 'natural' to take another species milk and to drink it after infancy, but that doesn't mean it's unhealthy (almost all medicines are 'unnatural' too, while some poisons are fully natural!). There's some evidence of milk/dairy being protective against bowel cancer for instance, and inconclusive evidence of harms so I do wince a bit at the plant-based milk alternatives (which are highly- or ultra-processed, if you do care about that kind of thing!) being so trendy.
nineplay
The 'no fruit juice' thing really got on my nerves when my kids were little since people just throw it out with no qualifications. So really, if I cut up some oranges and squeeze the juice into a cup I can't give it to my kid because fruit = sugar = bad? It's such a reductionist way to look at food and nutrition.
I also recently had a PT tell me that blending fruit into smoothies removes all the nutritional value, which is why no one should get nutritional advice heath professionals who are not nutritionists.
ch4s3
The real issue with fruit juice is that you can easily consume the juice of several pieces of fruit all at once and in a form that makes the sugar rapidly available so you get insulin spikes. The serving size for children of juice is 4-6oz which isn't very much volume, so its super easy to over do it.
If you eat the whole fruit that sugar s bound up with fiber so you don't consume as much as easily and you digest it more slowly. Fiber plays a key role in satiety (feeling full) and stripped of fiber its easy to consume too many calories. A whole orange contains 3-6x the fiber of the equivalent volume of orange juice with pulp.
bobthepanda
It is that and that the acidity of the fruit juice is pretty bad for the enamel of your teeth.
timcobb
> So really, if I cut up some oranges and squeeze the juice into a cup I can't give it to my kid because fruit = sugar = bad? It's such a reductionist way to look at food and nutrition.
Sorta? It's not bad, right? But it has not much nutritional value, and spikes their glycemic index, which is probably fine but... why? I guess it does taste good...
nineplay
Because no one wants to drink water all day every day and nothing else.
snozolli
no one should get nutritional advice heath professionals who are not nutritionists.
Nobody should take advice from nutritionists. It's not a regulated title. Anyone can call themselves a nutritionist. Take your nutritional advice from dieticians (and licensed medical professionals with relevant training and experience).
bitwize
As Dara Ó Briain put it, dietician is to nutritionist as dentist is to tootheologist.
colechristensen
>I also recently had a PT tell me that blending fruit into smoothies removes all the nutritional value, which is why no one should get nutritional advice heath professionals who are not nutritionists.
I'd just suggest nobody get nutritional advice. Really so much of it is just nonsense and there's no good advice in my opinion outside "eat a variety of food in moderation" unless you have specific health problems. If a health professional told me that blending fruit into smoothies removes nutritional value I'd make it a point to try to get them fired. (I have gotten healthcare professionals fired, but for more serious stupid statements)
nineplay
I don't entirely disagree but my kid was with me and I feel like I need someone now to reassure her that blending doesn't magically remove vitamins from food.
( I asked her if blending tomatoes for sauce removed the nutritional value but that's different for reasons that no one understands. )
I'm with you. Eat a variety of food and as close to the natural source as possible. If you think that orange juice and mountain dew are the same because of sugar content than you've lost the plot.
JumpCrisscross
> if I cut up some oranges and squeeze the juice into a cup I can't give it to my kid
Nobody was seriously arguing against fresh-squeezed juices (especially when served with the pulp).
colechristensen
>Nobody was seriously arguing against fresh-squeezed juices (especially when served with the pulp).
Yes they are.
And when it comes down to it a little bit of fiber especially when something has been aggressively mashed up, doesn't make your orange juice all that different from a Mtn Dew. Fructose is fructose and no amount of magical extras is going to make that big of a difference on its metabolic effects.
I say that but I'm not advocating you to not drink juice. Just balance your inputs.
nineplay
People below you in this thread are saying that fresh squeezed orange juice is little better than Mountain Dew. Something about nutrition makes people lose their minds.
timcobb
With pulp we're getting somewhere, but without pulp?
fnord77
I am. That's a processed food. The sugar is concentrated via a mechanical extraction
MyOutfitIsVague
> if I cut up some oranges and squeeze the juice into a cup I can't give it to my kid because fruit = sugar = bad?
Yeah, that's fine, but a 16 ounce glass of orange juice has way more than one orange in it, and it's got a hell of a lot of sugar.
BoingBoomTschak
Or just do like me and switch to grapefruit juice. Awesome without drinking pure liquid sugar.
bitwize
Consuming whole fruit is kinda okay because the fiber in the fruit helps buffer sugar absorption.
With juice you're getting lots of sugar but no fiber.
Commercially bottled juices (e.g., Tropicana) are worse but fresh squeezed is still bad.
If it's sweet, spit it out!
leoh
>I guess I'll stick to drinking water. But I'm sure there's a reason why that's bad for me.
Micro-plastics, fluoride.. ;)
anonzzzies
People worry about where the drinking water is from and how it's transported etc as well. Whatever you do, you will die soon-ish. I prefer to enjoy the journey.
Galatians4_16
> These days, about the only liquid you can consume without controversy is water.
Tapwater, or artesian well water?
Magnitically left-spun water, or ionically charged crystal-dipped water?
Hermetically sealed water, or Gnostically gestated water?
Distilled or deionated?
Choose wisely.
butlike
In worrying about it all you miss all the earthly delights AND you STILL don't live forever
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bko
Naw, that's just big waters psy-op getting you to buy their nectar to fill up the Pacific ocean with plastic.
In all seriousness, I met people that essentially don't drink water. They get water through food. Give them a glass during dinner and it goes untouched. I don't think it's because they're lazy and don't want to get up and fill up their water. It's just that they're not thirsty. It's really quite fascinating
pshirshov
> Saccharin breaks the walls of bacterial pathogens, causing them to distort and eventually burst, killing the bacteri
Sugar, salt, kerosene and, for example, ethanol, do the same. What is special about saccharin?
smt88
You can't put the other things you've listed on a wound in a hospital without some, uh... unpleasantness.
masfuerte
I don't fancy kerosene much. Sugar works very well [1]. Salt and ethanol are very effective in mouthwashes, though ethanol is carcinogenic. I stick to the salt.
[1]: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180328-how-sugar-could-...
smt88
Salt is painful and I believe the risk with sugar is that it can be metabolized by bacteria or fungi, so the remnants of it can make conditions better for microbes (although I haven't googled to confirm this)
pshirshov
Sure thing you can put sugar or, for example, colloidal silver (an awesome option!).
ChrisMarshallNY
Hate the taste of the stuff, but glad to hear this.
Wonder if some megacorp will try to patent some formulation of it.
Obscurity4340
Saccharin adderallide
profsummergig
The gut biome thing.
There have been murmurs on the conspiracy internet about how artificial sweeteners may have been responsible for making gut biomes less effective.
This seems related. The gut biome refers to bacteria in the gut.
gyudin
I wouldn't be surprised. Living in US more and more of my immigrant friends discover severe food sensitivities that they've never experienced before.
stephenitis
There are a lot of bacteria that live in a dirt and our natural biome that also reduce to antibiotic resistance of pathogenic bacteria thus making antibiotics a more effective.
This general weakness of the bacterial wall is something to be wary of given they didn’t study its effect on a wider range of important bacteria.
Throwing a lot of anything in your gut that can cause an imbalance, ir serious dybosis is a good reason to treat your stomach like a little fermenting aquarium whose bacteria and skin cells cycle every 3-5 days.
dingdingdang
But surely.. we also got a decent amount of research showing how Saccharin causes increased biofilm formation: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8156656/
Guess it's all about the usage model..!!
tickerticker
If taken orally, how does the saccharin distinguish between good and bad bacteria when bursting bacteria cell walls?
kokada
I don't think most antibiotics distinguish between good and bad bacteria, you just kill the majority of them and wait until they reproduce themselves again (and hopefully only the good bacterias).
pfdietz
The paper describe the effect at 1.4% saccharine in solution.
The oral LD50 in mice is 17 g/kg. https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Saccharin#section=...
Maybe ok for topical application?
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hinkley
Well at least it’s not in vitro. Everything kills bacteria in a Petri dish.
But it is topical. So it may do a treat for MRSA but not for resistant pneumonia.
pshirshov
There is a vaccine, which works against SA (including MRSA of course) as both a prevention and a cure: https://www.eapteka.ru/goods/id123804/ The old and mostly unknown legacy of the Soviet medicine. $50 per 20 doses.
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arijo
All sweeteners are considered harmful.
Please watch the video:
Saccharin was the first artificial sweetener, discovered in 1879. It was popular in the early 20th century, and is available today as Sweet'n'Low or "the pink packet" (generics). The chemical has an advocacy group: https://saccharin.org/ - the latest news is that Canadians can now use saccharin too (2016). Walmart and Amazon have boxes of bulk sweet'n'low for baking/etc.
~4 weeks ago I reposted a submission about Aspartame: Aspartame aggravates atherosclerosis through insulin-triggered inflammation (sciencedirect.com) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43313574
My comment tried to put saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame potassium and sucralose into context. Aspartame is not heat stable, so it's often combined with acesulfame-K. The diet soda industry standardized on aspartame in the 1980's because saccharin has a metallic aftertaste. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43313575
I think saccharin is probably the safest of all the artificial sweeteners. Stevia and monk fruit extracts (herbal sweeteners) are probably okay too, as long as you're not allergic to them.
If you want to try saccharin-sweetened beverages, I've noticed that zero sugar tonic waters at my local grocery store (brand name and generic) use saccharin.