Robert B. Shapiro, a brash former law professor turned corporate executive who performed a marketing miracle by branding aspartame as the sugar substitute NutraSweet and making it a household name that consumers demanded in thousands of products, died on May 2 at his home in Chicago. He was 86.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, his son James Shapiro said.
Aspartame was invented by chemists at the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle in Illinois in 1965 and approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in soft drinks in 1983, a year after Mr. Shapiro became chief executive and chairman of what the company was already calling its NutraSweet subsidiary.
Unlike its chief rival, saccharin, which had dominated the market in the 25 years since it was approved, aspartame leaves no bitter aftertaste and wasn’t suspected of being linked to cancer. (In 2023, however, the World Health Organization identified aspartame, on the basis of “limited evidence,” as “possibly carcinogenic.”) It has virtually no calories and, despite its brand name, virtually no essential nutritional value.
In 1985, Searle sold $700 million worth of aspartame, identified as NutraSweet by the tiny but distinctive red-and-white swirl logo that appeared on the packaging of food and drink products that appealed to dieters and other consumers who wanted to avoid sugar.
“Shapiro built a marketing campaign around that trademark, convincing consumers that NutraSweet (and no other company’s version of the very same sweetener) was the key to losing weight,” Daniel Charles wrote in “Lords of the Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, and the Future of Food” (2001).
Mr. Shapiro’s role in branding and marketing NutraSweet, which costs more than saccharin but is sweeter, earned him a place in the “business history books,” Jesse Meyers, the publisher of the industry newsletter Beverage Digest, told The New York Times in 1989. Products had been branded routinely, but rarely had a single ingredient that they contained.
Federal authorities approved Simplesse, a fat substitute developed by NutraSweet, as an ingredient in frozen desserts in 1988 and, later, in other products.
Searle was bought by Monsanto in 1985. Mr. Shapiro was named president of the parent company in 1993 and chief executive in 1995, as Monsanto transitioned from mostly manufacturing chemicals to making drugs and genetically modified seeds, fertilizer and food additives.
Mr. Shapiro and his colleagues insisted that biotechnology products created by the company reduced the need for pesticides and weed control, expanded the food supply and reduced the amount of land needed to farm.
When Mr. Shapiro became Monsanto’s chief executive, “he carried the company’s already serious commitment to biotechnology to a whole new level, both psychologically and financially,” Rachel Schurman and William A. Munro wrote in “Fighting for the Future of Food: Activists Versus Agribusiness in the Struggle Over Biotechnology” (2010).
“Shapiro was by all accounts a persuasive, inspiring and motivational leader,” the authors added. “Indeed, Monsanto employees described him as a ‘visionary’ who swept people up with his larger sense of purpose and broad perspective on the technology.”
But environmental critics accused Monsanto of tampering with nature by concocting potentially dangerous vegetation and monopolizing the market for seeds. The company soon found itself struggling in the face of legal challenges, regulatory rulings and adverse public opinion in the United States and Europe.
“In retrospect, it seems incredibly naïve,” Mr. Shapiro said, but “we painted a big bull’s-eye on our chest.”
In a video address to the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace in 1999, Mr. Shapiro acknowledged: “Our confidence in this technology and our enthusiasm for it has, I think, widely been seen, and understandably so, as condescension or indeed arrogance. Because we thought it was our job to persuade, too often we forgot to listen.”
William C. Miller acknowledged in his book “Flash of Brilliance: Inspiring Creativity Where You Work” (1998) that “some of Monsanto’s products are controversial.” But, he added, “What you can’t argue about Bob Shapiro is that within his belief system, he’s absolutely sincere about doing what he thinks is the way to go to address hunger and address nutrition, as the world population explodes from six billion to 10 billion.”
Robert Bernard Shapiro was born on Aug. 4, 1938, in Manhattan. His father, Moses Shapiro, was the chairman and chief executive of the electronics company General Instrument. His mother, Lilly (Langsam) Shapiro, had worked for ASCAP, the music licensing organization.
He attended the Horace Mann School in the Bronx before earning a bachelor’s degree in 1959 from Harvard College, where he studied English and history, and a law degree in 1962 from Columbia Law School.
Mr. Shapiro practiced law in New York (he represented rent strikers in East Harlem and the poet Allen Ginsberg, among others, without fee) and taught at the law schools of Columbia, the University of Wisconsin and Northeastern University. He was a lawyer for the U.S. Transportation Department during the Johnson administration before joining General Instrument, where he worked from 1972 to 1979 as vice president and counsel.
He joined Searle in 1979. After Monsanto merged with Pharmacia & Upjohn in 1999, he served as chairman of the combined company, Pharmacia Corporation, until early 2001.
A liberal Democrat who had no formal training in science, Mr. Shapiro was more comfortable playing the casual college professor than the high-powered lawyer. He offered his employees free silent meditation retreats and performed as a folk guitarist. (His children Nina and James were in the alternative rock band Veruca Salt in the 1990s.)
After stepping down as chairman of Pharmacia Corporation, he was a founder of Sandbox Industries, a venture capital firm. He was also an early board member of Theranos, the blood-testing company established by Elizabeth Holmes, who was later convicted of fraud.
In addition to his son James and his daughter Nina Gordon, both from his marriage to Berta Gordon, he is survived by his wife, Ginger Farley; two children, Kai and Gabe Shapiro, from his later marriage to Kemery Bloom; his stepchildren, Harley Mac Cionaodha and Lydia Link; his sister, Susan Garfield; his brother, Bill Shapiro; and four grandchildren.
“We did proceed on the basis of our confidence in the technology,” Mr. Shapiro said of Monsanto in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in 1999. “And we saw our products as great boons both to farmers and to the environment. I guess we naïvely thought that the rest of the world would look at the information and come to the same conclusion.”
