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COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY

SACCHARIN [C7H5NO3S]

a artificial sweetener that is calorie free. Products with saccharin is required to carry the warning label: Use of this product may be hazardous to your health. This product contains saccharin, which has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals".

http://ific.org/glossary/index.cfm Accessed March 2007. International Food Information Council.
Saccharin, the oldest of the non-nutritive sweeteners, is currently produced from purified, manufactured methyl anthranilate, a substance occurring naturally in grapes. It is 300 times sweeter than sucrose, heat stable and does not promote dental caries. Saccharin has a long shelf life, but a slightly bitter aftertaste. It is not metabolized in the human digestive system, is excreted rapidly in the urine and does not accumulate in body.
Igoe, Robert S. 1983. Dictionary of Food Ingredients. Van Nostrand and Reinhold Company.
is a nonnutritive synthetic sweetener, being a synthetic sweetener which is 300 to 400 times sweeter than sucrose. It is nonhygroscopic and has a bitter after-taste and a stability problem in cooked, canned, or baked goods. It is slightly soluble in water with a solubility of ten grams in 100 grams of water at 25C but the solubility improves in boiling water. It is used as sodium or calcium saccharin. It is used in low calorie foods such as jam, beverages, and desserts. It is also termed sodium benzosulfimide.
Ruth Winter.1978. A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives. Crown Publishers, Inc., New York.
An artificial sweetener in use since 1879. Pound for pound it is 300 times as sweet as natural sugar but leaves a bitter aftertaste. It was used along with cyclamates in the experiments which led to the ban on cyclamates in 1969. The FDA has proposed restricting saccharin to 15 milligrams per day for each kilogram of body weight or 1 gram a day for a 150-pound person. The FDA announcewd March 9, 1977, that the use of saccharin in foods and beverages would be banned because the artifricial sweetener has been found to cause malignant bladder tumors in laboratory animals. The ban was based on findings of a study sponsored by the Canadian government, which found that 7 out of 38 animals develop turmors, 3 of them malignant. In addition, 100 offspring were fed saccharin and 14 developed bladder tumors. In contrast, 100 control rats were not fed saccharin and only two developed tumors. At the time of the FDA's announcement, 5 million pounds of saccharin were being consumed per year, 74 percent of it in diet soda, 14 percent in dietetic food, and 12 percent as a tabletop replacement.
Excerpts from Bender, Arnold E. 1990. Dictionary of Nutrition and Food Technology. Butterworths, Boston.
Chemical, benzoic sulphimide, 550 times as sweet as cane sugar. Soluble saccharin is the sodium salt. Has no food value; useful as a sweetening agent for diabetics and slimmers.; discovered in the USA in 1879.
The October 29, 1997 Wall Street Journal [McGinley, L. 1997, October 29. Saccharin's presence on list of carcinogens may be near an end. Wall Street Journal CXXXVII (no. 85): A1.] indicates that saccarin may be taken off the listing as a carcinogen. This would be great for Sweet 'N Low. This sugar substitute is a synthetic compound derived from coal tar in 1879 by a student researcher at Johns Hopkins University. It is approximately 300 times sweeter than sugar. Monsanto Co. got the product in 1901.

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Uses: animal feed, antacids, cough syrups, diet beverages, diet jelly, mouthwash and toothpaste, sugar-free gum, tabletop sweetener, low calorie baked goods.

Company: Contact: PMC Specialities
187 Mountainview
Nutley, NJ 07110


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