Sugar’s Past​—How Sweet Was It?

IN THE year 1829 a three-hundred-ton sailing ship weighed anchor from a tiny port in the West Indies, pointed its bow south-southeast and sailed into open seas. Aboard were her commander, sailing master and fifty-five ragged and rugged men of various nations, colors and castes​—crew members all. In her hold were sixteen short iron cannons, powder, twenty-four-pound cannonballs, hand grenades, a cargo of West Indies rum, a miscellany of coral beads and other items, and a store of food and provisions. On deck, fore and aft, were muskets, ammunition and cutlasses.

After seventy-six days of being buffeted by galelike winds and seas foaming with great unrest, the vessel and her crew reached their destination​—a Portuguese port in Mozambique on the east coast of Africa.

After only eight days of unloading and taking on a new cargo, the small sloop put out to sea again bound for Cuba, leaving behind fourteen larger vessels laying anchor waiting to fill their holds with cargo of the same kind.

Riding low in the water, her deck almost constantly awash from the turbulent seas, the vessel’s returning cargo became a constant cause for apprehension for the ship’s crew. Within her hold were stowed a prize cargo​—eight hundred black men, women and children; without exception all naked, all heads shaved, all branded. A prize cargo for the sugarcane growers in the West Indies whose slaves they would become and whose crops by the sweat of their brows they would turn into sugar; and prized by the ship’s owners and commander whose profits from the sale of the slaves could run well over a hundred thousand dollars.

Secured by leg-irons, two by two, those packed on the starboard side faced forward in a sitting position like cradled spoons in one another’s lap, and those on the port faced aft.

The reader must try to visualize a hall seated with eight hundred people​—then literally packing that same number into a very small area only a few feet wide and about the length of a railroad car, and the phrase “packed like sardines” becomes appropriate. The hold being filled in this manner, the remainder of the slaves were secured to the deck.

Eight hundred miserable souls at sea. One of the greatest catastrophes that could strike a slave ship was to cut that number almost in half before they reached Cuba. Smallpox! The very word spread terror through the ship’s crew when the first victim of the hold was struck down by it. The dreadful scourge ran rampant. Dead man after dead man was lowered over the side as he expired. Four hundred and eighty alone remained of a cargo of eight hundred. The ship’s commander also did not survive.

From the beginning self-serving individuals, who saw a chance to make a dollar from the demand for sugar, jumped on the bandwagon. Religious missionaries in Africa discarded their frocks and flocks and stuck their greedy hands into the sugar pie by selling their own black converts to the slave hunters. Even the pope, Nicholas V, seeing the revenue to be made from the sugar trade, gave his blessings to slavery.

Slave ships plowed the waters from Africa to the Western world in such a steady stream that if it were possible for a ship to create a permanent rut as it cuts its way through the water, a great canyon would have been trenched to the very ocean floor from Africa to the West Indies alone in a few short years. Ships were pirating ships on the open seas for the black skins chained and stowed in the holds. Hence, the need for cannons and short arms to protect their precious cargo.

It must be remembered that greed makes for strange bedfellows. It affected white and black man alike. So the slaver was not without his accomplice among the Africans. If the lure was tempting enough it pitted black against black, family member against family member, tribe against tribe. Thus developed the systematic ease with which the slave hunters could purchase their living commodity. The black women would sell their own slaves, a booty from tribal wars, for a new string of coral beads. A warrior would fight harder to become the victor in battle, that he might have the conquered to sell for a keg of rum. Since coins were not then known in Africa, the slave traders filled their holds with needed provisions and with commodities that were of small worth to the white man, but that were considered luxuries by the black man, who accepted them in exchange for his black brothers. In this way the greed of all was satisfied.

Just how many Africans survived the passage from one continent to the other to put their backs and brawn in the sugar rush is not known. One modern demographer has estimated a conservative figure of fifteen million. Said one British historian: “It will be no exaggeration to put the tale and toll of the Slave Trade at 20 million Africans, of which two thirds are to be charged against sugar.”

Dear reader, can you comprehend this: to be uprooted from your land, what’s more​—your continent—​and be transported across open seas that took months to navigate, and when landed, to be placed in cages and sold at public auction, each family member individually, many never to see one another again? Ah, the price of sugar could not be measured in pounds but in lives! As ships plowed the seas, cane growers plowed their lands to make room for more growth and production of this sweet, white gold called sugar.

Although sugarcane was a comparatively new commodity in the Western world up until about the sixteenth century, it was known as far back as the reign of Alexander the Great. Sugarcane was discovered in India in the year 325 BCE by one of his soldiers.

Coming forward to Nero’s time of the first century of the Common Era, a Greek physician may have thought he was the first to discover the fountainhead of sugar. “There is,” he wrote, “a sort of hard honey which is called saccharum (sugar) found upon canes in India. It is grainy like salt and brittle between the teeth, but of sweet taste withal.”

The taste for sugar was catching on. Sugarcane was being uprooted and transplanted from the Far East to Europe. The Arabs brought it with them to Egypt, Persia and into Spain when they conquered that country in the eighth century. And for the next two hundred years the only sugar raised in Europe was in Spain.

It was from Spain that Christopher Columbus brought cuttings to the western hemisphere on his second voyage, planting them in what is now known as the Dominican Republic in the West Indies. China was not to be denied this sweet luxury and dispatched men to India to learn the mystery of producing sugar from the cane. Years later Marco Polo described China’s sugar mills as one of the great wonders of that country.

The Crusaders, under the direction of the popes and with their blessing, had tried to secure Jerusalem from the Turks. They returned home with glowing tales of this strange new sweet called sugar. Sugar trade routes between the East and Europe were soon set up. But sugar was expensive and only the rich were able to buy it. As late as 1742 sugar sold for $2.75 (US) per pound in London. When the poor sampled this sweet commodity they too became hooked on it. The rulers of the countries with foresight saw a whole new horizon of revenues coming into their tills. The chant for sugar was beginning to be heard around the world.

Spain and Portugal saw that some countries were growing rich from the sugar trade with India. They too wanted a piece of the action. Straightaway they sent sailing vessels out into the unknown seas to locate a new and quicker route to India. Columbus was one who went, but what he discovered instead was the West Indies. And his mistake paid off handsomely, for here he found the climate and the soil perfect for growing sugarcane.

Next came the Spanish settlers to take the land away from the natives. The natives became their slaves but proved all but worthless for work in the cane fields. So, in 1510, King Ferdinand of Spain gave his consent to transport a large vessel of slaves from Africa. Thus was started the ruthless trafficking in human lives across the seas. It continued for over three hundred years.

England did not for nothing boast of the greatest fleet sailing the seven seas. And when the precise moment came for her to get into the sugar business and slave running, her mighty fleet arrived in the West Indies and drove the Spaniards out. England was soon to become the center of the sugar industry of the world. “The pleasure, glory, and grandeur of England has been advanced more by sugar than by any other commodity, wool not excepted,” said a knighted Englishman of that era.

England’s view of the slave trade and the incredible pain inflicted on a people may best be summed up by a noted political personality of that nation: “The impossibility of doing without slaves in the West Indies will always prevent the traffic from being dropped. The necessity, the absolute necessity then, of carrying on must, since there is no other, be its excuse.” And ‘carry on’ she did. Sufficient is this observation made public in the eighteenth century when the sugar slavery was at its peak: “No cask of sugar arrives in Europe to which blood is not sticking.”

The English obviously struck a deal with their African accomplices for a reduced rate on a per-volume purchase. Hence this boast from a British lord: “As to the supply of negroes, we have such a decided superiority in the African trade that it is allowed we have slaves one sixth cheaper.”

Since it was obvious to all that sugar was no longer a passing craze but was here to stay and that slaves from Africa were the absolute, needed essential to keep the industry alive, the paramount question that exercised the minds of all concerned was, how long will the flow of slaves last before running out? The answer was not long in coming. From the pen of an African Gold Coast governor the words came back: “Africa not only can continue supplying the West Indies in the quantities she has hitherto, but, if necessity required it, could spare thousands, nay, millions more.”

However, this was not to be. Already there were at work forces that bitterly opposed the inhuman traffic of black humans, and voices of protest were being heard around the world. Every means possible was being used to get their message across and to stamp out slavery. Notice, for example, this circulated advertisement: “B. Henderson China Warehouse​—Rye Lane Peckham, Respectfully informs the Friends of Africa that she has on sale an Assortment of Sugar Basins [bowls] labelled in Gold Letters: East India Sugar Not Made by Slaves.” And then it said: “A family that uses five pounds of sugar per week will, by using East India instead of West India for 21 months, prevent the Slavery or Murder of one Fellow Creature. Eight such families in 19 ¹⁄₂ years will prevent the slavery or murder of 100.”

In course of time one country after another enacted new laws that prohibited slave trade. The United States, however, who had heretofore purchased her sugar from her southern neighbor Cuba, threw herself into the sugar and slave business, and the southern state Louisiana, with her newly developed sugar plantations, became the focal point. Any slaves that she could not use, the cotton plantations of the South could.

For over three centuries King Sugar had reigned supreme in the world, exacting a tribute that staggers the imagination. No commodity on the face of the earth has been wrested from the soil or the seas, from the skies or from the bowels of the earth with such misery and human blood as has sugar. Today, ah, how sweet it is! Yesterday it was as bitter as gall.

[Blurb on page 6]

Eight hundred miserable souls at sea. One of the greatest catastrophes that could strike a slave ship was to cut that number almost in half before they reached Cuba

[Blurb on page 6]

Religious missionaries in Africa discarded their frocks and flocks and stuck their greedy hands into the sugar pie by selling their own black converts to the slave hunters

[Blurb on page 7]

The slaver was not without his accomplice among the Africans. If the lure was tempting enough it pitted black against black, family member against family member, tribe against tribe

[Blurb on page 7]

“It will be no exaggeration to put the tale and toll of the Slave Trade at 20 million Africans, of which two thirds are to be charged against sugar”

[Picture on page 4]

Black women would sell their own slaves for a new string of coral beads

[Picture on page 5]

“No cask of sugar arrives in Europe to which blood is not sticking”

Sugar’s Present​—How Sweet Is It?

DO YOU recognize me? My scientific friends know me as C₁₂ H₂₂ O₁₁. I have not been without prominence since I made my debut on the world scene. Several times in world history, and in many parts of the earth, I was more precious than gold and rarer too. I remember once, in China, when some Indian princes owed tribute money to the emperor, that this Chinese ruler demanded that the tribute be paid by giving me to him rather than gold.

Great debates and controversies have been waged in the majestic palaces and great senate halls the world over due to my presence. I take no pleasure in saying that millions of people have literally been enslaved and millions have died because of me.

Today I am again the center of great controversies. Some say that I should be banned from the face of the earth forever. Others say that I am refined, sweet and needed, and not at all the villain I am accused of being.

Now do you recognize me? I am the spoonful of sugar that the popular song of the ’60’s said “helps the medicine go down . . . in a most delightful way.” I am the spoonful of sugar that was tied in a small cloth and served as a pacifier for you while your mother did her housework. I am the spoonful of sugar that coats the laxative pills you take and sweetens the otherwise bitter medicines you drink. I am in the cosmetics with which you adorn your face and in the synthetic rubbers and plastics that literally surround you. I helped with the curing of the leather for the shoes you wear. Those who smoke tobacco are smoking part of me. When you dye your clothes I am there. If you die and your remains are buried in a plastic casket, there I will be also. I am in your life, literally, from the cradle to the grave.

In addition to all these things and more, there is the thing for which I am the most popular​—the ability to satisfy your insatiable desire for something sweet. And herein lies the paradox. My assets are, to my opponents, my liabilities. Their claim is that I am in everything and everywhere. To deny this, of course, would be for me to disregard the facts. I would be the first to say that more often than not the use of me is the abuse of me.

It is reasonable to say that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. But is it reasonable that a spoonful of sugar also helps tomato ketchup, or horseradish, or relish, or salad dressings go down? Or bread, or canned vegetables, or, would you believe it, salt, to mention a few more? Does a pretzel need sugar? Are you not surprised that a package of processed gefilte fish, of all things, was found to have more sugar per serving than a piece of cake?

Why should I be a prominent ingredient in foods that you don’t expect to taste sweet in the first place? If you have a sweet tooth you know that munching on a cookie would probably satisfy your desire. But what reasonableness is there in the fact that a salted cracker might serve your purpose just as well with its 12 percent sugar content? By eating a certain chocolate candy bar you might well expect to consume 51 percent sugar. But what might disturb your good sense of judgment would be the discovery that you would be consuming the same amount of sugar by eating certain breaded chicken coatings.

I am not a genius, nor does it take one to determine that manufacturers and food processors of almost any consumable product apparently season with the idea that a spoonful of sugar will help their product go down in a most delightful way, whether I am needed or not. I consider this an abuse of me. It is also additional ammunition for my critics.

Consider, for example, the world consumption of me for the year 1982​—calculated to have exceeded ninety-two million metric tons. Americans and many others will consume about seventy-seven poundsa of me (refined) in a year, per person, and the average adolescent three pounds a week. Yet 75 percent of this consumption is nondiscretionary. Only a small portion actually comes from your sugar bowl. Facts show that people are buying less of me, yet their consumption of me is increasing. To plan menus, then, with a total abstinence of me would be, though not impossible, very difficult.

Possibly, most people recognize me only as I appear in their sugar bowls​—white and refined. In this form I am known as sucrose, about 99.9 percent pure and sold in either granulated or powdered form. Do not stop, however, when you see the word “sugar” or “sucrose” on the food labels. Other names of mine to watch for are fructose (from fruits), lactose (from milk), maltose (malt sugar), glucose, corn syrup, corn-syrup solids, dextrose and maple sugar. Raw sugar is banned in the United States unless impurities​—dirt, insect parts, molds, bacteria and other contaminents—​are removed. When this is done it can be sold as turbinado sugar. Although dark in color, this should not be confused with brown sugar, which generally is simply white refined sugar sprayed with molasses.

Now add to the estimated seventy-seven pounds of refined sugar consumed per person for the year 1982 another forty-five pounds of corn sweeteners (becoming more popular with food processors due to cheaper cost) found in foods on supermarket shelves, and the per capita consumption of sugar soars to even dizzier heights.

If you have a very basic knowledge of me you will know that, like starches, I am also a carbohydrate, which provides your body with energy, heat and subsequently the fuel for moving your body. When you consume more carbohydrates than your body can use, the excess is converted to fat.

In view, then, of your body’s basic need for fuel and energy, what’s wrong with eating sugar? The problem is that, unlike other sources of carbohydrates, I contain no proteins, no minerals, no vitamins​—no nutrients except calories. And these I have in abundance​—about sixty to a half ounce, or about a tablespoonful. Nutritionists describe me as being “empty calories.” On the other hand, in consuming foods other than sugar that are also rich in carbohydrates, such as whole grains, beans, vegetables and fruits, you are getting not only good energy sources but many nutrients as well.

Consumer Reports magazine of March 1978 really puts me down. I must agree, however, when it writes: “Essentially, there’s absolutely no dietary requirement for sugar that can’t be satisfied by other, more nutritious foods, such as fruits and vegetables. There isn’t even a need for sugar for so-called quick energy, to fuel a morning of tennis, skiing, or the like.” Your body’s already-stored energy fuel supply will take care of that.

Now what adds additional injury is that when I am consumed in such concentrated doses before a meal, say in a candy bar, pies and cakes, and possibly washed down with a twelve-ounce can of cola beverage, which contains about nine spoonfuls of sugar itself, then these empty calories have satisfied your appetite, and the beneficial foods are shunned at mealtime. You put on additional weight, but you are actually starving for good nutrition. You are aware of your weight, but you are not aware that you are malnourished.

Although I am accused of many sinister things, many of which are debatable, there is one thing that all experts seem to agree on​—I cause tooth decay, and particularly in children. Even the Sugar Association, whose role it is to promote more of me, agrees on this point. The problem, according to dental experts, is that as sugar I am used by the bacteria normally present in your mouth to create a thick gel-like substance that sticks tenaciously to your teeth. It speeds the buildup of bacterial plaque, which, along with other acids, attacks the teeth and leaves them vulnerable to decay.

Experts say, however, that it is not how much sugar you consume that determines the number of cavities you will get, but the form in which the sugar is consumed. If, for example, you eat a candy bar that has 10 percent sugar you can do more damage to your teeth than by drinking a soda beverage with a 25 percent sugar content. The reason is obvious. The candy will stick to your teeth, hence a longer exposure, whereas the sugar in the soda is washed away. However, before you breathe a sigh of relief if you are a soft-drink guzzler, you must be aware of this: Scientists report that several soft drinks a day could do more damage to your teeth than one piece of chewy candy a week. Also, colas and many other soft drinks often contain acids that are harmful to the teeth.

So, children, this points up another fact that your parents have possibly been trying to get through to you: Be diligent in brushing your teeth regularly, particularly after eating sweets. More especially after eating sugar-ladened foods before going to bed. The longer I am between your teeth the greater the chance of tooth decay and cavities.

Here is a hope but not necessarily an antidote: According to recent preliminary findings, as reported in The New York Times of December 16, 1980, cheddar cheese may actually inhibit tooth decay. “We think it’s a valid observation that will have to be pursued, but it is only in a preliminary stage yet,” said Dr. William H. Bowen, chief of the caries (tooth decay) prevention and research branch of the National Institute of Dental Research.

American scientists, following up on the research of a British colleague, who had found that cheddar cheese had a decay-slowing effect on human teeth, tested laboratory rats with a semiprocessed cheddar. The results were the same, reported Dr. Bowen, “provided the animals ate the cheese immediately after eating sugar, a known contributor to tooth decay.” “Why cheese,” continues The New York Times, “should have such an effect is unknown.”

Bad News All Around

Since I am telling my own story, I must tell it the way it is, even though it puts me in a very bad light. But here is more bad news for you lovers of me. This news also incriminates my archrival, salt. It seems to be widely recognized that salt, or too much of it, plays a sinister role in contributing to high blood pressure. Now a recent report has it that the combination of sugar and salt may increase the danger.

According to researchers at the Louisiana State University Medical School, spider monkeys were put on three different diets. One was a standard nutritional diet designed for laboratory monkeys. The second was the same diet, but the monkeys were given additional salt. The third was like the second, with the same amount of salt, but with extra sugar added. Science Digest magazine of October 1980, which carried this report, tells the findings:

“All the animals were carefully tested during a three-week ‘base period,’ then divided into three groups; each group received one of the three trial diets for eight weeks. As expected, blood pressures rose in the animals who received additional salt. But, the team reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, those monkeys fed extra salt and sugar had a significantly higher rise in their pressures.”

In addition to some of the things I have mentioned here, which I agree with, there are also a host of other medical ills that I am accused of, but that are not substantially proved. Controversies will no doubt continue until they are finally laid to rest one way or another.

In the meantime you should exercise moderation and balance in the foods and the amount of sugar you consume. The overuse of anything can make you ill and bring on a multitude of problems. I have my place in your daily diet if you will eat with good sense.

Also, remember, the Great God, Jehovah, who created me, led the Israelites into the Promised Land flowing with “milk and honey,” a form of sugar. That tells me I can’t be all bad. And when everyone worthy is sitting “under his vine and under his fig tree” in the paradise earth, why, I too will be there​—in those sweet grapes and ripe figs!​—Micah 4:4.

[Footnotes]

[Blurb on page 10]

I am again the center of great controversies. Some say that I should be banned from the face of the earth forever. Others say that I am refined, sweet and needed, and not at all the villain I am accused of being

[Blurb on page 10]

I would be the first to say that more often than not the use of me is the abuse of me

[Blurb on page 11]

Are you not surprised that a package of processed gefilte fish, of all things, was found to have more sugar per serving than a piece of cake?

[Blurb on page 12]

Food manufacturers, in order to disguise the high percentage of sugar in foods, will list me under many different names

[Graph on page 9]

(For fully formatted text, see publication)

SUGAR PERCENTAGES

Jell-O 83%

Sara Lee Chocolate Cake 36%

Hershey’s Milk Chocolate 51%

Sealtest Chocolate Ice Cream 21%

Cool Whip 21%

Coca Cola 9%

Cremora 57%

Coffee-mate 65%

Quaker 100% Natural Cereal 24%

Kellogg’s Sugar Frosted Flakes 39%

Kellogg’s Apple Jacks 57%

Post Raisin Bran 55%

Wishbone French Dressing 23%

Wishbone Italian Dressing 7%

Wishbone Russian Dressing 30%

Shake’N Bake Barbecue Style 51%

Hamburger Helper 23%

Ragu Spaghetti Sauce 6%

Heinz Tomato Ketchup 29%

Skippy Peanut Butter 9%

Ritz Crackers 12%

Consumer Reports listed the percentage of sugar in these products, among others. Of course, quantities consumed determine the person’s actual sugar intake. For example, a teaspoonful of Cremora (57%) in a cup of coffee contains much less sugar than a bottle of Coca Cola (9%).