I've been reading some old (early 1900s) diabetic recipe books from archive.org and it was a bit of a surprise to see how many recipes used saccharin back then (and almond flour, bone broth, etc.). I remember seeing saccharin tablets everywhere as a youngster, then they all suddenly went away. As it turns out, researchers found a higher incidence of bladder cancer in rats fed a diet of saccharin (20x the expected human dose, I think), which caused the production of saccharin to drop off dramatically. Up until that point, it was cheap, relatively easy to produce and plentiful.
Further research eventually proved that saccharin reacted with a compound in rat urine that caused crystals to form in the urine, which 'scraped' the bladder wall, causing injury, increased cell repair, and (therefore) an increased incidence of bladder cancer in rats. The researchers proved that this compound did not exist in human urine and crystals did not form, therefore the increased incidence of cancer should not exist in humans - and analysis of bladder cancer rates for lifelong saccharin users backed-up the new findings.
Still, the damage to saccharin had been done and I think there's only one plant in Europe that still produces it. I'm not sure how large the artificial sweetener market is (it seems to be growing exponentially), but every decade an old sweetener appears to fall out of favour and is replaced by a new one (or is added in combination with others). I'm not sure we're much further ahead than we were in the early 1900s!
Further research eventually proved that saccharin reacted with a compound in rat urine that caused crystals to form in the urine, which 'scraped' the bladder wall, causing injury, increased cell repair, and (therefore) an increased incidence of bladder cancer in rats. The researchers proved that this compound did not exist in human urine and crystals did not form, therefore the increased incidence of cancer should not exist in humans - and analysis of bladder cancer rates for lifelong saccharin users backed-up the new findings.
Still, the damage to saccharin had been done and I think there's only one plant in Europe that still produces it. I'm not sure how large the artificial sweetener market is (it seems to be growing exponentially), but every decade an old sweetener appears to fall out of favour and is replaced by a new one (or is added in combination with others). I'm not sure we're much further ahead than we were in the early 1900s!