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No Wonder Americans Are So Fat

Just as diet soda’s multibillion-dollar industry stems from the unassuming Russian Jewish émigré Hyman Kirsch, so the history of artificial sweeteners is an immigrant story, one that begins in a Johns Hopkins University laboratory in 1879. Constantine Fahlberg, a “well-built, handsome, German-American,” according to an article Scientific American published years later, was working there examining the properties of coal tar. Quite by accident, he stumbled upon a chemical that would forever sweeten the course of history. “One evening I was so interested in my laboratory,” Fahlberg told Scientific American, “that I forgot about supper until quite late, and then rushed off for a meal without stopping to wash my hands. I sat down, broke a piece of bread, and put it to my lips. It tasted unspeakably sweet. I did not ask why it was so, probably because I thought it was some cake or sweetmeat. I rinsed my mouth with water, and dried my mustache with my napkin, when, to my surprise, the napkin tasted sweeter than the bread. Then I was puzzled.”

Fahlberg quickly realized what he had stumbled upon, a byproduct of coal tar that, strangely enough, “out-sugared sugar.” After running back to the lab, he proceeded to violate several principles of scientific safety, tasting each and every chemical in order to figure out which one had accidentally found its way into his food. Stumbling upon saccharin, Fahlberg began secretly to study the compound and in time went back to Germany to set up his own manufacturing company. Soon he was selling his product worldwide.

Diet soda was certainly the furthest thing from Fahlberg’s mind; medicine was where saccharin would prove most useful, he thought, and suggested that the chemical be used in “fine wafer and other foods for invalids,” hoping it would prove “invaluable in disguising and destroying all the bitter and sour tastes in medicine without changing the character or action of the drugs.”

Fahlberg wasn’t concerned with side effects. Saccharin “has no injurious effect on the human system,” he said; “what effect has been noticed is rather beneficial than otherwise.” And soon he was looking beyond medical applications: “In the future, the new sugar will be used by druggists, physicians, bakers, confectioners, candy makers, preserve and pickle makers, liquor distillers, wine makers, and dealers in bottlers’ supplies.”

No Sugar Tonight On March 9, 1977, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced its intention to ban saccharin, an artificial sweetener in use since the turn of the century, because of studies that showed it caused bladder cancer in rats. Dieters, diabetics, and producers of low-calorie foods and beverages reacted with outrage, and understandably so. Ever since 1969, when cyclamates were banned, also for causing cancer, saccharin had been the only artificial sweetener on the market. Opponents of the ban pointed out that the rats that had developed cancer had been fed a diet of 5 percent saccharin, or the equivalent of 800 cans of diet soda per day, a level at which many common substances would no doubt cause problems. Canada, where the incriminating studies were performed, announced its intention to ban saccharin the same day. But cyclamates were still legal in that country, combining with Cuban cigars and over-the-counter codeine to make Canada a sybarite’s paradise. FDA officials pointed out that they had no choice. Under the law, any food additive linked with cancer had to be banned. In April the agency backed off a bit, allowing saccharin to be sold in tablets or powder form but not in prepared foods or beverages. This was not enough to satisfy Congress, which passed an 18-month moratorium on the ban. The FDA finally settled for requiring warning labels in stores and on products containing the sweetener (this requirement was repealed by laws passed in 1996 and 2000). The congressional moratorium was repeatedly renewed, and during the 1980s, as aspartame came onto the market and the Reagan administration adopted a laissez-faire approach, the saccharin ban ceased to be an issue. In July 2000, the National Institutes of Health removed saccharin from its list of suspected carcinogens. The saccharin controversy turned out to be the high-water mark of the regulatory movement of the 1960s and 1970s. During the Eisenhower administration, the PDA’s responsibilities had been greatly expanded in an attempt to protect Americans from unwittingly consuming dangerous substances. Each success gave the regulators new momentum, and the culmination of this process, the saccharin ban, attempted to prevent willing purchasers from voluntarily consuming a product with at worst a marginal effect on health. Today, sensible regulators remember the saccharin controversy and make an effort to balance the costs and benefits of any proposed rule. - Frederic D. Schwarz

However, saccharin was always viewed a bit suspiciously; from the earliest days of its marketing and even during the First World War’s intense sugar rationing, some Americans saw the substance as a poor substitute for energy-rich sugar and perhaps even as something hazardous.

In 1937 Michael Sveda, the son of Czech immigrants and an amateur violinist and woodworker, stepped out for a cigarette after a long day of working toward his chemistry Ph.D. at the University of Illinois. Like Constantine Fahlberg before him, Sveda realized that what he was putting in his mouth was unusually sweet. He walked back in the lab for another groundbreaking chemical taste test. He had stumbled upon cyclamate.

Cyclamates were everything that saccharin was not: They lacked the metallic aftertaste that plagued saccharin, and there were no initial concerns about safety. Hyman Kirsch used them to sweeten No-Cal, Royal Crown to sweeten Diet Rite Cola. For close to two decades cyclamates went into everything from toothpaste to canned fruit. Then came 1969 and the alarm about cyclamates causing cancer in rats. In the years that followed, aspartame would have its day, though that chemical, too, has been plagued by reports linking it with cancer.

While most technologies have changed dramatically in the last hundred years, artificial sweeteners aren’t much more advanced than they were in Constantine Fahlberg’s time, and the regular association of them with cancer may help explain why the diet-soda industry changes formulas every 20 years or so. Splenda, the brand name for sucralose, is the latest in the line of new artificial sweeteners. Like its predecessors, it was born when a researcher happened to taste a chemical he had merely been asked to “test.”

If I decide that I'm going to have whipped cream every day on my dessert, I think that we should be allowed to make that choice. I don't think that we need to have Big Brother over us telling us that we shouldn't be having it. There's no mystical food that's quick and convenient, sweet, savoury and satisfying, and still good for us.

People are compelled to eat food because it's attractive, because they know it's going to taste good, and when they eat it, it tastes good and as a result they want more of it because it tastes so good. We don't really think about whether it's good for us if our doughnuts are drenched in extra sugar and stuffed with cream. From burgers to barbecue and crabs to crawfish, we know we should choose fresh, raw and natural, but we still choose all the wrong things. The fattier, the saltier, the sweeter the better.

Though it still has America in its sugary headlock, we’re so over the cupcake frenzy. Instead, we’re pushing for a revival of chatter about a world’s worth of classic pastries and savory baked treats. Literally. While we think the crumbs up top are, well, tops, we’re ever-so-grateful to the bakeries that put as much work (and imagination) into the cakey bit as well.

Is it a snack or a meal? Take your pick. Thanks to an ever-growing variety of fillings in empanadas around the world, you could eat them at every meal and never get bored. Flaky crusts and bursts of sweet fruit make us bubble over with delight. Some might take issue with us putting the delicate and oh-so-French macaroon into the behemoth “cookie” category, but so be it.

What’s not to like about gourmet doughnuts — doughnuts have been around for centuries. They were all made by hand until a Russian immigrant saw an opportunity in the early 20th century. Adolph Levitt emigrated from Russia with his family to America in 1892. His father died within a year, forcing Adolph to leave school at the age of 10. As a teenager, he began a mercantile business with his brother, John. They opened several stores using their plan to put merchandise in the windows to attract customers. The stores prospered for awhile but, it didn't last.

At 37, Adolph moved to New York and bought into a bakery chain. Soldiers returning from WWI clamored for the donuts they had eaten in France. Adolph heard about this and began frying donuts in a kettle placed in the window of his bakery in Harlem. People lined up to watch the donuts fry and to purchase them fresh. Soon, he was unable to make enough donuts to keep up with the demand.

Levitt had an idea for a donut machine that could fry and automatically turn donuts while pushing the fumes to the roof with a fan. With such a machine, he would be able to produce donuts in greater numbers and meet the demand. Levitt worked with an engineer on 12 prototypes before creating a successful one. The total cost was $15,000.

Levitt called his machine The Wonderful Almost Human Automatic Donut Machine. He chose Mayflower Donuts for his brand name. He put the machine in the bakery window and produced large quantities of donuts. A circle of dough, shaped like a ring dropped from a hopper and into a vat of boiling oil, circulated, turned over to brown both sides and rolled out of the oil on a moving ramp. He set up a donut machine in a shop window in Times Square, New York that drew so many onlookers, it caused traffic to come to a halt.

Soon, Levitt sold machines to small shops and large baking companies all over America. By this time, he was doing a 25-million dollar a year business. Levitt's next step was to manufacture the mix for the donuts. He started more bakeries, opened restaurants to sell the donuts and created advertising to sell them. During WWII, he rented machines to the Red Cross so the soldiers could have donuts.

Donut machines grew to be more refined and many other companies produced their own version of Levitt's machine. Today, some 300 million donuts are consumed in the US. In Canada, Tim Horton's, famous for its donuts, has twice as many stores in the country as McDonald's.

Benjamin Siegel. The never-ending quest for fake sugar. . June/July 2006. Sandra McGarrity. The First Donut Machine. . February/March 2008.

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