Splenda ad campaign comes under fresh fire

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The marketing campaign for Johnson & Johnson’s Splenda sweetener drew fresh criticism on Monday, as agriculture and public interest groups added their voices to charges it is misleading the public.

Splenda, an artificial sweetener enjoying surging sales growth, is marketed by J&J’s McNeil Nutritionals unit with the line: “Made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar.”

The Sugar Association and several consumer organizations say that marketing pitch does not accurately represent the end product, as the sugar used to make Splenda is converted to sweetener, using chlorine.

“We feel that Splenda’s marketing techniques are unfair to the entire agriculture industry,” Richard Weiss, chief operating officer of the National Grange agriculture advocacy group, told a news conference on Monday.

“When farmers have to compete with chemistry pretending to be natural, it puts them at a disadvantage that affects their ability to provide quality products for consumers,” he added.

A survey by consumer group the Center for Science in the Public Interest showed that of 426 Splenda users polled, 47 percent thought it was a natural product against 57 percent who believed it was an artificial sweetener.

“‘Made from sugar’ certainly sounds better than, say, ‘made in a laboratory,”’ said CSPI Executive Director Michael Jacobson.

“Splenda’s artificiality may present a marketing challenge but that’s not an excuse to confuse consumers and lead them to believe that Splenda is natural or closely related to sugar.”

McNeil currently faces nine class action lawsuits from consumers, one from the Sugar Association and one from Merisant Worldwide Inc, the maker of rival low-calorie sweetener products including Equal and Canderel.

Andy Briscoe, president of the U.S. Sugar Association which represents producers and growers, said the budget for J&J’s advertising campaign for Splenda had been estimated at $40 million a year, “more than 20 times the entire budget of the Sugar Association.”

A spokeswoman for McNeil declined to give details of the advertising spend for Splenda. The company has itself filed a lawsuit against The Sugar Association, each of its members, and the public relations firm representing it, for false advertising and deceptive trade practices.

“McNeil contends in the lawsuit that the Sugar Association and other defendants have knowingly and intentionally made false claims about the Splenda brand that are baseless and that are designed to injure its reputation and goodwill,” the company said in a statement.

Splenda currently has just over 50 percent of the U.S. market for low calorie sweeteners, based on dollar volume, according to data collected by trade data group IRI and made available to Reuters by McNeil. 

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