Global Food: The Background of Sugar

Global Food politics
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Background of Sugar
Sugar is one of the world’s oldest well-known commodities, and at one time, it was so treasured that people sealed it up in sugar safe. Sugar is a product universally consumed for its sweet taste, medicinal value as well as cultural reasons. The crystal refined from beets or sugarcane only provide caloric energy, but no minerals, vitamins, or any other nutritional value. Despite debatable findings from many nutritionists that consider sugar as a source of empty calories and contributor to obesity and diabetes, the product consumption and production continues to rise. For instance, in 2018, the world sugar consumption was 172.4 million metric tons as compared to 123.4 million tons recorded in 2001.["About Sugar | International Sugar Organization". 2019. Isosugar.Org./sugarsector/sugar.]
Although chewing sugarcane for its sweet taste was likely done in the olden days, the domestication started around 8000 BCE. Sugarcane was first discovered by some group of people from New Guinea approximately 10,000 years ago. Their understanding of this plant was far-fetched and slowly started to spread to South East Asia, China, and eventually India, the home of organized sugar production. Consequently, people began exchanging sugar through India, Byzantium, and Persia. Around 500 BCE, Indians were boiling sugarcane syrup to make crystals for medicines- the major early use of sugar. Similarly, crystallized sugar was found in medicinal records of Romans and Greek societies and was used to treat stomach and indigestion illnesses. Today, it is believed that the high concentration of calories in sugar helps calm emotions and mood swings.["History of Sugar - From Early Sugarcane Cultivation". 2019. Sugarhistory.Net./who-made-sugar/history-of-sugar/.] [Sen, Anandaroop, Nicole Isaacs, Marina Geldenhuys, Sameshni Govender, Vimal ThakorVallabh, Zachary Fleishman, and Yonela Ndlawana. "The History of Sugar." (2019).] [Tomich, Dale. "The “Second Slavery”: Bonded Labor and the Transformation of the NineteenthCentury World Economy." In Critical Readings on Global Slavery (4 vols.), pp. 13261349. Brill, 2017.]
India and its favorable climate conditions for sugar plantation used the commodity in diverse forms. Initially, they used simple procedures of chewing sugarcane before they developed a means to crystallize sugar in more portable forms at around 350AD. The country started trading with sugar for profits with the surrounding countries while sharing knowledge about sugar production wherever they went, such as China and the Middle East. By 650AD, china had adopted sugar into their cuisine and culture and had their plantations of sugarcane. Subsequently, sugar found its way to the Muslim world and become a lavish commodity linked with power. As a result, European began to long for sugar after the crusades and invasion in the Islamic lands in the 11th century.["History of Sugar - From Early Sugarcane Cultivation". 2019. Sugarhistory.Net./who-made-sugar/history-of-sugar/.] [Gerritsen, Anne, and Giorgio Riello. "Sugar revisited: Sweetness and the environment in theearly modern world." In The Global Lives of Things, pp. 214-236. Routle...