Focus on Food! Sugar's tragic history

Today I'm starting a new series inspired by my gestational diabetes.  I've been trying loads of new recipes and different foods in compliance with my healthy diet, and it motivates me to able to share some of it here.  It might help me from becoming too much of a whiner.  Please join me with some thoughts about SUGAR...

A History Book about Sugar?

As I was browsing the school library for something to read, I ran across this book.  I thought, “Hey, well, I can’t EAT sugar right now, I might as well READ about it.”

The book really became a page turner for me.  Sugar had a huge effect on world history – and I don’t even remember ever learning about it!  Much of it is very distasteful.  This did help tame my sugar cravings….for about 2 days. 

So just for fun, here are a few of the notable things I learned about sugar:

1. Sugar as medicine. When sugar was first refined from cane in the 600s in small amounts, it was used as a MEDICATION for illness!  Now this absolutely makes sense to me!  I can totally see how sugar could be a remedy for depression, sadness, weakness and even pain!  Too bad it’s effect is so temporary and the side effects so damaging! 

2. The bearers of sugar to the world were MUSLIMS!   As they conquered the Eastern worlds where sugar was first refined, they brought small amounts to other places they traveled, and understandably the demand quickly grew.  Before too long, they had designed and reproduced sugar plantations for rapid production of massive amounts of sugar.

3. I always wondered “What is molasses made of?”  When I look at the ingredient list it just says “molasses.”  So what is it?  Turns out, the process of refining sugar from cane into the white crystals we love so much is a long, many stepped, energy intensive one.   Molasses is merely one of the first products of the sugar refining process.  To quote from page 17 of the book, “What we call molasses is just a natural part of the first grinding of sugar cane into syrup.  Sugar refiners drain out the dark molasses to use by itself and are left with relatively white sugar."

4. White granulated sugar is a highly processed food.  It may be “natural”, but after reading the book, I’m not sure it has much of a benefit over corn syrup or other sweeteners.  Whether it be from cane or beets, the process involves multiple heatings and boilings and pourings before the white crystals are left.  I do think that brown sugar, raw sugar, and the Javanese sugar we use here are less processed options.

5. Slavery and sugar.   My understanding of slavery has previously been limited to America’s involvement with it in the South.  I watched Amazing Grace, the movie, about how William Wilberforce helped to abolish slavery in Britain.  I didn’t think any further.  Where were the slaves in England?  Britain had no plantations needing huge amounts of workers.  The slaves were overseas, in the tropics, stolen from Africa and sold and cruelly worked to death on sugar plantations, owned by wealthy aristocracy and gentlefolk back in England. 

6. Something about American slavery I never considered.   Although slavery in America was a horrible thing, it turns out that Americans treated their slaves better than other places in the world.  Of all of the people ever taken from Africa, 96% were sold as slaves in the Caribbean, Brazil, and South America, most to sugar plantations.  Only 4% were sold in America.  The reason for the disparity is that those other places literally worked their slaves to death in a very short amount of time, so they continually needed to resupply the manpower.  Whereas, Americans, although still cruel, fed and medicated and rested their slaves enough that they survived and married and reproduced, eliminating the need to import new slaves from overseas.  According to the book, only 500,000 slaves were ever brought to America, but there were 4 million slaves freed at the time of emancipation.  In contrast, over 2 million Africans were taken as slaves to the “sugar” islands, and only 670,000 were alive to be freed at emancipation.

7. How did so many Japanese and other Asians come to be in Hawaii?  Again, the answer is sugar.  As slavery was abolished, the sugar business moved to new places, including Hawaii.  Japanese, Philippino, Indians, and others went to Hawaii as (poorly) paid workers on sugar plantations.  Many never returned to their homelands.

8. Most sugar comes from beets now.  Sugar beets provide the same final product as sugar cane, and you don’t need plantations and slaves to produce it. 

”C & H, pure cane sugar … from Hawaii, sweetened by the sun….”  Do any of you remember this commercial ditty from the 80’s?  I’ve been humming it off and on my entire life!  But I will never think of those words in the same way again.  Thanks for letting me share with you about my enjoyable and lightening read!