Saccharin, also called saccharine or benzosulfimide, or used in saccharin sodium or saccharin calcium forms, is a non-nutritive artificial sweetener. Saccharin is a benzoic sulfimide that is about 500 times sweeter than sucrose, but has a bitter or metallic aftertaste, especially at high concentrations. It is used to sweeten products, such as drinks, candies, baked goods, tobacco products, excipients, and for masking the bitter taste of some medicines. It appears as white crystals and is odorless.
Saccharin derives its name from the word "saccharine", meaning "sugary". The word saccharine is used figuratively, often in a derogative sense, to describe something "unpleasantly over-polite" or "overly sweet". Both words are derived from the Greek word σάκχαρον (sakkharon) meaning "gravel". Similarly, saccharose is an obsolete name for sucrose (table sugar).
Saccharin is heat-stable. 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 offtaste. Saccharin is often used with aspartame in diet carbonated soft drinks, so some sweetness remains should the fountain syrup be stored beyond aspartame's relatively short shelf life.
In its acid form, saccharin is not water-soluble. The form used as an artificial sweetener is usually its sodium salt. The calcium salt is also sometimes used, especially by people restricting their dietary sodium intake. Both salts are highly water-soluble: 0.67 g/ml in water at room temperature.
In the 1970s, studies performed on laboratory rats found an association between consumption of high doses of saccharin and the development of bladder cancer. However, further study determined that this effect was due to a mechanism that is not relevant to humans (deposition of crystals; see section).
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Sweetness is a basic taste most commonly perceived when eating foods rich in sugars. Sweet tastes are generally regarded as pleasurable. In addition to sugars like sucrose, many other chemical compounds are sweet, including aldehydes, ketones, and sugar alcohols. Some are sweet at very low concentrations, allowing their use as non-caloric sugar substitutes. Such non-sugar sweeteners include saccharin and aspartame. Other compounds, such as miraculin, may alter perception of sweetness itself.
Neohesperidin dihydrochalcone, sometimes abbreviated to neohesperidin DC or simply NHDC, is an artificial sweetener derived from citrus. It is particularly effective in masking the bitter tastes of other compounds found in citrus, including limonin and naringin. Industrially, it is produced by extracting neohesperidin from the bitter orange, and then hydrogenating this to make NHDC. NHDC was discovered during the 1960s as part of a United States Department of Agriculture research program to find methods for minimizing the taste of bitter flavorants in citrus juices.
The gustatory system or sense of taste is the sensory system that is partially responsible for the perception of taste (flavor). Taste is the perception stimulated when a substance in the mouth reacts chemically with taste receptor cells located on taste buds in the oral cavity, mostly on the tongue. Taste, along with the sense of smell and trigeminal nerve stimulation (registering texture, pain, and temperature), determines flavors of food and other substances.
Affective symptoms such as anxiety and depression are frequently observed in patients with epilepsy. The mechanisms of comorbidity of epilepsy and affective disorders, however, remain unclear. Diverse models are traditionally used in epilepsy research, inc ...
Gustatory perception is a complex phenomenon involving the recognition of sensory properties of a food (taste modality and intensity, flavour, texture, fat content, temperature) as well as its reward value (pleasantness and nutritional value). The sense of ...