A passing reference to maltodextrin, a sugar-based sweetener, on BoingBoing turned on the little lightbulb what hovers over my brain, and I Googled around to find this: Sugar substitutes and the potential danger of Splenda Saccharin, the first widely available chemical sweetener, is hardly mentioned any more. Better-tasting NutraSweet took its place in almost every diet soda, but saccharin is still an ingredient in some prepared foods, gum, and over-the-counter medicines. Remember those carcinogen warnings on the side of products that contained saccharin? They no longer appear because industry testing showed that saccharin only caused bladder cancer in rats. Most…