Sugar and Sweetness

Is there a universal desire for sweetness?

Social sweetness

• The “Sweet Life” - the good life

• Sweethearts

• Sweet = character and state of being

• “Sweet” as an experience of something good and desirable

What are main sources of sweetness?

• Honey - bee products

• sugar cane - • refined, molasses

• sugar beet - last century

• High Fructose corn syrup (HFCS)

The rise of sucrose

Sugar is added to fatty foods to create

“Go-Away”

(describes texture of food)

Peanut butter = worst go-awayadd 10% sugar by weight

Food Texture= mouth feel

Sugar increases viscosity- makes, gummy, thicker

Substitute gums for sugar to create mouth feel

How is most sugars consumed?(world over average consump. =

10%)• add to carbohydrates

– millet, rice, other starches• add to bitter beverages

– cold or hot, tea, coffee, chocolate– SWEET TEA

• add to bitter food to make sweet– tomato, peanut, guava

Saccharum officinarum

Sugar cane is a grassdomesticated in New Guinea - 8000 B.C.to Philippines to India by 6000 B.C.Greek and Roman limited useArab traders to Mediterranean by A.D. 700-1100

SUGAR from Luxury to a Necessity

Sugar originally had medicinal usetoo expensive for food

Later is a spice (not sugar and spice)a rare commodity add to meat dishes

Decoration - display by royaltyonly royals could afford = black

teeth

Columbus carried sugarcane on 2nd journey

• to Santo Domingo

• later throughout Caribbean and Brazil

– by 1650 large-scale production

• later to Pacific islands, esp. Hawaii

Native population decline and importation of slave labor

How do you make sugar?

After Harvest• Crush cane and fiber

– release juice– use animal powered crushers, now mechanical

• Heat liquid to increase evaporation– becomes thicker

• supersaturated = crystals will appear– crystals are brown– uncrystallized liquid = molasses, treacle,

blackstrap (used for alcohol)

• Purify through refining to get white pure sucrose (remove molasses)

Cane – after harvest is pressed

Jamaica train

PanochaJaggery

Non-centrifugal, less refined

Sugar evaporation

Turbinado

Demerara

Sugar production

Extremely labor intensive

could not have produce on large-scale without importation of slave labor

English, Dutch, French in the Caribbean

= greater sugar production than Spaniards

Environmental consequences –

fuelwood, monocropping

Sugar becomes affordable and necessary

England - sugar production increased

2500% in 150 years

by 1850 most consumers = Europeans

Added to beverages - tea, coffee, chocolate

Tea and Sugar

British tea tradition est. mid-1700s

Tea for working class = quick energy

use > jam, puddings

Industrial Revolutionand Diet

Bread, jam,and hot beverage with sugar

High Tea

Sugar = medicine - spice - decoration – food with human cost in past and today

Modern consequences?

Brutal to produce – labor

Horrible for diet