Sweet and Low is the testament of an American family and its patriarch, a short-order cook who, converting his cafeteria into a factory, invented the sugar packet and Sweet’N Low™ and amassed a great fortune that would destroy his family. It is also the story of immigrants, sugar, the health and diet craze, and U.S. government regulation of food.

Paperback, 272pp

Picador USA/Farrar Straus and Giroux, March 2007

ISBN-13: 9780312426019

Barnes & Noble online price: $12.60

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SYNOPSIS

FROM B&N EDITORS
One reader described this family biography concisely and accurately as “the history of the sweet tooth and the Machiavellian family that tamed it.” The Machiavelli at its center is Ben Eisenstadt, the author’s grandfather, who built a business empire based on saccharine and dextrose. After World War II, this former short-order cook invented first the sugar packet and then, with the help of his son Marvin, sugar substitute Sweet ‘N Low. These discoveries brought immigrant Ben and his family a fortune but also provoked a fierce 40-year battle for control of the company. Now happily disinherited, Rich Cohen recapitulates the saga of his family’s twisted American dream with a bittersweet mix of affection and regret.

FROM THE PUBLISHER
Sweet and Low is the amazing, bittersweet, hilarious story of an American family and its patriarch, a short-order cook named Ben Eisenstadt who, in the years after World War II, invented the sugar packet and Sweet’N Low, converting his Brooklyn cafeteria into a factory and amassing the great fortune that would destroy his family. It is also the story of immigrants to the New World, sugar, saccharine, obesity, and the health and diet craze, played out across countries and generations but also within the life of a single family, as the fortune and the factory passed from generation to generation. The author, Rich Cohen, a grandson (disinherited, and thus set free, along with his mother and siblings), has sought the truth of this rancorous, colorful history, mining thousands of pages of court documents accumulated in the long and sometimes corrupt life of the factor, and conducting interviews with members of his extended family. Along the way, the forty-year family battle over the fortune moves into its titanic phase, with the money and legacy up for grabs. Sweet and Low is the story of this struggle, a strange comic farce of machinations and double dealings, and of an extraordinary family and its fight for the American dream.

FROM THE CRITICS

The Washington Post
So what made Rich Cohen write this book? His mother, daughter of the patriarch, was cruelly disinherited in the aftermath of the great man’s death. Is it, then, about the money? Is Rich Cohen, the grandson who got squat from the Sweet’N Low millions, taking revenge? No; this book is about his mother, and the way that her family — the whole saccharine-sticky lot of them — were truly and unnaturally awful to her, a woman who makes but brief appearances in the narrative and is never eulogized. A woman who could have survived her vile relatives only through a tremendous inner strength. It is this strength which, subtly, gloriously, Rich Cohen celebrates. -John Barlow

The New York Times
Although Mr. Cohen is probably using this book to settle scores on some level, he has also managed to turn his family’s rancorous history into a gripping memoir: a small classic of familial triumph, travail and strife, and a telling — and often hilarious — parable about the pursuit and costs of the American Dream. -Michiko Kakutani

The New Yorker
Cohen’s unflinching and hilarious account of his family begins with his grandfather, a lawyer turned cafeteria counterman who “built the fortune that would be the cause of all the trouble.” Combining saccharin, a powder three hundred times as sweet as sugar, with lactose, he produced the sugar substitute Sweet’N Low, which went on sale in 1957, in its iconic pink packets. It was aimed at diabetics, but diet mania made it ubiquitous, and by 1975 the family factory, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, was producing forty million packets a day. Cohen, whose branch of the family was disinherited in a power struggle, acidly narrates the gradual unravelling of the family and its fortune, and detours through the histories of sugar, Brooklyn, dieting, and packaged foods. The nadir came in 1993, when federal agents raided the factory; a reputed mafioso who had been put in charge of lobbying against a saccharin ban had funnelled illegal contributions to politicians and bilked the company of millions.

Publishers Weekly
Cohen’s grandfather, Benjamin Eisenstadt, created the artificial sweetener saccharine and modified a tea-bagging machine to produce individual, sanitary packets of sugar substitute, calling it Sweet`N Low. Cohen expands the story beyond the family by incorporating truncated histories of Jews in New York, the saga of sugar alternatives and the rise and fall of Sen. Alfonse D’Amato. Nevertheless, internecine wars over the family fortune, ending with a legal battle over Grandma’s will, dominates. Despite the abridgment, accounts of dead relatives tangentially connected to the story and FDA history are rambling and overlong. Fortunately, the tale is laced with enough humor and family shenanigans to keep the listener’s attention. Cohen, the son of Eisenstadt’s disinherited daughter, has a bit of an axe to grind. As reader, he keeps his voice even, perhaps too level, with the same monotonous emphasis on a noun or adjective in every sentence. A hint of smugness creeps in as Grandpa Ben and his son, Marvin, are convicted of misdeeds that are more low than sweet. Simultaneous release with the FSG hardcover (Reviews, Feb. 13). (Apr.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal
The history of the artificial sweetener giant-its humble beginnings, its rise to prominence, and the high-profile criminal doings that got into the mix-would be interesting enough. When the saga is written by the (disinherited) grandson of the inventor, who combines the product’s history with his personal quest for the truth and his considerable skills at crafting compelling tableaux, you have one sweet read. Cohen (contributing editor, Rolling Stone; Tough Jews) doesn’t just rely on family anecdotes; he digs through court records, interviews relatives (some won’t talk with him), and peruses library microfilm to reveal various layers of truth. Everything from the origins of the name Sweet and Low and its packet design to his family’s involvement in organized crime is up for investigation. Cohen also offers good servings of history on related topics-the sugar trade, the diet craze, the migration of Jews to New York-much of which provides a helpful backdrop to the story. At the heart of this tale is his family, a cast of characters who, owing to Cohen’s gifts as a writer, are neither lionized nor demonized. Cohen is one talented storyteller, and Sweet and Low is a great read. Recommended for all public libraries. -Jennifer Zarr, NYPL Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.