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Why? Sweet N Low CEO tycoon, 89, jumps to his death from Park Ave apartment

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Donald Tober suicide
Donald Tober suicide. Pictured Sweet'N Low magnate and wife Barbara Tober. Image courtesy PMC.
Donald Tober suicide
Donald Tober suicide. Pictured Sweet’N Low magnate and wife Barbara Tober. Image courtesy PMC.

Donald Tober suicide: Sugar Foods CEO jumps to his death from Manhattan apartment. Sweet’N Low tycoon, 89, was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. 

A 89 year old tycoon behind artificial sweetener, Sweet’N Low has committed suicide after jumping from his Park Avenue apartment building according to a report. 

Donald Tober, CEO and co-owner of the New York-based Sugar Foods, leapt to his death just after 5 a.m. Friday, and was found in the courtyard of the luxury Upper East Side building between 65th and 66th streets, sources told the nypost.

According to the source, the tycoon was struggling with Parkinson’s disease – a progressive nervous system disorder that affects movement.

As the chief of Sugar Foods, Tober turned the company’s flagship product, Sweet’N Low, and its ubiquitous little pink packets, into a mainstay on kitchen counters and restaurant tables across the country, along with Sugar in the Raw and N’Joy nondairy creamer.

By the mid-’90s, some 80 percent of foodservice establishments used Sweet’N Low; the sweetener also commanded more than 80 percent of the sugar substitute market. 

Donald Tober suicide
Donald Tober suicide: Pictured the Park Ave apartment building where the Sweet’N Low magnate jumped to his death from.

No known motive

‘Donald IS Sweet’N Low,’ the president of Sugar Foods, Steve Odell told Restaurant News in 1995.

Adding, ‘Don’s had as much to do with building Sweet’N Low into a household name as anyone ever has with a product. Every packet of Sweet’N Low sold today can be traced back to a single sales call that he probably made or at least had a part in.’

A Harvard Law School grad, Tober was a former chairman at The Culinary Institute of America and a founder of City Meals-on-Wheels.

He was the husband of Barbara Tober, who worked for three decades as editor-in-chief of Brides magazine and was a former trustees board chair at the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan. The couple lived on the building’s 11th floor.

While it no longer distributes Sweet’N Low, Tober’s company currently manufactures a range of sweeteners and other products for supermarkets and foodservice industries under the N’Joy and Almond Breeze lines.

It remained immediately unclear what prompted Tober to jump to his death.

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