num_pages: 128
description: Its no surprise that sugar has been on our minds for millennia. First cultivated in New Guinea around 8000 B.C.E. this addictive sweetener has since come to dominate our appetiteswhether in candy desserts soft drinks or even pasta saucesfor better and for worse. In this book Andrew F. Smith offers a fascinating history of this simultaneously beloved and reviled ingredient holding its incredible value as a global commodity up against its darker legacies of slavery and widespread obesity. As Smith demonstrates sugars past is chockfull of determined relentless sugar barons and plantation owners who worked alongside plant breeders food processors distributors and politicians to build a business based on our cravings. Exploring both the sugarcane and sugar beet industries he tells story after story of those who have made fortunes and those who have met demise all because of sugars simple but profound hold on our palates. Delightful and surprisingly action-packed this book offers a layered and definitive tale of sugar and the many people who have been caught in its spellfrom barons to slaves from chefs to the countless among us born with that insatiable devil the sweet tooth. 
language: English
title: Sugar: A Global History
publisher: Reaktion Books