David Leveraux is an Apprentice Flavour Chemist at one of the world’s leading production houses. While testing Sweetness #9, he notices that the artificial sweetener causes unsettling side-effects in laboratory rats and monkeys. But with his career and family at risk, David keeps his suspicions to himself.

A year later, Sweetness #9 is America’s most popular sweetener - and David’s family is changing. His wife is gaining weight, his daughter is depressed, and his son has stopped using verbs. Is Sweetness #9 to blame, along with David’s failure to stop it? Or are these just symptoms of the American condition?

An exciting literary debut, Sweetness #9 is a darkly comic, wildly imaginative investigation of whether what we eat makes us who we are.