Archival Consumed: Sticky Success

[ Splenda ]

Sugar is one of those commodities that seem so commonplace that it is hard to imagine their absence. This was not always so: it was once a rare luxury, but a few hundred years of globalization and industrialization, plus some colonization and slavery, helped change that. Not that there weren’t always critics, of course. ”Sugar hath now succeeded honie,” the author of one quasi-medical book wrote in 1633, ”and is become of farre higher esteem, and is far more pleasing to the palat” — before questioning the view, not uncommon at the time, that sugar had medicinal properties and charging that it ”heateth the blood” and ”rotteth the teeth,” among other things. Several centuries on, of course, sugar is something that many people try to cut back on, or eliminate from their diets altogether. But sweetness is something few can do without, which means that there has been a vigorous market for sugar substitutes, from Sweet ‘N Low to Equal to, more recently, Splenda.

The rise of Splenda has generally been tied to the Atkins low-carb craze, but Splenda appears to have transcended that phenomenon, continuing to sell well as demand for Atkins products appears to be slowing down. According to Splenda, the initial appearance of the sugar substitute on the consumer market was as an ingredient in Diet Rite cola in 1998. It began being sold as a stand-alone ”table-top product” late the following year. The target market was diabetics, but soon it was swept up in low-carb mania. It was used as an ingredient by consumer companies aimed at dieters and by those sugar-shunning consumers on their own — some 300,000 people have signed up to receive Splenda-friendly recipes from the brand’s Web site. Splenda is now by far the top-selling nonsugar sweetener, sales of real sugar are down and Coke and Pepsi have Splenda-based versions in the works. Splenda sales top $175 million a year, and its maker has had trouble keeping up with demand.

The basic Splenda claim, as summarized in its advertising slogan, is that it is ”made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar.” This sounds like some kind of riddle. Consumers who take the time to explore Splenda’s Web site will find a one-paragraph summary of the ”patented, multistep process” that begins with sugar and converts it, at the molecular level, to sucralose, an ”essentially inert” ingredient. (Pure sucralose is 600 times as sweet as sugar, a spokeswoman explains, so for the ”table top” version it is combined with granular ”bulking ingredients.”) In any case, consumers are apparently convinced that this sugar substitute hits their sweet spot. Splenda has attained a kind of in-the-know aura: it is conspicuous at Starbucks, for example, and its logo on other products has become sort of like the ”Intel Inside” promise on some personal computers.

Which is why the latest chapter in the history of the human desire for sweetness is so interesting. According to competitors, Splenda fans have been duped. The maker of Equal, which is Splenda’s closest sugar-substitute rival, has sued Splenda’s marketers on the grounds that the ”made from sugar” claim tricks consumers into thinking that Splenda is all natural. And now the Sugar Association has added its own sour note by way of a Web site, truthaboutsplenda.com, with the kind of all-out assault on a rival that is almost never seen in consumer (as opposed to political) marketing. ”Splenda is not natural and does not taste like sugar,” the site charges. ”The sweetness of Splenda derives from a chlorocarbon chemical that contains three atoms of chlorine in every one of its molecules.” It goes on to say that Splenda consumers ”are actually eating chlorine,” suggests that the product is unsafe and has not been thoroughly tested and links to a statement from the Web site of the Whole Foods grocery-store chain, which refuses to stock anything made with sucralose. The Splenda camp has now sued the Sugar Association for making ”false and misleading claims.”

More interesting, perhaps, than the legal wrangling is the struggle for sweet virtue — Splenda as diet aid for the health-conscious or sugar as true product of Mother Earth. Should the clever consumer align with the trusted brand Whole Foods? Or the trusted brand Starbucks? Perhaps the confused sweet-seeker can find solace in the latest addition to the Splenda line: Splenda Sugar Blend for Baking. It is a mix of Splenda and actual sugar, and thus the best of both worlds — or, depending on how you look at it, the worst.

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[This installment of the Consumed column appeared in the March 13, 2005, New York Times Magazine; it was posted on this site some time much later, despite the fiddled-with time/date stamp.]