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The evils that lurk behind the innocent and seemingly indispensable pleasures of life
The inseparability of sugar and slavery
The sickly-sweet history of sugar has stuck fast to so many of the seamier and crueller chapters of history. Sadly, its journey of devastation continues to this very day with modern slavery, worker exploitation, environmental destruction and damage to human health in the form of dental decay, obesity and the associated problems that come with these conditions. Because of sugar and the other ingredients that go with it to mass produce all manner of processed foods and addictive confectionaries, slavery, indentured, and child labour continue to be a reality in many countries worldwide. Not only then, has sugar caused a global health problem, but its exponential production continues to facilitate the multinational conglomerates, who exploit millions of workers to mass produce sugar and sugar-based products deriving from a crop that covers 65 million acres of land worldwide.
While waistbands in the developed world expand at an alarming rate, workers in developing countries, or immigrant workers in developed countries, are burning calories at an equally alarming rate to satisfy our sugar rush. Bizarrely though, with the ubiquitous availability of cheap processed foods laden with sugar or corn syrup, obesity has become the mark of poverty because these are the very foods that are affordable to people on low or unreliable incomes. The science is undeniable, regardless of the PR spin coming out of the sugar industry. Following the release of new guidelines on sugar consumption by the World Health Organisation in 2015, Dr Francesco Branca, Director of WHO’s Department of Nutrition for Health and Development said, “We have solid evidence that keeping intake of free sugars to less than 10% of total energy intake reduces the risk of overweight, obesity and tooth decay[1].”
Powerful multinational conglomerates in food and agri-food industries, especially sugar-related ones, have great track records in getting government protection and government subsidies. With massive budgets for advertising, public relations and product placement, not to mention the clever and disingenuous employment of food scientists and behavioural psychologists, the business of sweetening our foods continues to be profitable for the shareholders. Having achieved the ‘bliss point’ or the amount of sugar which perfects the level of sweetness, global conglomerates like Haribo, Nestlé and Mars continue to watch the money roll in.
Over four hundred years, the proliferation of sugar has changed our diets in subtle and not so subtle ways. As soon as this novel and revolutionary ingredient hit the jaded palates of seventeenth century Europe, there was no going back. What was once a mystical niche product for royalty and elites would quickly become a ‘bread and butter’ consumer item for everyone; and this was only made possible with the use of slave, and later, indentured labour, on sugar cane plantations. The environmental and ethnic profile of those geographic areas unfortunate enough to be suitable for growing sugar cane, were destroyed; similar destructive patterns would emerge with the propagation of tea, coffee and tobacco. While African slaves endured a living hell in the sugar plantations, the results of their labours were the Epicurean playthings of the rich on the other side of the world. But there was a soupçon of unexpected retribution.
With all the sugar extravaganza practiced in the courts of European royalty, from magnificently carved follies, to elaborate new recipes, it is salutary to learn that the French and English royal courts fell victim to horrendous dental problems. Not only did King Louis XIV lose his hair at a young age, heralding the ridiculous fashion of wigs, he also lost all his teeth by the age of forty; and of course, Queen Elizabeth l is unfairly renowned for her rotten teeth. James Walvin[2], in Sugar: The World Corrupted From Slavery to Obesity, describes rotten and missing teeth, gum disease, collapsed mouths and disfigured appearances, in the higher echelons of European society. Poetic justice, you might agree, when you consider the suffering endured by the African slaves shipped to the Caribbean, to produce the offending sweetener. But as sugar began to trickle down to society at large it lost its snob value; soon, even the poor could have missing teeth and collapsed mouths. When it came to public health, sugar did level the demographic playing field.
It was the exponential spread of refined sugar from the 1600s onwards that created this new condition of dental decay; a phenomenon that was rare in earlier, pre-refined sugar times. To prove this, CT scans carried out on the skeletons of people who died in the AD 79 Mount Vesuvius volcanic eruption show that most of the children and adults died with all their teeth, which were in good condition. The same could be seen in Anglo-Saxon skeletons. This would remain the story of teeth until the pervasive use of refined sugar would give archaeologists an entirely different picture of dental devastation; a tale played out increasingly from the seventeenth century onwards. Georgian and Victorians skeletons did not have the pretty smiles of their ancestors.
Interestingly, sugar also came to be considered as a respectable medicine. Walvin refers to Gervase Markham’s book The English Housewife (first published in 1616). Markham recommended sugar in a cordial ‘for any infection at the heart’, for ‘a new cough’, ‘an old cough’, eye problems, consumption, to staunch the blood, ‘for the wind colic’, and ‘for any old sore’; nothing like a tasty fix-all then. As a very young child in the sixties, I remember getting the polio vaccine in a sugar cube. A spoonful of sugar literally did make the medicine go down, all with the imprimatur of the medical establishment. The fact that many children’s medicines became available in sugar-free varieties from the late twentieth century onwards demonstrates how sugar was pushed by the pharmaceutical companies and accepted by the medical professions for over a century.
It was Christopher Columbus who brought sugar cane home from his second voyage in 1493. The human craving for sweetness was not new and like all good swashbuckling prospectors, Columbus was keenly alert to its commercial possibilities. Over the next few centuries, they were fully realised through the unspeakably appalling use and abuse of African slaves, started by the Portuguese, and followed by the French, English, Spanish and Dutch. Portugal would eventually ship 2.8 million slaves from its African colony Angola, to Brazil. These mass shipments of African slaves would transform the demographic structure of South America and the Caribbean. This was achieved by re-locating or slaughtering the local indigenous populations and replacing them with the African slaves and slashing and burning the landscape to make it suitable for sugar cultivation. When sugar cane production moved to the islands of the Caribbean, there was no stopping the monster that would feed the insatiable craving for sugar in Europe and North America, and what a perfect accompaniment it was for the tea being imported by the East India Company. All stages of production were perfected in the Caribbean. Matthew Parker[3] in The Sugar Barons; Family, Corruption, Empire and War,[4] excellently describes the process from planting to shipping. It was not for the feint hearted, and pushed everything to the limit, from the unfortunate slaves to agricultural science to mechanised production to logistics. Parker rightly concludes that the whole system “ushered in an era of global commerce, long supply chains, and ruthless exploitation of human and natural resources.”
The economic marriage of sugar, colonisation and slavery – a horrifying threesome you will agree - created a most toxic and shameful social and environmental eco system from the Brazilian rainforests to the Floridian Everglades. The worst coal-based pollution caused by the spread of sugar refineries across Northern Europe was a small irritant in comparison to the suffering of the African slaves and indigenous populations of sugar producing regions. And the problem continues into the 21st century. According to the WWF[5], a dozen countries use at least 25% of their farmland to grow sugar cane today. But because of its insatiable requirement for water, sugar cane continues to have a significant impact on iconic regions from the Mekong Delta to the Great Barrier Reef. Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, for example, is only 7% of its original size. The evidence is indisputable; historic planting of sugar cane around the world, going back hundreds of years, has led to significant impacts on biodiversity in the form of polluted rivers and seas, eroded fertile soils, pesticide and fertiliser damage, and air pollution from burning cane.
There is a watchdog organisation though, Bonsucro, that promotes sustainable production of the largest agricultural commodity in the world – sugar cane. Bonsucro’s mission is to “ensure that responsible sugar cane production creates lasting value for the people, communities, businesses, economies and eco-systems in all cane-growing regions.” The Bonsucro Production Standard employs six principles to achieve its mission. Obey the law; respect human rights and labour standards; manage efficiency to improve sustainability; manage biodiversity and ecosystem; continuously improve; and adhere to EU directives.[6] And yet, age-old problems associated with sugar production prevail in the 21st century.
Walvin estimates that within less than a century, the approximately two million indigenous inhabitants of the Caribbean islands had vanished. “Soon, Africans were being fed in the Caribbean islands on fish from the North Atlantic to enable them to cultivate crops from North America, Arabia and Asia – and all to flatter the taste of the Western World.” The Caribbean islands, he says, became in effect the “crucible for the creation of totally new cultures and people.” Back in the 1600’s they were a ‘get rich quick’ opportunity for every type of vagabond. Parker introduces us to Ned Ward, a hard-up Grub Street writer who tried to mend his own ‘Decay’d Fortune’ by sailing to Jamaica in 1697. Like any good journalist, his powers of observation in A Trip to Jamaica were acute and unforgiving in his description of his fellow countrymen who set up shop there. “A broken Apothecary will make there a Topping Physician; a Barbers Prentice, a good Surgeon; a Balliffs Follower, a passable Lawyer; and an English Knave, a very Honest Fellow”. This would not have happened without the sugar industry.
As slavery was abolished throughout the nineteenth century, human exploitation did not end; the slaves were replaced with indentured labourers from India, China, Japan, and the Philippines, but these labourers were just one rung up the ladder from slavery. These new mass movements of indentured labourers transformed the indigenous populations of Hawaii, Mauritius, Trinidad, Guyana and Natal as these regions succumbed to sugar cane plantations.
Human exploitation in the industry continues to this very day, even in Bonsucro certified operations. A 2018, rigorously researched article in The Conversation tellingly entitled Child labour, poverty and terrible working conditions lie behind the sugar you eat[7], looks at the origins of the sugar that ends up on supermarket shelves in the UK, and it demonstrates how history is repeating itself in sugar production. The article highlights child labour in Belize, Guatemala and El Salvador, forced labour and multidimensional poverty in Brazil, and workers exposed to heat stress in Costa Rica. Heat stress and dehydration symptoms include headaches and increased heart rate while long term exposure can lead to chronic kidney disease. The article reports that monthly temperatures during harvesting exceed safe limits in Belize, Fiji, Guyana, Mauritius and Jamaica.
Innocent pleasures like cups of hot tea, coffee and chocolate have sustained the Western world for over three-hundred years. Most of us consume one of these beverages every morning, and the rest of our day is punctuated with tea breaks and coffee breaks, which we are all apparently ‘dying for’. When these drinks were first brewed in Europe and North America, they were deemed to be too bitter, and it was the addition of sugar that made them more palatable. It was soon realised that this magic ingredient would also make bland foodstuffs like porridge and cornmeal more palatable also; and so the massive injection of sugar from the Caribbean into Europe and North America started a tsunami of tooth decay and obesity among consumers; but this suffering paled in comparison to the most unspeakable hardships endured by the African slaves on the sugar plantations. Sweet tea and coffee became a staple among all classes on both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, the importance of tea in what would become a predominantly coffee drinking nation, was highlighted in the run up to the American Revolution, several of the opening shots being reactions to the Sugar Act of 1760 and the Tea Act of 1773 imposed on the colony by the British Parliament. These acts increased taxation on sugar and tea and played no small part in igniting the American War of Independence in 1776.
One of the most colourful and harmful by-products of sugar was rum, and not just because of its association with piracy. Incredibly, it was considered a preferable alternative to gin, which had plagued Great Britain in the first half of the eighteenth century. As with so many addictive products that are cheap and widely available, rum became the drug of choice for drinkers on the lower rungs of the social ladder. It was also consumed as a cure-all and coping mechanism by African slaves enduring the harsh rigours of the sugar plantations; even mentioned in the Broadway musical Alexander Hamilton, about the Caribbean orphan who becomes one of America’s founding fathers. “And every day while slaves were being slaughtered and carted / Away across the waves, he struggled and kept his guard up”. The same young Hamilton would also do a stint, “Tradin’ sugar cane and rum and other things he can’t afford” before arriving to a new life in New York.
But most distressingly, as Walvin explains, “Slaves cultivated the very item now being traded in Africa, for yet more slaves.” So, as sugar and its by-product rum, were consumed in increasing quantities, sugar production accelerated with improved mechanisation and the spread of processing factories. This improved mechanisation also facilitated the speedy production of confectionary in vast quantities, requiring even more produce from the sugar cane fields. Harvesting was still back-breaking though, because much plantation terrain was unsuitable for machinery. The monster was reeling out of control; more and more lands were cleared to grow sugar cane to feed the factories to feed growing populations with a sweet tooth, and rail transport brought sugar to every small town and village. New and ingenious ways were devised to preserve food by pickling or canning; another way was by making jam; all of course needed copious amounts of sugar; the more the better, in fact. Indeed, by the nineteenth century, the trend of cheap and mass-produced sugar-laden food being consumed by the poor had already started; bread, jam and sweet tea was becoming the staple diet for many of the urban poor in Great Britain and Ireland.
Special occasions are marked with sugar – birthday cakes, wedding cakes, Christmas cakes, piñatas, Easter eggs – and that’s just a tiny sample. Sweet confectionary and sugary drinks have become staples rather than occasional treats. Obesity levels are rising in children and adults and this is reflected in everything from school uniform sizes, to hospital bed sizes to coffin sizes. The scientific evidence points to sugar as the main culprit for piling on the pounds. A recent New York Times article[8] describing the arduous and dangerous conditions endured by Syrian refugees harvesting hazelnuts in Turkey for criminally low pay, reminds us that workers are still being mistreated. Most of the hazelnuts they harvest are bought by Ferrero as the main ingredient in Nutella, that most beloved of Western confectionaries. But there is hope that sugar might be put to a much better use than human consumption; as prices of petroleum rise, there is a growing market for ethanol from sugar cane. Maybe environmental science will come to the rescue and help put an end to the centuries of harm caused by sugar.
[1] https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/sugar-guideline/en/
[2] Parker, M., 2012. The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire and War. Second ed. s.l.:Windmill Books.
[3] Walvin, J., 2017. Sugar: The World Corrupted from Slavery to Obesity. First ed. s.l.:Robinson.
[4] Chapter 3, page 33.
[5] https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/sugarcane
[6] https://www.bonsucro.com
[7] https://theconversation.com/child-labour-poverty-and-terrible-working-conditions-lie-behind-the-sugar-you-eat-95242
[8] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/business/syrian-refugees-turkey-hazelnut-farms.html
The evils that lurk behind the innocent and seemingly indispensable pleasures of life
The inseparability of sugar and slavery
The sickly-sweet history of sugar has stuck fast to so many of the seamier and crueller chapters of history. Sadly, its journey of devastation continues to this very day with modern slavery, worker exploitation, environmental destruction and damage to human health in the form of dental decay, obesity and the associated problems that come with these conditions. Because of sugar and the other ingredients that go with it to mass produce all manner of processed foods and addictive confectionaries, slavery, indentured, and child labour continue to be a reality in many countries worldwide. Not only then, has sugar caused a global health problem, but its exponential production continues to facilitate the multinational conglomerates, who exploit millions of workers to mass produce sugar and sugar-based products deriving from a crop that covers 65 million acres of land worldwide.
While waistbands in the developed world expand at an alarming rate, workers in developing countries, or immigrant workers in developed countries, are burning calories at an equally alarming rate to satisfy our sugar rush. Bizarrely though, with the ubiquitous availability of cheap processed foods laden with sugar or corn syrup, obesity has become the mark of poverty because these are the very foods that are affordable to people on low or unreliable incomes. The science is undeniable, regardless of the PR spin coming out of the sugar industry. Following the release of new guidelines on sugar consumption by the World Health Organisation in 2015, Dr Francesco Branca, Director of WHO’s Department of Nutrition for Health and Development said, “We have solid evidence that keeping intake of free sugars to less than 10% of total energy intake reduces the risk of overweight, obesity and tooth decay[1].”
Powerful multinational conglomerates in food and agri-food industries, especially sugar-related ones, have great track records in getting government protection and government subsidies. With massive budgets for advertising, public relations and product placement, not to mention the clever and disingenuous employment of food scientists and behavioural psychologists, the business of sweetening our foods continues to be profitable for the shareholders. Having achieved the ‘bliss point’ or the amount of sugar which perfects the level of sweetness, global conglomerates like Haribo, Nestlé and Mars continue to watch the money roll in.
Over four hundred years, the proliferation of sugar has changed our diets in subtle and not so subtle ways. As soon as this novel and revolutionary ingredient hit the jaded palates of seventeenth century Europe, there was no going back. What was once a mystical niche product for royalty and elites would quickly become a ‘bread and butter’ consumer item for everyone; and this was only made possible with the use of slave, and later, indentured labour, on sugar cane plantations. The environmental and ethnic profile of those geographic areas unfortunate enough to be suitable for growing sugar cane, were destroyed; similar destructive patterns would emerge with the propagation of tea, coffee and tobacco. While African slaves endured a living hell in the sugar plantations, the results of their labours were the Epicurean playthings of the rich on the other side of the world. But there was a soupçon of unexpected retribution.
With all the sugar extravaganza practiced in the courts of European royalty, from magnificently carved follies, to elaborate new recipes, it is salutary to learn that the French and English royal courts fell victim to horrendous dental problems. Not only did King Louis XIV lose his hair at a young age, heralding the ridiculous fashion of wigs, he also lost all his teeth by the age of forty; and of course, Queen Elizabeth l is unfairly renowned for her rotten teeth. James Walvin[2], in Sugar: The World Corrupted From Slavery to Obesity, describes rotten and missing teeth, gum disease, collapsed mouths and disfigured appearances, in the higher echelons of European society. Poetic justice, you might agree, when you consider the suffering endured by the African slaves shipped to the Caribbean, to produce the offending sweetener. But as sugar began to trickle down to society at large it lost its snob value; soon, even the poor could have missing teeth and collapsed mouths. When it came to public health, sugar did level the demographic playing field.
It was the exponential spread of refined sugar from the 1600s onwards that created this new condition of dental decay; a phenomenon that was rare in earlier, pre-refined sugar times. To prove this, CT scans carried out on the skeletons of people who died in the AD 79 Mount Vesuvius volcanic eruption show that most of the children and adults died with all their teeth, which were in good condition. The same could be seen in Anglo-Saxon skeletons. This would remain the story of teeth until the pervasive use of refined sugar would give archaeologists an entirely different picture of dental devastation; a tale played out increasingly from the seventeenth century onwards. Georgian and Victorians skeletons did not have the pretty smiles of their ancestors.
Interestingly, sugar also came to be considered as a respectable medicine. Walvin refers to Gervase Markham’s book The English Housewife (first published in 1616). Markham recommended sugar in a cordial ‘for any infection at the heart’, for ‘a new cough’, ‘an old cough’, eye problems, consumption, to staunch the blood, ‘for the wind colic’, and ‘for any old sore’; nothing like a tasty fix-all then. As a very young child in the sixties, I remember getting the polio vaccine in a sugar cube. A spoonful of sugar literally did make the medicine go down, all with the imprimatur of the medical establishment. The fact that many children’s medicines became available in sugar-free varieties from the late twentieth century onwards demonstrates how sugar was pushed by the pharmaceutical companies and accepted by the medical professions for over a century.
It was Christopher Columbus who brought sugar cane home from his second voyage in 1493. The human craving for sweetness was not new and like all good swashbuckling prospectors, Columbus was keenly alert to its commercial possibilities. Over the next few centuries, they were fully realised through the unspeakably appalling use and abuse of African slaves, started by the Portuguese, and followed by the French, English, Spanish and Dutch. Portugal would eventually ship 2.8 million slaves from its African colony Angola, to Brazil. These mass shipments of African slaves would transform the demographic structure of South America and the Caribbean. This was achieved by re-locating or slaughtering the local indigenous populations and replacing them with the African slaves and slashing and burning the landscape to make it suitable for sugar cultivation. When sugar cane production moved to the islands of the Caribbean, there was no stopping the monster that would feed the insatiable craving for sugar in Europe and North America, and what a perfect accompaniment it was for the tea being imported by the East India Company. All stages of production were perfected in the Caribbean. Matthew Parker[3] in The Sugar Barons; Family, Corruption, Empire and War,[4] excellently describes the process from planting to shipping. It was not for the feint hearted, and pushed everything to the limit, from the unfortunate slaves to agricultural science to mechanised production to logistics. Parker rightly concludes that the whole system “ushered in an era of global commerce, long supply chains, and ruthless exploitation of human and natural resources.”
The economic marriage of sugar, colonisation and slavery – a horrifying threesome you will agree - created a most toxic and shameful social and environmental eco system from the Brazilian rainforests to the Floridian Everglades. The worst coal-based pollution caused by the spread of sugar refineries across Northern Europe was a small irritant in comparison to the suffering of the African slaves and indigenous populations of sugar producing regions. And the problem continues into the 21st century. According to the WWF[5], a dozen countries use at least 25% of their farmland to grow sugar cane today. But because of its insatiable requirement for water, sugar cane continues to have a significant impact on iconic regions from the Mekong Delta to the Great Barrier Reef. Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, for example, is only 7% of its original size. The evidence is indisputable; historic planting of sugar cane around the world, going back hundreds of years, has led to significant impacts on biodiversity in the form of polluted rivers and seas, eroded fertile soils, pesticide and fertiliser damage, and air pollution from burning cane.
There is a watchdog organisation though, Bonsucro, that promotes sustainable production of the largest agricultural commodity in the world – sugar cane. Bonsucro’s mission is to “ensure that responsible sugar cane production creates lasting value for the people, communities, businesses, economies and eco-systems in all cane-growing regions.” The Bonsucro Production Standard employs six principles to achieve its mission. Obey the law; respect human rights and labour standards; manage efficiency to improve sustainability; manage biodiversity and ecosystem; continuously improve; and adhere to EU directives.[6] And yet, age-old problems associated with sugar production prevail in the 21st century.
Walvin estimates that within less than a century, the approximately two million indigenous inhabitants of the Caribbean islands had vanished. “Soon, Africans were being fed in the Caribbean islands on fish from the North Atlantic to enable them to cultivate crops from North America, Arabia and Asia – and all to flatter the taste of the Western World.” The Caribbean islands, he says, became in effect the “crucible for the creation of totally new cultures and people.” Back in the 1600’s they were a ‘get rich quick’ opportunity for every type of vagabond. Parker introduces us to Ned Ward, a hard-up Grub Street writer who tried to mend his own ‘Decay’d Fortune’ by sailing to Jamaica in 1697. Like any good journalist, his powers of observation in A Trip to Jamaica were acute and unforgiving in his description of his fellow countrymen who set up shop there. “A broken Apothecary will make there a Topping Physician; a Barbers Prentice, a good Surgeon; a Balliffs Follower, a passable Lawyer; and an English Knave, a very Honest Fellow”. This would not have happened without the sugar industry.
As slavery was abolished throughout the nineteenth century, human exploitation did not end; the slaves were replaced with indentured labourers from India, China, Japan, and the Philippines, but these labourers were just one rung up the ladder from slavery. These new mass movements of indentured labourers transformed the indigenous populations of Hawaii, Mauritius, Trinidad, Guyana and Natal as these regions succumbed to sugar cane plantations.
Human exploitation in the industry continues to this very day, even in Bonsucro certified operations. A 2018, rigorously researched article in The Conversation tellingly entitled Child labour, poverty and terrible working conditions lie behind the sugar you eat[7], looks at the origins of the sugar that ends up on supermarket shelves in the UK, and it demonstrates how history is repeating itself in sugar production. The article highlights child labour in Belize, Guatemala and El Salvador, forced labour and multidimensional poverty in Brazil, and workers exposed to heat stress in Costa Rica. Heat stress and dehydration symptoms include headaches and increased heart rate while long term exposure can lead to chronic kidney disease. The article reports that monthly temperatures during harvesting exceed safe limits in Belize, Fiji, Guyana, Mauritius and Jamaica.
Innocent pleasures like cups of hot tea, coffee and chocolate have sustained the Western world for over three-hundred years. Most of us consume one of these beverages every morning, and the rest of our day is punctuated with tea breaks and coffee breaks, which we are all apparently ‘dying for’. When these drinks were first brewed in Europe and North America, they were deemed to be too bitter, and it was the addition of sugar that made them more palatable. It was soon realised that this magic ingredient would also make bland foodstuffs like porridge and cornmeal more palatable also; and so the massive injection of sugar from the Caribbean into Europe and North America started a tsunami of tooth decay and obesity among consumers; but this suffering paled in comparison to the most unspeakable hardships endured by the African slaves on the sugar plantations. Sweet tea and coffee became a staple among all classes on both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, the importance of tea in what would become a predominantly coffee drinking nation, was highlighted in the run up to the American Revolution, several of the opening shots being reactions to the Sugar Act of 1760 and the Tea Act of 1773 imposed on the colony by the British Parliament. These acts increased taxation on sugar and tea and played no small part in igniting the American War of Independence in 1776.
One of the most colourful and harmful by-products of sugar was rum, and not just because of its association with piracy. Incredibly, it was considered a preferable alternative to gin, which had plagued Great Britain in the first half of the eighteenth century. As with so many addictive products that are cheap and widely available, rum became the drug of choice for drinkers on the lower rungs of the social ladder. It was also consumed as a cure-all and coping mechanism by African slaves enduring the harsh rigours of the sugar plantations; even mentioned in the Broadway musical Alexander Hamilton, about the Caribbean orphan who becomes one of America’s founding fathers. “And every day while slaves were being slaughtered and carted / Away across the waves, he struggled and kept his guard up”. The same young Hamilton would also do a stint, “Tradin’ sugar cane and rum and other things he can’t afford” before arriving to a new life in New York.
But most distressingly, as Walvin explains, “Slaves cultivated the very item now being traded in Africa, for yet more slaves.” So, as sugar and its by-product rum, were consumed in increasing quantities, sugar production accelerated with improved mechanisation and the spread of processing factories. This improved mechanisation also facilitated the speedy production of confectionary in vast quantities, requiring even more produce from the sugar cane fields. Harvesting was still back-breaking though, because much plantation terrain was unsuitable for machinery. The monster was reeling out of control; more and more lands were cleared to grow sugar cane to feed the factories to feed growing populations with a sweet tooth, and rail transport brought sugar to every small town and village. New and ingenious ways were devised to preserve food by pickling or canning; another way was by making jam; all of course needed copious amounts of sugar; the more the better, in fact. Indeed, by the nineteenth century, the trend of cheap and mass-produced sugar-laden food being consumed by the poor had already started; bread, jam and sweet tea was becoming the staple diet for many of the urban poor in Great Britain and Ireland.
Special occasions are marked with sugar – birthday cakes, wedding cakes, Christmas cakes, piñatas, Easter eggs – and that’s just a tiny sample. Sweet confectionary and sugary drinks have become staples rather than occasional treats. Obesity levels are rising in children and adults and this is reflected in everything from school uniform sizes, to hospital bed sizes to coffin sizes. The scientific evidence points to sugar as the main culprit for piling on the pounds. A recent New York Times article[8] describing the arduous and dangerous conditions endured by Syrian refugees harvesting hazelnuts in Turkey for criminally low pay, reminds us that workers are still being mistreated. Most of the hazelnuts they harvest are bought by Ferrero as the main ingredient in Nutella, that most beloved of Western confectionaries. But there is hope that sugar might be put to a much better use than human consumption; as prices of petroleum rise, there is a growing market for ethanol from sugar cane. Maybe environmental science will come to the rescue and help put an end to the centuries of harm caused by sugar.
[1] https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/sugar-guideline/en/
[2] Parker, M., 2012. The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire and War. Second ed. s.l.:Windmill Books.
[3] Walvin, J., 2017. Sugar: The World Corrupted from Slavery to Obesity. First ed. s.l.:Robinson.
[4] Chapter 3, page 33.
[5] https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/sugarcane
[6] https://www.bonsucro.com
[7] https://theconversation.com/child-labour-poverty-and-terrible-working-conditions-lie-behind-the-sugar-you-eat-95242
[8] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/business/syrian-refugees-turkey-hazelnut-farms.html
