How Sweet It Is

Coke's aspartame generation

Sweet-toothed but calorie-conscious Americans constitute a mammoth market for soft drinks, but there have been problems among the profits. Cyclamates and saccharin, artificial sweeteners used in soft drinks during the past generation, were thought to cause cancer, at least in laboratory animals. Cyclamates were generally banned in 1970, but Congress saved saccharin by requiring a warning label on drinks that contain it.

Now comes aspartame, which has been tested to a fare-thee-well by the Food and Drug Administration. Last week Atlanta's Coca-Cola introduced a new version of its diet Coke, containing a blend of saccharin and NutraSweet, drugmaker G.D. Searle's trade name for the aspartame. The new Coke is already on sale in Birmingham and will appear in Chicago, New York City, Washington and all other major American markets by year's end.

Diet Coke, which so far has been sweetened entirely with saccharin, made its debut a year ago and has since become the fourth-bestselling soft drink in the U.S. Some Coke lovers claim the drink has an aftertaste, but Brian G. Dyson, president of Coca-Cola USA, said the new diet Coke will deliver better flavor and attract male consumers, who are "less likely to make taste sacrifices for dieting."

Coca-Cola's announcement put it ahead of archrival Pepsi-Cola, which is not happy over Coke's head start. Said one official curtly: "Pepsi will announce its plans in the near future." Coke's move marks the first time in 30 years that a major producer has led the market with a new drink. Innovations usually have come from smaller bottlers. By moving first, Coke will act as a giant magnet to draw others to aspartame faster.

And sure enough, Coke's announcement barely made, Royal Crown Cola, also of Atlanta, tried to do Coke one lesser. It said that its Diet Rite Cola, the first diet soft drink ever (1962), will also be sweetened with aspartame and will contain no caffeine or, another first, sodium.

Aspartame, 200 times as sweet as sugar, has had a bitter journey since being accidentally discovered in 1965 by a Searle scientist researching an ulcer drug. Aspartame-sweetened Diet Rite and diet Coke have already been sold in Canada, and diet Coke has also quenched thirsts in Ireland and Scandinavia, but the U.S. introduction had been held up by the FDA, which was wary after its approval years earlier of cyclamates and saccharin. Aspartame won FDA acceptance in 1974, only to be pulled back after some scientists voiced concern that the substance might cause brain damage.

After two years of research, a panel concluded that the studies were sound. Other reviews were conducted by a board of inquiry made up of three scientists from outside the FDA. In 1981 approval was granted for aspartame's use in such items as General Foods' Kool-Aid and Searle's table-sugar substitute, Equal. Last month, describing aspartame as "one of the most tested food additives ever evaluated by the FDA," the agency ruled it safe as a soft-drink sweetener after no ill effects showed up in people who had consumed five times the recommended maximum daily dosage for 28 weeks.

Aspartame's biggest remaining problem is its cost. It is 20 times as expensive as saccharin.

To keep down their prices, Coca-Cola and other bottlers will be mixing aspartame with saccharin, in secret proportions. Squirt & Co. will sell its grapefruit drink, though, sweetened entirely with aspartame.

For Searle, a favorite stock on Wall Street in the 1960s that fell on hard times in the 1970s, aspartame could add as much as $500 million a year by 1985 to the company's 1982 revenues of about $1 billion. But Searle may soon have some competition. American Hoechst, the U.S. arm of the West German chemical company, is preparing to introduce a somewhat similar sweetener called acesulfame-K. The diet soft-drink market seems big enough for all comers. Sales, now at $4 billion, could double to $8 billion in coming years if the new artificially sweetened drinks live up to their good-taste claims. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.