How did sugar grow from prize to pariah? Acclaimed historian James Walvin looks at the history of our collective sweet tooth, beginning with the sugar grown by enslaved people who had been uprooted and shipped vast distances to undertake the grueling labor on plantations. The combination of sugar and slavery would transform the tastes of the Western world. Prior to 1600, sugar was a costly luxury, the domain of the rich. But with the rise of the sugar colonies in the New World over the following century, sugar became cheap, ubiquitous, and an everyday necessity. Less than fifty years ago, few people suggested that sugar posed a global health problem. And yet today, sugar is regularly denounced as a dangerous addiction, on a par with tobacco. Masterfully insightful and probing, James Walvin reveals the relationship between society and sweetness over the past two centuries— and how it explains our conflicted relationship with sugar today.

Traces the panoramic story of the sweet substance and its important role in shaping world history.

A fascinating persuasive history of how sugar has shaped the world, from European colonies to our modern diets In this eye-opening study, Sidney Mintz shows how Europeans and Americans transformed sugar from a rare foreign luxury to a commonplace necessity of modern life, and how it changed the history of capitalism and industry. He discusses the production and consumption of sugar, and reveals how closely interwoven are sugar's origins as a "slave" crop grown in Europe's tropical colonies with is use first as an extravagant luxury for the aristocracy, then as a staple of the diet of the new industrial proletariat. Finally, he considers how sugar has altered work patterns, eating habits, and our diet in modern times. "Like sugar, Mintz is persuasive, and his detailed history is a real treat." -San Francisco Chronicle

Since the first book published by Woodhead on the global sugar business (The international sugar trade) was released in 1996, the world sugar market has undergone fundamental change. Over the past decade the industry's key economic and policy drivers have created a new regional distribution of sugar production that has had an enormous impact on the price finding process as well as changing the type of sugar on offer to the world market. Brazil has become a dominant supplier whilst Cuba's production has collapsed to the pre World War One level; Russia has become the world's greatest importer and structural surpluses have seen stocks rise to historic highs and the world price fall to a level below the production costs of some of the most competitive exporters.The world sugar market focuses on these changes by identifying, describing and assessing the key industry drivers and their future potential impact on the market. Part one provides an overview – covering the history of sugar production and consumption, cultivation of beet and cane and the current state of the market for sugar and alternative sweeteners. Part two focuses on identifying, describing and assessing the key market drivers, both economic and political, on sugar demand. Part is devoted to a similar analysis of sugar supply, whilst part four covers the future for the sugar markets.The world sugar market is aimed at a wide audience from the sugar specialist looking for in-depth information on a specific topic to the newcomer needing to gain an overview of the current state-of-play and future for the world sugar market. The book is published in collaboration with the International Sugar Organization whose statistics and studies are used extensively throughout. - Provides a comprehensive overview of this complex and rapidly changing business - Written by three of the world's leading authorities on the global sugar industry and its economics - Includes data from the International sugar Organization

For fans of the New York Times bestseller I Quit Sugar or Katie Couric's controversial food industry documentary Fed Up, A Year of No Sugar is a "delightfully readable account of how [one family] survived a yearlong sugar-free diet and lived to tell the tale...A funny, intelligent, and informative memoir." —Kirkus It's dinnertime. Do you know where your sugar is coming from? Most likely everywhere. Sure, it's in ice cream and cookies, but what scared Eve O. Schaub was the secret world of sugar—hidden in bacon, crackers, salad dressing, pasta sauce, chicken broth, and baby food. With her eyes opened by the work of obesity expert Dr. Robert Lustig and others, Eve challenged her husband and two school-age daughters to join her on a quest to quit sugar for an entire year. Along the way, Eve uncovered the real costs of our sugar-heavy American diet—including diabetes, obesity, and increased incidences of health problems such as heart disease and cancer. The stories, tips, and recipes she shares throw fresh light on questionable nutritional advice we've been following for years and show that it is possible to eat at restaurants and go grocery shopping—with less and even no added sugar. Year of No Sugar is what the conversation about "kicking the sugar addiction" looks like for a real American family—a roller coaster of unexpected discoveries and challenges. "As an outspoken advocate for healthy eating, I found Schaub's book to shine a much-needed spotlight on an aspect of American culture that is making us sick, fat, and unhappy, and it does so with wit and warmth."—Suvir Sara, author of Indian Home Cooking "Delicious and compelling, her book is just about the best sugar substitute I've ever encountered."—Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Powers

What is life like on a sugar plantation at the end of the twentieth century? What will happen if the sugar industry collapses? How do the poverty-stricken cane cutters of rural Jamaica fit into the global economy? And how does sugar make its way from the canefield to our kitchens? The Carribean's history is inseparable from sugar. In Jamaica entire communities depend on the sugar industry, earning a precarious living on old-fashioned plantations. For many the crop even doubles as currency. But as the advanced nations reassess the economic policies that keep sugar alive, time is running out for the island's industry. King Sugar looks at the world sugar business, identifying the key playersproducers, markets and transnational companiesand explaining how the industry works. It explores the economics and politics of trading agreements, the mysteries of the futures market and the technology of sugar production. Based on interviews with traders, buyers and producers, it provides a unique look at the history of this commodity. King Sugar also looks in detail at how ordinary people fit into this global industry. Through interviews with workers on a plantation she provides a vivid picture of producers and the crises they face. The book finally assesses the future of sugar, both in Jamaica and the wider world, and considers the options for those still ruled by "King Sugar."

A classic text long out of print, Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar traces the historical development of slave labor and plantation agriculture in Martinique during the period immediately preceding slave emancipation in 1848. Interpreting these events against the broader background of the world-economy, Dale W. Tomich analyzes the importance of topics such as British hegemony in the nineteenth century, related developments of the French economy, and competition from European beet sugar producers. He shows how slaves' adaptation—and resistance—to changing working conditions transformed the plantation labor regime and the very character of slavery itself. Based on archival sources in France and Martinique, Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar offers a vivid reconstruction of the complex and contradictory interrelations among the world market, the material processes of sugar production, and the social relations of slavery. In this second edition, Tomich includes a new introduction in which he offers an explicit discussion of the methodological and theoretical issues entailed in developing and extending the world-systems perspective and clarifies the importance of the approach for the study of particular histories. This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to Knowledge Unlatched—an initiative that provides libraries and institutions with a centralized platform to support OA collections and from leading publishing houses and OA initiatives. Learn more at the Knowledge Unlatched website at: https://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/, and access the book online at the SUNY Open Access Repository at http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12648/7131.