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Edible
Sugar: A Global History
It’s no surprise that sugar has been on our minds for millennia. First cultivated in New Guinea around 8,000 B.C.E., this addictive sweetener has since come to dominate our appetites—whether in candy, desserts, soft drinks, or even pasta sauces—for better and for worse. In this book, Andrew F. Smith offers a fascinating history of this simultaneously beloved and reviled ingredient, holding its incredible value as a global commodity up against its darker legacies of slavery and widespread obesity.
As Smith demonstrates, sugar’s past is chockfull of determined relentless sugar barons and plantation owners who worked alongside plant breeders, food processors, distributors, and politicians to build a business based on our cravings. Exploring both the sugarcane and sugar beet industries, he tells story after story of those who have made fortunes and those who have met demise all because of sugar’s simple but profound hold on our palates. Delightful and surprisingly action-packed, this book offers a layered and definitive tale of sugar and the many people who have been caught in its spell—from barons to slaves, from chefs to the countless among us born with that insatiable devil, the sweet tooth.
As Smith demonstrates, sugar’s past is chockfull of determined relentless sugar barons and plantation owners who worked alongside plant breeders, food processors, distributors, and politicians to build a business based on our cravings. Exploring both the sugarcane and sugar beet industries, he tells story after story of those who have made fortunes and those who have met demise all because of sugar’s simple but profound hold on our palates. Delightful and surprisingly action-packed, this book offers a layered and definitive tale of sugar and the many people who have been caught in its spell—from barons to slaves, from chefs to the countless among us born with that insatiable devil, the sweet tooth.
159 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2015
12 people are currently reading
176 people want to read
About the author
Andrew F. Smith
45 books14 followersAndrew Francis Smith teaches food studies at the New School University in Manhattan. He has written more than three hundred articles in academic journals and popular magazines and has authored or edited seventeen books, including The Oxford Encyclopedia on Food and Drink in America, a James Beard finalist in 2005. He has been frequently appeared on several television series, including the History Channel's American Eats, and the Food Network's Heavy Weights.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 26, 2022
Sugar: A Global History
Sugar has managed to conquer the global economy and satisfy the taste-buds for millennia as a base-ingredient, so it comes to no surprise when in our modern commercial society sugar manufacturers and foods-and-drinks companies utilise its effectiveness from their research in establishing maximum yield-profit ratio through addictions – or a “sweet tooth” – in order to cultivate a dependency on their products.
Sugar, as a rich commodity, has had a tumultuous history of good and evil; and in this sober account it highlights the slavery aspect of the sugar plantations and colonial outposts from the Caribbean, Haiti, Colombia, and other regions involved: such numbers and hard-labour are astronomically high to the point where the slave-masters occupying these such countries were in command of the inhabitants three-times their number; and becoming known as a leading-source of sugar production has unfortunate weighty and conflicting connotations.
The book dives a little into the information of what makes up sugar by its monosaccharides, glucose, fructose, sucrose, while also discussing how it is extracted from the stalks of the sugarcane, or later from the sugar-beets, with molasses being a viscous by-product of the extraction also used as a sweetener.
Ultimately, this book is a story of how refined sugar became so important and dependable in our daily lives; why we consume it so much; and what the risks are from its value.
“Short, but sweet”, as the profound proverb punctuates.
Sugar has managed to conquer the global economy and satisfy the taste-buds for millennia as a base-ingredient, so it comes to no surprise when in our modern commercial society sugar manufacturers and foods-and-drinks companies utilise its effectiveness from their research in establishing maximum yield-profit ratio through addictions – or a “sweet tooth” – in order to cultivate a dependency on their products.
Sugar, as a rich commodity, has had a tumultuous history of good and evil; and in this sober account it highlights the slavery aspect of the sugar plantations and colonial outposts from the Caribbean, Haiti, Colombia, and other regions involved: such numbers and hard-labour are astronomically high to the point where the slave-masters occupying these such countries were in command of the inhabitants three-times their number; and becoming known as a leading-source of sugar production has unfortunate weighty and conflicting connotations.
The book dives a little into the information of what makes up sugar by its monosaccharides, glucose, fructose, sucrose, while also discussing how it is extracted from the stalks of the sugarcane, or later from the sugar-beets, with molasses being a viscous by-product of the extraction also used as a sweetener.
Ultimately, this book is a story of how refined sugar became so important and dependable in our daily lives; why we consume it so much; and what the risks are from its value.
“Short, but sweet”, as the profound proverb punctuates.
August 18, 2018
One of the more informative books in this series, it suffers from the authors writing style, which is is best described as early high school term paper. An interesting, if not entirely enjoyable, read.
June 25, 2023
The Edible Series is an interesting collection…
On the farm in the Salinas Valley of California, we grew sugar beets. But over time, fewer and fewer acres were grown. The regions very large sugar processing facility owned by Spreckles Sugar, eventually was closed. I toured the plant a few times.
One of my 4-H projects was growing sugar beets, small Plot in my garden. We’d harvest and deliver the beets to Spreckles, which would process, calculate the sugar content, and then give me the equivalent sugar. Thank you to my great farmer mentor, Hugo Scattini, for teaching me out to grow sugar beets🙏🏻
So I’ve seen beet sugar and sugar cane around the world…California, Hawaii, The Philippines, India, Thailand, and Florida.
On the farm in the Salinas Valley of California, we grew sugar beets. But over time, fewer and fewer acres were grown. The regions very large sugar processing facility owned by Spreckles Sugar, eventually was closed. I toured the plant a few times.
One of my 4-H projects was growing sugar beets, small Plot in my garden. We’d harvest and deliver the beets to Spreckles, which would process, calculate the sugar content, and then give me the equivalent sugar. Thank you to my great farmer mentor, Hugo Scattini, for teaching me out to grow sugar beets🙏🏻
So I’ve seen beet sugar and sugar cane around the world…California, Hawaii, The Philippines, India, Thailand, and Florida.
November 4, 2022
Think of "The Spice" in DUNE. Or cocaine wars from Mexico to Brazil to Italy. That's what sugar has done to transform the modern world: a highly addictive substance that reshaped the world after 1500 when the Portuguese planted it Brazil, using first Indian and the African slave labor, on a mass scale, and then all her rivals wanted a cut of the action. Wars between Portugal and Spain followed, then Portugal versus Holland, next Spain versus England and finally New World versus Old, most violently in Cuba from 1868 onwards. Andrew Smith tells a tall but true tale of how your morning sugar for tea and coffee has more blood behind it than opium.
April 19, 2022
Great insights into everything about sugar: the history, economics, uses, corporations, health impacts, and recipes. It’s got great pictures too!
September 2, 2022
Sugar is definitely too broad of a topic for an Edible book. There's just not enough room to give anything full coverage, so it's all extremely brief.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews