Diet Revolution In Richard Cohen's Sweet And Low

"Sweet and Low" is the story of those ubiquitous little pink packets of sugar substitute that you see in restaurants and diners and coffee shops — the story of the role saccharine played in the diet revolution that began sweeping America in the 1950's and the story of the artificial sweetener wars that raged in the 80's and 90's. The story is about the family that invented first the sugar packet and then Sweet'N Low, capitalizing on Americans' diet madness to build a company that by 1996 was producing 50 million packets of artificial sweetener a day at a factory in Brooklyn. In this book, the author (Richard Cohen) plays multiple roles of narrator, stage manager and chorus. The rest of the characters in the book are Benjamin Eisenstadts: the eldest in the family, whose inventiveness and drive made the family's millions, but who basically "wanted a simple life", "A piece of grapefruit. Something sweet in his tea." Ben's wife, Betty, "the power behind the throne," a woman who wanted "a pile of money to protect her from shame and disaster," a woman who believed that "love is finite" and must be allocated among family members, with some getting more than others. The
There was nothing new about tea bags, it was in a coffee shop where Ben came up with an idea that would change his families lives, to put sugar in little bags and sell them individually. Ben took his invention, unpatented, to a sugar company, which apparently stole it, rendering him forever suspicious. The company actually took off when Ben and Uncle Marvelous came up with the idea for Sweet'N Low. They positioned it first as an aid to diabetics, but dieters began swiping it from hospitals and restaurants, and soon the little pink packets had largely replaced not only the sugar dispenser but sugar