What is Saccharin?
Hubby was asking me yesterday what are exactly the substance of saccharin. As far as I know, I told him that it is an artificial sweetener and sometimes not really good for the body. He always use it in his coffe as sweetener. Actually, he was asking if it is one of the causes why he is having a high blood pressure at the moment. I told him maybe. When I research it in wikipedia, here are the information that I found.
“Saccharin is an artificial sweetener. The basic substance, benzoic sulfilimine, has effectively no food energy and is much sweeter than sucrose, but has an unpleasant bitter or metallic aftertaste, especially at high concentrations. It is used to sweeten products such as drinks, candies, biscuits, medicines, and toothpaste.
Properties
Saccharin is unstable when heated but it does not react chemically with other food ingredients. As such, it stores well. Blends of saccharin with other sweeteners are often used to compensate for each sweetener’s weaknesses and faults. A 10:1 cyclamate:saccharin blend is common in countries where both these sweeteners are legal; in this blend, each sweetener masks the other’s off-taste. Saccharin is often used together with aspartame in diet soda, so that some sweetness remains should the fountain syrup be stored beyond aspartame’s relatively short shelf life. Saccharin is believed to be an important discovery, especially for diabetics, as it goes directly through the human digestive system without being digested. Although saccharin has no food energy, it can trigger the release of insulin in humans and rats, apparently as a result of its taste, as can other sweeteners like aspartame.”
