Sweeteners have long played an important role in the American diet and economy, yet are largely absent from accounts of the American past. Sweet Stuff rectifies that oversight in the first in-depth history of sugar and other major sweeteners, both natural and artificial, in the American experience. Sweet Stuff discusses sweeteners in the context of diet, science and technology, business and labor, politics, and popular culture.

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 Pena 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.

Sugar is a major crop for many less developed countries, but major barriers exist to its international trade. Both the EU and US distort the world sugar market through various internal policies. With the growth in production of other sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup, the controversy surrounding international sweetener markets has further increased. This book addresses these issues and reviews world sweetener markets, with particular chapters devoted to important players such as the US and EU, as well as other producers such as Australia, Brazil, Cuba, Eastern Europe and India. Topics such as international trade negotiations, trade liberalization, US policy reform, and regional integration in Latin America and the Caribbean are also addressed.

The fourth edition of Alternative Sweeteners follows the same formula as the previous three books by discussing each sweetener in terms of its characteristics. Qualities covered include means of production, physical characteristics, utility, and relative sweetness (compared to sucrose). Technical qualities covered include admixture potential, application, availability, shelf life, transport, metabolism, carcinogenicity, and other toxicity evaluation data. A new chapter on the sweetener Advantame has been added, and new contributors have updated information throughout the book. Also new is a section on how stevia sweeteners have been examined and deemed safe by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives and the US FDA.

Sugar replacement in food and beverage manufacture no longer hasjust an economic benefit. The use of ingredients to improve thenutritional status of a food product is now one of the majordriving forces in new product development. It is thereforeimportant, as options for sugar replacement continue to increase,that expert knowledge and information in this area is readilyavailable. Sweeteners and Sugar Alternatives in Food Technologyprovides the information required for sweetening and functionalsolutions, enabling manufacturers to produce processed foods thatnot only taste and perform as well as sugar-based products, butalso offer consumer benefits such as calorie reduction, dentalhealth benefits, digestive health benefits and improvements in longterm disease risk through strategies such as dietary glycaemiccontrol. Part I of this comprehensive book addresses these healthand nutritional considerations. Part II covers non-nutritive,high-intensity sweeteners, providing insights into blendingopportunities for qualitative and quantitative sweetnessimprovement as well as exhaustive application opportunities. PartIII deals with reduced calorie bulk sweeteners, which offer bulkwith fewer calories than sugar, and includes both the commerciallysuccessful polyols as well as tagatose, an emerging functional bulksweetener. Part IV looks at the less well-established sweetenersthat do not conform in all respects to what may be considered to bestandard sweetening properties. Finally, Part V examines bulkingagents and multifunctional ingredients. Summary tables at the endof each section provide valuable, concentrated data on each of thesweeteners covered. The book is directed at food scientists andtechnologists as well as ingredients suppliers.