Artificial sweetener usage thought to facilitate C difficile virulence

Actual page title: "Dietary trehalose enhances virulence of epidemic Clostridium difficile"

Submitting with a genericized title causes confusion with common consumer ASes like aspartame, sucralose, Ace-K, etc.

Submitted earlier with original title:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16778032

I think I read about this on HN before. This is a common sugar like additive put in icecream because of it's texture properties. Its like the favorite food of the bug mentioned here. How did an artifical ingredient become a prefered food for it?