How Sweet’N Low Taught Americans to Say No to Sugar

Louis Armstrong had two great loves in life—music, of course, and eating. The legendary trumpet player “ate just like a dog,” he once said. Armstrong adored soul food and Chinese food, scarfing down so much of both that he’d also swallow antacids and laxatives in an attempt to keep his weight in check. In 1968, Armstrong found another remedy, one that worked so well he wrote a letter to the company. [kickout id="2"] “Dear Sweet’N Low Folks,” it read. “I just want to tell you that Sweet’N Low picks me up and is just right for my diet. … Let me know if I can buy maybe a carton or so.” History does not record if Pops ever got his carton, but the letter is an enduring testament to one of the most revolutionary food products of the 20th century, one that accomplished the tiny miracle of making your coffee sweeter than sugar with just a single calorie. Today, 138 million Americans use sugar substitutes, fueling an industry that’s worth nearly $16 billion. It’s a crowded category now, but 60-year-old Sweet’N Low—the first of its kind—continues to prosper. “Many consumers remain loyal,” said marketing vp Catherine Steffen, “simply because they love its one-of-a-kind sweet taste.” [kickout id="3"] That taste was the work of a restaurateur named Ben Eisenstadt, who ran the Cumberland Cafeteria across from the Brooklyn Navy Yard during WWII. When the war ended, Eisenstadt’s business fell off, so he sold it to buy a teabag-filling machine and went into the tea business as the Cumberland Packing Co. One afternoon, Eisenstadt and his wife, Betty, were lunching at a local eatery when she remarked the sugar bowl on the table was unsanitary. “Wouldn’t it be nice,” she mused aloud, “if sugar came in individual bags, like tea?” In a eureka moment, Eisenstadt decided to retool his teabag machinery to put sugar into paper packets—an idea so revolutionary that sugar companies promptly stole it. [kickout id="1"] So Eisenstadt pivoted once again: In 1957, with some help from his son Marvin (a chemical engineer), he mixed up a batch of saccharin, dextrose and cream of tartar, sifting it into small pink paper packets. And it caught fire. Part of the winning formula was timing (dieting took off in the postwar years), but much of it was packaging. Paula Hansanugrum, ecd of Chase Design Group, observes that the “iconic pink packet became instantly recognizable in sugar bowls in restaurants across America.” [kickout id="4"] The boom years didn’t last forever. Newer nonnutritive sweeteners such as aspartame (Equal) and sucralose (Splenda) eroded market share. Consumers complained about Sweet’N Low’s aftertaste. An early-1970s study linking saccharin with cancer in lab rats—a link that the National Institutes of Health has since stated does not extend to humans—soured things further. But that hasn’t stopped loyal consumers from tearing open more than 5 billion Sweet’N Low packets a year. And why? “When you are familiar with a flavor profile, you can attenuate to that and become accepting of any of its seemingly negative qualities,” observed Barb Stuckey, president and chief innovation officer of consulting firm Mattson. Besides, she adds, Sweet’N Low will always have a distinction none of its competitors will: It was the first. “No new sweetener has made as big a splash,” she said. “They really broke the ground.”

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How Sweet’N Low Taught Americans to Say No to Sugar

The little pink packets that revolutionized the concept of sweetness

Robert Klara

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Robert Klara