From the moment the first sweetener was discovered, the sugar industry sensed a threat.
In the early 20th century, the European sugar beet industry persuaded several countries to make the inexpensive saccharin available only by prescription.
A cartel of saccharin smugglers sprang up in response, sneaking the synthetic white powder over the Swiss border inside car tires, false-bottomed suitcases, waistcoats, candles and bottles of champagne.
It was just the first scuffle to break out in the world of artificial sweetness.
The latest centers on sucralose, which has seized about 50 percent of the packet artificial sweetener market in the United States during the past four years under the brand name Splenda.
Baking is at the heart of the conflict.
Sucralose - 600 times sweeter than sugar - was discovered in 1976 as chemists working for Britain's sugar-maker Tate & Lyle searched for new uses for sucrose. They altered it to contain three atoms of chlorine.
Its intense sweetness was discovered, so company legend goes, when a graduate student misunderstood instructions to "test" it, and "tasted" it instead.
As it turned out, the addition of the chlorine atoms rendered the compound indigestible and thus calorie free.
Splenda lacks saccharin's bitterness and aspartame's heat-fragility. The latter means it can be used in baking, putting it in direct competition with sugar.
But Splenda still falls short - because foods depend on sugar for more than just sweetness. In baked goods, sugar stops flour and water from reacting together to form long stringy threads of gluten. This enables cookies and piecrusts and cakes to be tender and crumbly instead of bread-like and doughy.
When heated, sugar combines with amino acids in a process known as the Maillard reaction - imparting crispness and color. It also adds bulk and moisture to baked goods: Remove it and you must add something else or face a culinary disaster.
Splenda's maker touts its closeness to the real thing and has been gradually building market share using the advertising slogan: "Made from sugar so it tastes like sugar."
The campaign has angered its competitors. While Splenda, they say, may start its life as sugar, the chlorine-studded chemical is anything but. Thus, they say, its marketing is deceptive.
Lawsuits have been filed against the company that markets Splenda, McNeil Nutritionals. Among those suing are the Sugar Association and Merisant Co., purveyors of Equal.
The Sugar Assn. also has sponsored a Web site, www. truthaboutsplenda.com, to challenge Splenda's advertising and safety.
McNeil Nutritionals has responded with its own lawsuit against the Sugar Assn.
"Sucralose is in fact made from sugar, and it does taste like sugar," McNeil spokeswoman Cathy Grayson-Roper said.
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