A Popular Sugar Additive May Have Fueled the Spread of Two Superbugs (latimes.com)

Zorro (Slashdot reader #15,797) quotes the Los Angeles Times: Two bacterial strains that have plagued hospitals around the country may have been at least partly fueled by a sugar additive in our food products, scientists say. Trehalose, a sugar that is added to a wide range of food products, could have allowed certain strains of Clostridium difficile to become far more virulent than they were before, a new study finds. The results, described in the journal Nature, highlight the unintended consequences of introducing otherwise harmless additives to the food supply.
Nearly half a million people were sickened by C. difficile in 2011, when it was directly linked to 15,000 deaths. "The misuse and overuse of antibiotics has long been thought to be responsible for the rise of many kinds of antibiotic-resistant 'superbug'," notes the article, before citing a researcher who now believes "the circumstantial and experimental evidence points to trehalose as an unexpected culprit."

Comments

Re: Something for Nothing

[BronsCon]

Sucrose, glucose, and fructose are the sugars that the FDA actually considers sugar. Since trehalose is none of those, you can add it and claim "no sugar added" the same way you can add guarana to something and still call it "caffeine free". It's false advertising, but with a legal green flag.

Re:Maybe it's time

[LeftCoastThinker]

A little Googling will reveal that Trehalose is about 11x more expensive than sugar, so this is not a financial play, it is used because of some unique gel behavior as it gets dehydrated, and it's stability at high temperatures. It naturally occurs in Shiitake mushrooms, among other things (15-25% by dry weight). It is also only half as sweet as table sugar, so you have to use more to achieve the same sweetness.