It tastes delightful but it's not a food. It is terribly habit-forming and causes cravings but it's not exactly a drug. It gives instantaneous energy and quickens the muscles, yet it's not quite a nutrient, vitamin or mineral. I am talking, of course, about sugar, which you have probably already consumed today, whether in the form of a spoonful in your coffee, the glaze on your breakfast cereal, or hidden in literally thousands of "convenience foods" found on the shelves of any modern
American supermarket. And you've probably got a package of it stashed away in your pantry somewhere. Hard to believe it was once an exotic luxury kept in a locked box by the aristocrats who could afford it. But in fact, when one looks more closely into the history of this common substance that most of us take for granted, one is confronted with a tale that is both fascinating and disturbing, even a bit scary, for the story of sugar -- its discovery, cultivation, production, refinement, sale, distribution and consumption over half a millenia -- is a story of incredible ingenuity, ruthless profiteering, brutal slavery, power politics, imperial ambitions, technological wizardry, corporate malfeasance, chronic
disease and human tragedy. It meant overnight fortunes for some while it reduced others to abject misery and bondage. Once touted as a medicine, a panacea for all sorts of ills, it is today often implicated in serious
health conditions which would surely have earned it a warning sticker were it any other substance. Thoughtlessly sprinkled, spooned, and ingested by millions each day, the seemingly innocuous little white crystals, almost as chemically pure as snowflakes, scarcely betray their amazingly strange and torturous history. In other words, when it comes to sugar, all is not sweetness and light. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the fate of Western civilization has been inextricably tied to the history of sucrose, or, simple table sugar.
