Question

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On slave labor and a commodity staple: What is your main impression from the historical transformation of sugar and how the outcome might have been different?

There's something crazy about the modern relationship with sugar. We demonize it, and yet we can't seem to stop gorging on it. Few plants can have caused more human misery than sugar cane, first through slavery and now through obesity, tooth decay and Type 2 diabetes. Yet when we see something sugary -- a ball of cotton candy, some salted-caramel ice cream, a chocolate fudge cake -- most of us still react only with joy, as if greeting a dear old friend. Despite everything we now know about the harm caused by sugar -- and other modern sweeteners, such as high-fructose corn syrup -- it never stops being sweet.

In "Sugar," James Walvin, a historian of Jamaica, has written a brilliant and thought-provoking history of sugar and its ironies. Mr. Walvin traces the way that within the space of two centuries, from 1700 to 1900, sugar established itself not just as a desirable commodity but as a "dietary essential for all sorts of people the world over." From the tea drinkers of England to the apple-pie eaters of the U.S., it stopped being a luxury and became something that people believed they positively needed to get through the day.

Sugar's conquest of the world proceeded in stages, Mr. Walvin shows. In ancient times, sugar was regarded not as a poison but as a panacea, the cure for a host of ailments, from coughs to colic. In every culture, sweetness has a symbolism related to goodness. It was valued so highly partly because it was so rare, obtainable mostly in tiny quantities as honey. The Quran says that "to enjoy sweets is a sign of faith." By medieval times, an increasing number of rich people were enjoying sweetness from sugar cane, a plant that traveled from the Mediterranean with the spread of Islam. "By 1400," writes Mr. Walvin, "it was being cultivated in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, North Africa, Spain and possibly Ethiopia and Zanzibar."

It was only in the New World that the modern sugar economy fully took shape. Both sugar and its alcoholic offshoot, rum, began to be produced on a large scale in Brazil and the Caribbean in the 17th century. Wherever the sugar planters went, they transformed both land and labor. The early sugar plantations used a mix of slaves and free laborers, but over time, as Mr. Walvin writes, sugar became "synonymous with slavery" and, later, with indentured labor.

The story of sugar and slavery has been told many times -- notably by the late anthropologist Sidney Mintz, whose "Sweetness and Power" (1985) remains one of the classic works of food history. But Mr. Walvin writes with fresh and righteous shock of the brutality and injustice of a system that enslaved and displaced millions of Africans for profit and to satisfy the sweet tooth of the West. The numbers involved are staggering. By the end of the 17th century, 18,000 Africans were being transported on hellish slave ships to the Americas every year. By the 1790s, it was 80,000 a year. Sugar cane is an unforgiving plant to cultivate and harvest. Slaves worked from childhood to old age and from dawn to dusk to tend the fields and crush, boil and filter the juices of the sugar-cane plant, whose sweetness they seldom tasted for themselves.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Europe, the sugar that the slaves toiled so hard to produce was spooned into countless cups of tea and coffee. But who, writes Mr. Walvin, ever "heard the sound of the lash, when spooning sugar into their tea or coffee in London or Paris?" By the 18th century, sugar was so ubiquitous that it had become mundane. It "could be bought as a powder," Mr. Walvin writes, "in lumps, in loaves, raw or moist, or it was known by its place of origin -- Barbados, Jamaica or Lisbon (for Brazilian)."

The sugar bowl, which started off as a status symbol for the wealthy, was now an everyday object on both sides of the Atlantic. "In the early years of the new Republic . . . the average American consumed only 8lb of sugar each year. A century later, in the 1890s, that had risen to 80lb a year," Mr. Walvin notes. As point of comparison, the World Health Organization now recommends that an adult consume no more than 25 grams of sugar a day -- roughly 20 pounds a year.

In the second half of his book, Mr. Walvin shifts his focus from slavery to the perils of consuming too much sugar. As the supply of sugar from cane began to be joined by new sugar from sugar beets, there was a problem of "massive over-production," which led, almost inexorably, to massive overconsumption. We learned to breakfast on sugary cereals and to quench our thirst with sugary sodas. During World War II, Coca-Cola became a patriotic drink. "Between 1941 and 1945," Mr. Walvin writes, "the US military bought 10 billion bottles of soft drinks from Coca-Cola."

Mr. Walvin's sobering final chapters suggest that by the time we noticed how much of a problem sugar was for our health, it was too late to do much about it. The tide has finally turned against sugar, with soda taxes enacted in multiple countries and widespread marketing of "sugar-free" alternatives. Public knowledge about the decades of misinformation spread by sugar lobbyists is growing. But Mr. Walvin suggests that too much is at stake for the sugar industry to suffer a serious challenge. "Currently, there are 120 countries producing 180 millions of tons of sugar," he writes -- and someone has to consume the stuff.

Increasingly the people consuming the most sugar are the poor. Mr. Walvin notes that 80% of Coca-Cola is consumed by just 20% of the American population: heavy consumers at the "lower end of the social scale." Many affluent Westerners have adopted low-sugar diets and found that life with less sugar can actually be sweeter. The real question is what it would take to unsweeten the palate of the population at large. The problem is one of culture as much as nutrition or economics. Public health officials may tell us to consume fewer sugary treats. But no one has succeeded in making us stop desiring them.

Answer 1

During the historical times, sugar was a luxury, a sign of religious supremacy. Its supply and demand were both concentrated at the beginning. Supply of sugar cane was concentrated in Mediteranean and the demand was concentrated in western world( since sugar was a luxury at that time, meant for the affluent class. However, may main impressions draws the following:
1. Exploitation of workers as slave - Its not about fair employment. No benefits were given to Africans who were forced to work as slaves. No education or social well being was introduced to them. Even the very product they were serving, they were not able to consume sugar.

2. Propaganda by sugar firms - Its right that the firm produces whatever is in demand. However, in this case sugar lobbyists wide spread the usage of sugar, citing it as a necessity, which should otherwise be a utility. In economic sense, what the lobbyists proposed that the marginal utility of consuming sugar is higher to being a necessity.

Because of this, the sugar consumption rose to uncontrollable levels in the modern economy. From beverages to food items, being 'sugary' became the norm.

I think that the majority of the blame( if not whole) lies with the health organizations around the world. Lets say, if they opted for proper labeling and controlled supply, things would have been different. Just because so much sugar is produced and there is no education awareness, people consume it at low prices. This is why high income groups have migrated to sugar free alternatives( because of education). Compare this with poor/low income class with low awareness and tight budget constraint.