A BITTER, SWEET BATTLE STIRS UP CONFUSIONTHE 'SUGAR CADDY' WARSSUGAR 'CADDY
PrintYellow Splenda. Blue Equal. Pink Sweet'N Low. Old-fashioned white granulated sugar, produced right here in Palm Beach County.
The colorful sweetener market is getting downright crowded -- and competitive, as packets fight for space in restaurant "caddies."
Now there's a new color in town: green-clad stevia, a plant-derived sweetener used for centuries in South America. In December, after years of opposition, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration abruptly cleared the path for a highly purified form to sweeten foods and beverages.
Welcome to caddy wars.
The introduction of stevia, the newest combatant, has touched off unlikely liaisons, created colorful marketing confusion and reinvigorated the fight for control of which sweeteners get stirred, poured and sprinkled, both in restaurants and eventually at home.
Through their connection to Domino Foods Inc., West Palm Beach-based Florida Crystals Corp. and the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida in Belle Glade are fighting back by joining hands with the enemy: NutraSweet Co., the Chicago-based maker of rival aspartame.
The local companies jointly own American Sugar Refining Inc. and the Domino sugar brand.
Domino and NutraSweet have developed a "caddy strategy" in the war of the packets, mixing up sugar and artificial sweeteners and -- perhaps confusingly for consumers -- colors, with a line of new products such as NutraSweet Cane.
Introduced this year, NutraSweet Cane's yellow packets contain sugar and two artificial sweeteners, taking direct aim at yellow-clad Splenda.
"We decided to go into each category -- each color -- and develop a product that was unique and better," NutraSweet CEO Craig Petray said.
But some consumers are bristling from the sugar caddy confusion. In a posting on the Fooducate.com blog, "Tina" expressed outrage that she picked up a "pink packet" to sweeten her iced tea at Burger King and noticed it was NutraSweet Pink, not Sweet'N Low.
She later found out that the NutraSweet product was not saccharine but contained neotame, which she had never heard of.
Sugar and sweetener producers have an adversarial history. For years, alternative sweetener manufacturers have marketed their products by attacking sugar as too high in calories, seeking to blame it for the nation's obesity epidemic.
The sugar industry has countered that sugar, unlike artificial sweeteners, is natural -- and at 15 calories a teaspoon, not that fattening.
"Sugar is the gold standard and everything else is trying to come as close as possible to it," said Brian O'Malley, Domino's president and CEO.
But, he added, "we decided to launch an artificial line of products in recognition that there are consumers who will not eat sugar; either they cannot or do not want to."
Just a few years ago, NutraSweet viewed sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, another major sweetener, as "the enemy," Petray said. Then, "five or six years ago, we got on a whole blending kick."
They opened a lab called Sweet Spot in Chicago that would specialize in sweetener blending. "We take out a little bit of high-fructose corn syrup or sugar and put in other sweeteners, and have the products taste the same," Petray said.
Products that are a blend of sugar and another sweetener are becoming more common, and consumers will see more and more "hybrid blends" in foods and beverages, Petray said. For example, Sunny D, a popular children's beverage, has corn syrup and artificial ingredients neotame and ace-k.
The partnership's first product was blue-packeted NutraSweet, a blend of aspartame and ace-k, designed to compete with Equal, which has only aspartame. "It has a better upfront sweetness and less of a linger," Petray said of "blue," launched last year.
The latest offering, brought out at the National Restaurant Association in Chicago in May, is a green-packeted product called "100 percent Natural NutraSweet with Stevia." It contains 98 percent sugar, but 90 percent of the sweetness is from stevia, Petray said. Each packet contains zero calories.
At first glance, the packets and boxes of the blended sweeteners appear almost identical to the products they seek to usurp. For instance, NutraSweet "blue" boxes could be mistaken for Equal, which is known for blue packaging.
New Pink's pink packets and boxes compete with pink-packeted saccharine, though New Pink brags right on the box that it is "saccharine free" and has an "extra sweet taste." It is formulated to taste "just like Sweet'N Low," Petray said.
"During our market research, we found the one thing consumers did not like about (Sweet'N Low) pink was that it has saccharine in it," he said, even though Sweet'N Low is practically synonymous with saccharine.
The blending strategy continues throughout the product line, which is manufactured and distributed by Domino and sold along with its sugar products. The sweeteners formulated by NutraSweet are marketed by both Domino and NutraSweet, and so far have been distributed primarily to restaurants and hotels, with grocery stores expected to be added later.
Petray said there's much more to come from NutraSweet's alliance with Domino.
"Our goal is to shake everything up a little bit and see what consumers prefer," Petray said. "There are just four colors out there. How many colors are there in a rainbow?"
~ susan_salisbury@pbpost.com
The new competition (NutraSweet's line)
The usual sweetener suspectsSweet'N Low
is saccharine, a synthetic chemicalSplenda
is sucralose, sucrose combined with chlorineEqual
is aspartame, a derivative of the amino acids aspartic acid and phenylalanine
The newer
Truvia
is rebaudioside A, known as Reb A, an extract from the stevia plantNutraSweet (blue) is a blend of aspartame and ace-kNutraSweet Cane (yellow)
is a blend of cane sugar with ace-k, aspartame and neotameNutraSweet New Pink
is a blend of ace-k and neotame, and is billed as 'saccharine free'The green-packeted
100% Natural NutraSweet with Stevia
is a blend of sugar and stevia, also known as Reb A, an extract from the stevia plantSugar
is sucrose, derived from sugar cane and sugar beetsCalories:
Sugar: 15 calories per teaspoon
Artificial sweeteners:0-5 calories per packet*
*The FDA allows them to be labeled 'zero calories'
White, pink, blue, yellow--or green?
Plant-derived stevia adds yet another colorful combatant to the 'caddy wars.'
White: Sugar
Biggest brand: Domino
Pink: Saccharine
Biggest brand: Sweet'N Low, offered in a pink packet
Sweetness: 300 times as sweet as sugar
Blue: Aspartame
Biggest brand: Equal
Sweetness: 200 times as sweet as sugar
Yellow: Sucralose
Biggest brand:Splenda, offered in a yellow packet
Sweetness: 600 times as sweet as sugar
Green: Stevia
Brands: Truvia, PureVia, Sweetleaf
Sweetness: Up to 300 times as sweet as sugar
Sources: Center for Science in the Public Interest; Calorie Control Council; industry reports
