The only trend in British sugar consumption, since it was first measured in the early 1700s until fairly recently, has been only increase upon increase, year after year. (See chart below) It is the argument of this essay that this phenomenon has taken place because of only two causes. One cause is historical and geographical and the other is the chemical and organic structure of the evolved human brain. The confluence of these two causes caused sugar to become abundantly and cheaply available to the British public, regardless of wealth, and that increased abundance of cheap sugar caused increased consumption of a substance that targets the sweetness sensitive regions of the brain that craves sugar because of our evolutionary past. Simply put, slavery gave Britain a lot of cheap sugar and its universal consumption triggered addictive responses among consumers to demand more and more of it.
There is no doubt that since 1704, when sugar consumption in Britain was only 4 pounds per person, its consumption has skyrocketed to well over 150 pounds per person, per year.
There are two major causes for this dramatic increase that combined into a perfect storm that transformed sugar from an expensive rarity among the wealthiest Britons to a dirt cheap, ubiquitous commodity on the tables and in the mouths of all citizens from princes to paupers.
There are two major causes for this dramatic increase that combined into a perfect storm that transformed sugar from an expensive rarity among the wealthiest Britons to a dirt cheap, ubiquitous commodity on the tables and in the mouths of all citizens from princes to paupers.rain. The confluence of these two causes caused sugar to become abundantly and cheaply available to the British public, regardless of wealth, and that increased abundance of cheap sugar caused increased consumption of a substance that targets the sweetness sensitive regions of the brain that craves sugar because of our evolutionary past. Simply put, slavery gave Britain a lot of cheap sugar and its universal consumption triggered addictive responses among consumers to demand more and more of it.
There is no doubt that since 1704, when sugar consumption in Britain was only 4 pounds per person, its consumption has skyrocketed to well over 150 pounds per person, per year.
The enslavement and transport of millions of Africans by the British and Europeans to the Americas where sugar, coffee, cocoa, tobacco, cotton and rice could be grown in prodigious quantities by the slaves at little cost and exported to Europe and North America where the insatiable appetites of the populace demanded an ever increasing supply of these now inexpensive commodities. Since slaves were paid no wages and given only bare subsistence in diet, clothing and housing to perform the work, the overhead of sugar planters in South America was quite low compared to how much money they would have had to pay for voluntary paid laborers. Without the slavery part of the economic equation in the production of New World sugar, there would never have been the flood of it into Britain, Europe and North America. Sugar would have remained a very expensive and rare treat for the wealthy. Because sugar production requires vast acreage of cane fields and a large round the clock processing facility, it is probable that cane sugar production could never have been profitable if the planters would have had to pay for the labor. Only slavery allowed sugar production to be profitable and indeed very profitable.
The pleasure and reward centers of the human brain are particularly sensitive to sweetness that lies deep in our evolutionary past when our pre-human ancestors desperately searched for ripe fruit and berries with enough sugar content to keep the larger primate brains in functioning order. Sweetness on the African savannah or forests is quite rare. Locating wild berries or hanging fruit meant the difference between survival and starvation. The competition for such rare resources was keen and no doubt most of our ancestors perished in the daily struggle for enough food to see another day. Because our brain, among the largest of land creatures, requires significant amounts of glucose to function properly. Because of this, the taste buds on our tongues are always seeking sugar and respond very positively to its presence from early infancy. While sugar is rare in the wild, found only in fruits and berries in significant amounts, when our brain encounters it as the British public first did when it became abundant and cheap, our brains went wild with sugar desire. Britain and Europe prior to the beginning of the exploitation of the Americas and Africa, survived on diets quite bland and tasteless except for a handful of spices and herbs imported at great cost from Asia. Basically, the only sweetness most people encountered in their brief lives, that were usually cut short by disease and malnutrition, was infrequent encounters with honey. However, honey was rare and costly. The peasantry could hardly be said to be very familiar with anything that tasted good or sweet. Therefore, when cheap sugar began to pour into Britain, Europe and North America, thanks to slavery, even the lowest subsistence tenant farmer’s family
could enjoy the pleasure that sugar triggered in their brains. With few other pleasures during their hard lives, people could at least enjoy the sweet bounty that human slavery provided for only a few pennies.
Only in recent years has the British consumption of sugar begun to wane as the health dangers of its over-consumption become apparent to more and more people through scientific studies of sugar’s effects on the human body. However, like any addictive drug, sugar’s hold on the food industry and humanity’s enjoyment of sweet taste, is proving a difficult hold to weaken. When sugar is commonly added to the many industrially processed foods consumed by many people, its consumption is often hidden.
The enormous increase of sugar consumption by the British over the course of two centuries is explainable only by sugar’s low cost and its powerful and addictive effects on the human brain. It is truly a unique occurrence in human history to consider how a simple agricultural product of narrow nutritional merit could take over the diets of entire nations because of the scourge of human slavery and the food’s addictive properties.
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- Britain is built on sugar: our national sweet tooth defines us
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/oct/13/lifeandhealth.britishidentity
- The Creation of an Atlantic Economy: Sugar and Slaves
https://www.learner.org/courses/worldhistory/support/reading_14_1.pdf
- Sack and sugar, and the aetiology of gout in England between 1650 and 1900
- Enslavement and Industrialisation
ttp://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/industrialisation_article_01.shtml
- Sugar and Britain’s obesity crisis: the key questions answered
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/23/sugar-britains-obesity-crisis-key-questions-answered
- How much sugar do we eat?
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27941325
- Changes in British Sugar Consumption during the 17th and 18th Centuries
- We’re all sugar junkies now: Britons now wolf down an almost unimaginable 160 teaspoons of it a week – and the even worse news? It really IS addictive
- Oxford History of the British Empire. The Eighteenth Century. The British West Indies, 1748-1815.
https://books.google.com/books?
Chocolate Class 