Back when we were all mouth-pipetting
'The sugar alcohols and glycosides are found in nature, but all the man-made types (the first three classes) were discovered accidentally when someone in a lab happened to ingest small amounts and noticed the taste. That last pathway is not as common as it used to be decades ago - who knows what artificial sweeteners we might have missed out on due to lack of sloppy lab technique?'
- Derek Lowe
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sugar-substitutes-surprise
