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Divine ambrosia

Reader question:

Please explain “divine ambrosia” in this passage – Merisant, which makes Equal, an aspartame sweetener, declared bankruptcy in January 2009, having been caught out by changing tastes. This month the firm emerged from bankruptcy ready for a comeback. It is betting heavily on the industry’s new divine ambrosia: a fake sugar that is natural (The Sweetener battle, Economist.com, January 28, 2010).

My comments:

If you have no idea what “ambrosia” is, it’s perfectly safe to guess that, here, the “fake sugar that is natural” is regarded as something divine.

That is, if you already know the word “divine”, something of the gods, something heavenly, something super fine.

“Ambrosia” refers to the food of gods in Greek mythology, food and drink (nectar) that could make mortals immortal. This, from Homer – The Iliad (Book XIX):

NOW when Dawn in robe of saffron was hasting from the streams of Oceanus, to bring light to mortals and immortals, Thetis reached the ships with the armour that the god had given her. She found her son fallen about the body of Patroclus and weeping bitterly. Many also of his followers were weeping round him, but when the goddess came among them she clasped his hand in her own, saying, “My son, grieve as we may we must let this man lie, for it is by heaven’s will that he has fallen; now, therefore, accept from Vulcan this rich and goodly armour, which no man has ever yet borne upon his shoulders.”