A Sweet Tooth
The history of sugar consumption is one of nothing more than capitalistic ventures and profit making. With the increased production from 1600 to 1800, prices plunged, making this once rare commodity available to even the poorest British citizen. Robbins offers several reasons for sugar’s expansion into the diets of British citizens during the Imperial period of its global trade ventures.
Various authorities, including doctors who touted its benefits as a food, medicine, and preservative, pushed for consumption. Used as a sweetener for tea, coffee, and cocoa, sugar found its way into the cups of British tea drinkers, and these three commodities increased in value and production, making profits for those involved in the businesses already. Sugar’s reputation as a commodity for the rich, inspired even the most discriminating middle class citizen, to desire the sweetener as a status symbol. The government of Britain offered rum, made from the molasses of sugar refinement to its sailors and purchased sugar for poorhouse residents, according to Robbins (Robbins 202-203). The British government also reduced tariffs on foreign sugar, and the market was flooded with the sweetner.
Robbins states that a popular physician, Dr. Frederick Slate, offered an opinion that called sugar a virtual “cure-all,” for all kinds of ailments, including use as a “dentifrice, lotion, substitute for tobacco, and for babies,” (Robbins 202).
The Florida Crystals website had the following to say about sugar used as a medicine:
“In the works of Arabic writers between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, sugar is an important medicinal ingredient. Islamic texts transmitted the medical lore of sugar to Muslim, Jewish and Christian physicians from Persia to Spain. By the thirteenth century, prescriptions of medical tonics containing sugar began to appear in Europe. It was blended with other herbs and spices and used in preservation and decoration. Thomas Aquinas wrote in the twelfth century "Though they are nutritious themselves, sugared spices are nonetheless not eaten with the end in mind of nourishment, but rather ease of digestion; accordingly, they do not break the fast any more than taking any other medicine.”
Since sugar had been used as a medicine for centuries before the 1700’s, it was only natural that as soon as it became widely available to the general public, the benefits of sugar, medicinally, would be advanced.
Used as a sweetener for tea, coffee, and cocoa, when, according to Robbins, these substances hadn’t required sugar in their places of origin (Robbins 203), sugar quickly found a purpose in use for these three popular drink beverages. A website that offers a chronology of tea mentions that in “1665, England imports less than 88 tons of sugar, a figure that will grow to 10,000 tons by the end of the century as tea consumption (encouraged by cheap sugar) increases in popularity.” The site also says, “ In 1780, English sugar consumption reaches 12 pounds per year per capita, up from 4 in 1700, as Britons increase coffee and tea consumption.” With the changes that occurred in the urban work force as a result of the Industrial Revolution, more and more women and children found themselves working in factories, and Robbins states that the average family’s diet changed from one of oatmeal and porridges, homemade breads, and vegetables to one dominated by sugar in teas, store bought white breads, and of course, sugar sweetened jams (Robbins 204). Sugar was no longer a status symbol for the wealthy, but was a part of the average American’s diet.
Finally, the British government’s removing of tariffs on imports of foreign sugar allowed more consumption. Not only did England find a use for molasses and rum for its naval forces, demanding more production of sugar, but England had also banned slavery, according to Robbins in the years 1834 – 1838 and created a labor pattern that forced freed slaves into contracted labor as sugar plantation workers until they became migrants to England (Robbins 203).
These forces; touting sugar as a medicinal remedy, increased usage as a sweetener for coffee, tea and cocoas, and finally, the government’s usage of sugar for its military and its poor citizens as well as making policies that encouraged importation, eventually led to the usage of sugar in many dishes and on many people’s teeth.Works Cited
Florida Crystals. Sugar Consumption. 2002.
<http://www.floridacrystals.com/sugarConsumption.asp> (04 Nov 04).
Nielsen, Kai Birger. Tea Chronology.<http://www.246.dk/teachronology.html> (04 Nov 04).
Robbins, Richard. Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism. 2002:Allyn & Bacon: Boston.
http://www.floridacrystals.com/sugarConsumption.asp
“In the works of Arabic writers between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, sugar is an important medicinal ingredient. Islamic texts transmitted the medical lore of sugar to Muslim, Jewish and Christian physicians from Persia to Spain. By the thirteenth century, prescriptions of medical tonics containing sugar began to appear in Europe. It was blended with other herbs and spices and used in preservation and decoration. Thomas Aquinas wrote in the twelfth century "Though they are nutritious themselves, sugared spices are nonetheless not eaten with the end in mind of nourishment, but rather ease of digestion; accordingly, they do not break the fast any more than taking any other medicine.”