CHICAGO — Midway through the afternoon, when the belly yearns for snacks, three NutraSweet executives are going wild: cola, orange drink, citrus punch, chocolate milk, more cola, pound cake and crispy squares of coconut pie -- all test-kitchen concoctions made with artificial sweeteners.
They consume two servings of everything. In quick succession.
They wax exuberant about one of the pound cakes -- moist, crumbly and nicely browned.
"The person who cooked these said she never had such browning before," says Craig R. Petray, chief executive of NutraSweet Co.
In the bounty of goodies before them lies a vision of the future of sweetness -- a future, these executives hope, just as sweet and delectable as real sugar.
But, as researchers have discovered, the quest to find a perfect, consequence-free artificial sweetener is difficult, littered with cloying, metallic and just plain odd-tasting chemicals.
Today, the research is receiving fresh attention -- fueled by an expanding national waistline. Nutritionists believe that Americans' breathtaking intake of sugars in soft drinks and processed foods is partly to blame.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that the average American eats about 100 pounds of added sugars a year, up 30% since the 1980s.
Consumers are taking note, trying in small ways to clean up their act. Diet soft drink sales are growing at about 6% a year, while those of regular soft drinks are declining by as much as 2%.
After years of loading snacks with sugar, food manufacturers are developing more reduced-sugar brands so that consumers can have their cake and eat it.
To tackle the problem, some are cutting down slightly on sugar in their products, or artfully combining high-intensity artificial sweeteners to find just the right combinations to mimic real sugar.
Other companies are turning to the latest research in genetics and chemistry. Now there are humming labs, seeking out "enhancer" chemicals that accentuate the effects of real sugar, thus allowing less to be used.
Shaving away sugar is no easy business.
Sugar does much more than sweeten. It provides crumbliness to a cake's interior, crispness to its outside and a richer taste to a soft drink.
Despite decades of research, artificial sweeteners -- a $1-billion-a-year market in the U.S. -- still taste noticeably unnatural.
