This increase in production caused a change at the consumption end. When sugar was first being produced it was seen as a luxury product only accessible to the rich, but then as its production increased and there was a surge amount in the market place its uses changed. It went from being a specialized product used for medicinal, ritual, or for display purposes to a common everyday food substitute. Now the working class people began more than ever to consume large quantities of sugar as a substitute to their calorie lacking diet. The production of sugar in the British West Indies was not able to keep pace with the demands from the mother country. When the supply from the British West Indies increased so did England’s demand for the crop. It seemed like from the middle of the eighteen century onward the islands were never able to produce more sugar than what was consumed by the people in the mother country. “English sugar consumption increased about four-fold in the last four decades of the eighteenth century, 1700-40, and more than doubled again from 1741-45 to 1771-75 (Mintz 1985) . As the English began to incorporate more amounts of sugar into their daily diets they began to find multiple uses of the commodity. Sugar soon developed into a stable product in the lives of people. With the increased use of sugar in multiple forms of consumption it changed from its previous classification as a spice to its own separate category. The use of this newly popular commodity did not lose any popularity as the years passed. Britain became a leading exporter of sugar crops into the world market, with majority of the supply going to feed their own peoples ravenous appetite. In 1800 British consumption of sugar had increased some 2,500 percent in... ... middle of paper ... ...k out of their home (Center n.d.). Modernization and development has left our working class people scrapping by to provide food for their families. To “solve” this, and increase their profits, corporations are now controlling the people’s nutritional needs. Since the development of the first sugar plantation businesses have been pumping sugar into our veins. We graciously accept this form of cheap nutrition because industrialization has left us inadequately prepared for survival in the fast paced consumer world. Simon Capewell, a professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Liverpool sums up the issue with sugar in modern time by saying, “Sugar is the new tobacco. Everywhere, sugary drinks and junk foods are now pressed on unsuspecting parents and children by a cynical industry focused on profit not health.” (NHS Choices: Your Health, Your Choices 2014).
What might be the biggest contribution to what drove sugar trade is consumer demand. Many popular drinks weren’t sweet and sugar was used as a sweetener. According to Sydney Mintz’s sweetness and power, “sugar as sweetener came to the force in connection with three other exotic imports tea,coffee, and chocolate(4)” because tea, coffee and chocolate
Kit-kats, Hershey bars, Skittles, and Jolly Ranchers. The reason these sweets, and many other products, are so popular is because of their sugar content. It’s hard to imagine that something used in nearly every food today was practically nonexistent at one point. But this is true- sugar wasn’t introduced globally until the 1500’s. Following this introduction, the trade that sprung up would come to be one of the most successful and profitable in the world. The Sugar Trade’s success was driven by many factors. Out of those several factors, the ones that promised success were high consumer demand, willing investors with a lot of capital, and the usage of slave labor.
From as early as 1100, Europeans employed the services of slaves to grow sugar in the eastern parts of the Mediterranean. During the 1400s and 1500s, Portuguese and Spanish introduced sugar farming on islands in the easter...
Sugar in its many forms is as old as the Earth itself. It is a sweet tasting thing for which humans have a natural desire. However there is more to sugar than its sweet taste, rather cane sugar has been shown historically to have generated a complex process of cultural change altering the lives of all those it has touched, both the people who grew the commodity and those for whom it was grown. Suprisingly, for something so desireable knowledge of sugar cane spread vey slow. First found in Guinea and first farmed in India (sources vary on this), knowledge of it would only arrive in Europe thousands of years later. However, there is more to the history of sugar cane than a simple story of how something was adopted piecemeal into various cultures. Rather the history of sugar, with regards to this question, really only takes off with its introduction to Europe. First exposed to the delights of sugar cane during the crusades, Europeans quickly acquired a taste for this sweet substance. This essay is really a legacy of that introduction, as it is this event which foreshadowed the sugar related explosion of trade in slaves. Indeed Henry Hobhouse in `Seeds of Change' goes so far as to say that "Sugar was the first dependance upon which led Europeans to establish tropical mono cultures to satisfy their own addiction." I wish, then, to show the repurcussions of sugar's introduction into Europe and consequently into the New World, and outline especially that parallel between the suga...
However, the outcome was different from his desired result due to strong protest from the dairy and livestock industry, so the Congress instead urged people to buy lean meat and less fat food so the dairy and livestock industry do not go out of business. This created the fat-free boom in the market in the 1980s. However, food companies began to put more sugar in their products because the taste was bad when they reduced fat in the food. Now, the sugar intake of Americans has doubled compared with before. In the American market, there are approximately 600,000 different food products, and 80% of those include sugar. Although sugar is written in various forms and names, one suggests that it’s bad in any form, especially if taken too much. Sugar consumed naturally through fiber-rich fruit or vegetable should be fine, but the added sweeteners stimulate the hormones that increase insulin. High insulin prevents people from thinking they are full, and thus crave more food. This causes many diseases. Of course one meal high in sugar will not kill them, but the problem is that people generally exceed daily sugar intake in one meal alone when consuming process food. We eat more processed and convenient food instead of fruits, vegetables, and
Sugar has been the basis of Europe and America where very few Europeans knew about sucrose in 1000 A. D. but shortly after cane sugar was highly sought after but why? Was sugar only loved because of its sweetness? By 1650 the English nobility and wealthy were very inve...
By 700 A.D., it was seen that sugar was diffused to the Mediterranean region by Islamic expansion and trade as sucrose was viewed as an exotic spice and medicine (Nunn, Nathan). In 1452, Portuguese sugar production began on Madeira, an uninhabited island off the northwest coast of Africa. Indigenous peoples were the first workers brought to island of Madeira to work on the sugar mills, but the need for labor was too much. To get help with more labor, the enslaved African Americans were brought in and they became the main labor force for the sugar industry. By 1500, Madeira became the largest exporter of sugar in the world (Dunn, R.). With the success of the cash crop and the labor provided by the African Americans, sugar production was seen to have spread to other Atlantic islands; first it was the Canaries, then Santiago in the Cape Verde islands but these islands lacked the required rainfall for good cane culture. This is where the Portuguese, and then later the Spanish, Dutch, and English came to set their sights on other areas to continue this white gold sugar industry hoping to expand the production and gain
Sugar cultivation essentially became the economic backbone throughout the remainder of the colonial period. Sugar cultivation led to the plantation system, which led to the transformation of Brazil (Kent 236). Brazil moved from being an unwanted, remote part of the world to a dynamic and productive colony (...
In document 7a, it tells when sugar got attention worldwide rich people started moving to the West Indies to grow because everyone wanted sugar and sugar makes you a lot of money. The more you consume sugar, the more you will start to
Dating all the way back to the early sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, sugar was being sold at jaw dropping prices at that time (Inglis, G. Douglas.). In Venetian and Sicilian regions purveyors sold extremely small amounts of sugar to wealthy elites, such as politicians, at extortionate prices (Inglis, G. Douglas.) This was mainly occurring throughout the sixteenth century (Inglis, G. Douglas.). This helped all vendors of sugar become one of the wealthy elites themselves. It all came to an end for these sellers once sugar was being produced by slave labor in the seventeenth century (Inglis, G. Douglas.) This was the cause of a great decrease from the exorbitant prices and allowed for the small middle class to now be able to buy the sweetener. The price decreased so much as slave labor was the cause for cultivating the crop that eventually not only the wealthy elites and middle class could buy sugar, but also the poor civilians of the land (“Sugar.”). The slave industry continued well into the late nineteenth century, but once it was abolished by all countries (United States being the last) for being immoral the sugar trade industry changed forever. Ultimately, due to the importation of slaves from mainly Africa and the specific sugar production techniques the slaves have learned, it enabled sugar to be the most profitable good in all of America and Europe at the time (“The Sugar Trade…”). This now
With such an obsession with sweet foods, there is an obvious desire for an explanation of how such a once unknown substance took center stage on everybody's snack, dessert, and candy list. That's where Sidney W. Mintz comes into play. He decided to write this book Sweetness and Power, and from the looks of all the sources he used to substantiate his ideas and data, it seems that he is not the first person to find the role that sugar plays in modern society important. By analyzing who Mintz's audience is meant to be, what goals he has in writing this book, what structure his book incorporates, what type, or types, of history he represents within the book, what kind of sources he uses, and what important information and conclusions he presents, we can come to better understand Mintz's views and research of the role of sugar in history, and how much it really affects our lives as we know them.
Taxing sugary drinks has been a controversial national topic for a while now, most people can agree that the arguments regarding this topic started when New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg attempted to ban all outsized sugary drinks from restaurants and other eateries. This sparked great controversy and upset many people regarding Bloomberg and how he used his "power" as New York City's mayor to impose such a ban. Although Bloomberg's ban was not as successful as he wanted it to be, many states and people agreed with what he was trying to impose and started taking matters into their own hands. Cities and states started to slowly ease in their attempt to put a ban on sugary drinks and have people apart of their region follow their attempts. Like Bloomberg, these states are all correct; putting a tax on sugary drinks is a positive initiative that the United States government should work harder to impose.
This is made by pressing sugar cane stalks to extract the plant's sugary juice, and then allowing the resultant liquid to crystallize. The sugar crystals are ground and sold. This ancient procedure produces the only real powdered sugar that the world has ever known. The powder is a beige color in its natural and organic form. The crystals of real cane juice should always be purchased instead of the brilliantly white "cane sugar", which is commonly known as "table sugar". Evaporated cane juice is our top recommendation for anyone needing a powdered sugar, and we confidently use it ourselves. The only ingredient listed should be "evaporated cane juice". If a product's label has any deviations from this, then you may know that its producer is dishonest, because it is not truly sugar anymore. Be cautious to never confuse evaporated cane juice with "pure" cane juice, or any of the other word combinations that
Unfortunately, however, sugar became very scarce due to the climate in which it was raised in. As a result, the fact that sugar was a sign of status, as mentioned earlier, is because salt became every expensive, and people who were in possession or able to afford sugar were seen as the more rich social group. In an effort to grow more sugar, explorers from Spain, Portugal, and other European countries found out that the Caribbean was a great place to grow sugar. began building sugar plantations in attempts to satisfy the demands of the people who wanted to use it to sweeten their foods. Sadly, these plantations required a lot of workers. At first, this wasn't a problem. Disastrously, when Europe was riddled with disease, plantation owners were desperate for workers to keep the sugar production flowing. As a result, they turned to Africans and enslaved them. This kept the sugar production flowing at the expense of a high mortality rate. This sugar production eventually helped the Caribbean
Sugar is found in a lot of foods these days. It is found naturally in fruits. It is added to a lot of processed foods. The high levels of sugar in American diets is definitely linked to increased risks for obesity and Type 2 diabetes. But, is all sugar bad and how much is too much?