Sugar, Drugs, and Other Poisons

Sugar is a drug. Like other drugs, you often don’t realize how damaging they are until it’s too late… or later in life. Sugar is a concentrated substance, like drugs are, and has profound physiological effects on the body.

Sugar is from India. There it was called Khaṇḍa, which is the source of the word candy. It eventually came to Europe thru Venice. Honey was the only sweetener previously known in Europe.

In 1492 Christopher Columbus stopped at the Canary Islands (near Spain) where he obtained cuttings of sugarcane, which he carried to the New World. This was the introduction of this plant in the Americas. Planted and the first harvest in Hispaniola in 1501. Mills constructed in Cuba and Jamaica. Portuguese took sugar cane to Brazil. By 1540 2,800 cane-sugar mills in South America.

Sugar was a luxury in Europe until 18th century when it became widely available. By 19th century sugar was considered a necessity. Demand for sugar as an essential ingredient resulted in major economic and social changes. Colonization of tropical lands with labor-intensive sugarcane plantations fed that desire. Cravings increased the demand for slave trade from Africa. After slavery abolished indentured laborers brought from South Asia creating modern ethnic mix of many nations in the Americas.

During the Napoleonic Wars, sugar-beet production increased in continental Europe because of blockades to imported sugar. By 1880 sugar beet was the main source of sugar in Europe. Sugar was originally purchased in loaves but later granulated sugar was sold in bags.

Today it is an essential part of our western culture that is constructed around consumer marketing that drives and satisfies cravings. Sugar is a drug that has come to define the essence and immediacy of an exploitative capitalist culture that says, “Tomorrow be damned”.

Peace on the Steem Blockchain @ClumsySilverDad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar#Ancient_times_and_Middle_Ages