Markets for Sweeteners

Excerpts from the report Introduction: The most important trend in the sweetener industry since World War II has been the growing importance of sweeteners other than sugar. Sugar remains the most important sweetener, by a wide margin, but it has lost some ground, particularly in such products as soft drinks, canned fruits, and ice cream. The sale and distribution of sweeteners in the United States differs in many ways from, that of most farm products. For instance, the more important sweeteners (measured by volume of sales) commonly available to consumers in this country are carbohydrate foods produced by farmers, but they are meeting increased competition from noncaloric substances with no nutritive value manufactured largely by the chemical industry. This situation appears to be akin to the competition between animal and vegetable fats, or between these two types of fat and nonorganic materials used in the manufacture of detergents. The most important change in the marketing of sweeteners in recent years has been the increasing competition between sugar and other sweeteners. The final effects of this are not yet fully apparent, but developments to date indicate a significantly slower increase in the use of sugar in the years ahead than would otherwise have been expected.