Empty Pleasures

The Story of Artificial Sweeteners from Saccharin to Splenda

Carolyn de la Peña

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780807872741, 9780807834091
• eBook ISBN: 9780807879672
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business History
• Index: Business

Sugar substitutes have been a part of American life since saccharin was introduced at the 1893 World’s Fair. In Empty Pleasures, the first history of artificial sweeteners in the United States, Carolyn de la Peña blends popular culture with business and women’s history, examining the invention, production, marketing, regulation, and consumption of sugar substitutes such as saccharin, Sucaryl, NutraSweet, and Splenda. She describes how saccharin, an accidental laboratory by-product, was transformed from a perceived adulterant into a healthy ingredient. As food producers and pharmaceutical companies worked together to create diet products, savvy women’s magazine writers and editors promoted artificially sweetened foods as ideal, modern weight-loss aids, and early diet-plan entrepreneurs built menus and fortunes around pleasurable dieting made possible by artificial sweeteners.

NutraSweet, Splenda, and their predecessors have enjoyed enormous success by promising that Americans, especially women, can “have their cake and eat it too,” but Empty Pleasures argues that these “sweet cheats” have fostered troubling and unsustainable eating habits and that the promises of artificial sweeteners are ultimately too good to be true.

Index

• Abbott Laboratories, 66–101, 239 (n. 61), 240 (n. 79);
  • and medicinal bottles, 40;
  • and liquid form of cyclamate, 53;
  • and cookbook, 55;
  • and Newspaper Food Editors Conference, 127;
  • and the Obesity Task Force, 224
• Abbott Tree, The, 67–69, 83, 236 (n. 4)
• Adulterant, 40, 59;
  • and saccharin, 7, 21–22, 24–25, 29, 38, 71;
  • and children, 32. See also “False scarlet”
• Advertising: and diet soda, 6, 147;
  • and Monsanto, 59;
  • direct-to-consumer, 89, 91, 183–84, 186;
  • and soda companies, 98;
  • and women, 107–8, 119, 198, 204, 241 (n. 2);
  • and Tasti-Diet, 113–24, 242–43 (n. 33);
  • and food editors, 125–32;
  • and Weight Watchers, 135–38, 205;
  • and saccharin, 162, 182, 232 (n. 59);
  • and FDA ban on saccharin, 170–71;
  • and African Americans, 172–73;
  • and NutraSweet, 175, 182–94, 197–98, 204;
  • and children, 194;
  • and obesity, 199;
  • and psychology, 236 (n. 48.);
  • false, 219–20, 222. See also Advertising Campaign; Marketing
• Advertising campaign: and canned food, 75;
  • and Abbott, 91–93;
  • and newspapers, 128–32;
  • and NutraSweet, 183–89
• Agriculture: and saccharin, 15–18;
  • and concerned consumers, 142. See also Plantation
• American Sugar Refining Company, 26–27, 29
• Artificial sweeteners: and consumer choice, 1–6;
  • as products, 3, 109, 113;
  • and health risks, 4, 55, 81, 148, 178, 224–25;
  • and making meaning, 7–9, 14, 106–7;
  • and excess consumption, 10–12;
  • as powders, liquids, and pills, 39–40, 42–51;
  • containers for, 40, 44–50;
  • and diabetes, 71;
  • and decalorization of pleasure, 105–6, 169;
  • and consumer letters, 168;
  • and food supply, 215, 222, 224;
  • and nature, 220, 223. See also Aspartame; Co...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Empty Pleasures
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Introduction
• ONE FALSE SCARLET HEALTHFUL SUGAR VS. ADULTEROUS SACCHARIN IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
• Two ALCHEMIC ALLY WOMEN'S CREATIVITY AND CONTROL IN SACCHARIN AND CYCLAMATES
• THREE DIET MEN THE FOOD-PHARMA ORIGINS OF ARTIFICIALLY SWEETENED PRODUCTS
• FOUR PROSPERITY STOMACHS AND PROSPEROUS WOMEN DIET ENTREPRENEURS
• FIVE SACCHARIN REBELS THE RIGHT TO RISKY PLEASURE IN 1977
• SIX NUTRASWEET NATION PROFIT, PERIL, AND THE PROMISE OF A FREE LUNCH
• CONCLUSION SPLENDA, SUGAR, AND WHAT MOTHER NATURE INTENDED
• Notes
• Bibliography
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• Index