Tagatose

CHICAGO -- After ruling the $1 billion U.S. market for artificial sweeteners for the last decade, Monsanto Co.'s Nutrasweet may be on the verge of its first challenge.Chemical and drug industry powers such as Johnson & Johnson, Hoechst Celanese Corp. and others are coming out with products that could rival Nutrasweet, which is used to sweeten everything from diet soft drinks to low-calorie yogurt.St. Louis-based Monsanto isn't waiting to find out if the competition catches up. It's revising the Nutrasweet formula and betting on a growing global sweet tooth as consumers in developing countries spend more on sweetened food and beverages.

In The Region Spherix narrows loss to $547,000 as sales rise 14% Spherix Inc., the company that developed the sugar-substitute sweetener Tagatose for last summer's hit Diet Pepsi Slurpee, reported yesterday a first-quarter net loss of $547,000, or a nickel per share. That's a slight improvement from the net loss of $686,000, or 6 cents per share, for the comparable three months in 2003. Revenue was $5.1 million for the first quarter, up 14 percent from the $4.4 million reported for the first quarter of 2003, said Spherix.

After 40 years, science has yet to resolve one of America's biggest dietary dilemmas - finding an alternative to sugar. It's not for lack of trying, or lack of a market. Some 30 percent of Americans are obese, a national weight problem expected to fuel an increased demand for sweeteners that began when the first diet products appeared in the 1960s. The Surgeon General has called obesity an epidemic, and more than 163 million Americans already eat reduced-calorie or sugar-free foods, making artificial sweeteners a $1 billion-a-year industry.

In the Region Port and channel dredging projects gain in Washington A House-Senate conference committee has approved an appropriations bill that includes $50 million for various maintenance dredging projects in the port of Baltimore and adjacent shipping channels. The Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill for fiscal 2002 includes $8 million to widen and deepen anchorages, dredge new branch channels and dredge a ship turning basin within Baltimore Harbor, said Sens. Paul S. Sarbanes and Barbara A. Mikulski, Maryland Democrats.