Three years after filing suit, the sugar industry’s battle against its biggest artificial sweetener rival, Splenda, is coming to a head.
Filed by five U.S. sugar companies, the suit claims McNeil Nutritionals, the maker of Splenda, has deliberately misled consumers with its “made from sugar, tastes like sugar” advertising campaign.
McNeil, which is owned by Johnson & Johnson of New Brunswick, New Jersey, says the suit is meritless and should be dismissed because the sugar companies waited too long to take action. The companies sued in 2004, four years after the “tastes like sugar” ad campaign began, according to McNeil.
A pretrial hearing took place on December 3, in preparation for a jury trial scheduled to begin next month. Six months ago, McNeil settled a similar lawsuit filed by Merisant Co., which makes Equal. And a French court ruled recently that Splenda’s slogan - which translates as “because it comes from sugar, sucralose tastes like sugar” - violates French consumer protection laws, and awarded Merisant about $50,000.
Splenda is the brand name for sucralose, which uses a chemical process to alter sugar by adding chlorine, eliminating most of the calories. In 2003, Splenda replaced Equal as the top-selling sugar substitute, according to data from market research firm Information Resources Inc. Sugar sales declined slightly from 2002 to 2006, while sales of Splenda increased more than threefold.
McNeil has since introduced baking products such as Splenda Sugar Blend for Baking and Splenda Brown Sugar Blend, saying that unlike other sugar substitutes, Splenda can be used for baking because it can withstand heat.
The sugar companies - American Sugar Refining Inc., C&H Sugar Co. (now owned by American Sugar), Imperial Sugar Co., Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers Inc., and Western Sugar Cooperative - claim that McNeil not only intentionally misled consumers about whether Splenda was natural, but also continued the ad campaign knowing that people were confused. A Center for Science in the Public Interest study of 426 people conducted in 2004 found that 47% of Splenda users thought it was a “natural product.”
McNeil counters in court filings that reams of consumer research “confirm that consumers well understand that Splenda is not ‘truly natural.’”
McNeil and the sugar companies have been battling it out on the Internet as well. The Splenda-sponsored website, www.splendatruth.com, emphasizes the numerous studies that have found Splenda safe. The home page of the sugar industry’s site, www.truthaboutsplenda.com, asks, “Do you know what your children are eating?” and features comments from consumers who say they feel deceived by Splenda advertising. That site, which McNeil calls a “smear campaign,” has spurred its own issues. In 2005, McNeil filed a lawsuit in federal court in Delaware to prevent the sugar association from making further “misleading” claims about Splenda, which it says “are designed to injure its reputation and goodwill.”