BORIS BURDA: How to Ensure Yourself a Sweet Life
Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash
ATTENTION — QUESTION!
Carcharodon, the great white man-eating shark, the terrifying villain of the blockbuster Jaws, and the sweet sugar stored in the sugar bowl on your table — what do they have in common?
ATTENTION — CORRECT ANSWER!
The nickname — both the man-eating shark and sugar — is often called «white death», and it is not without reason.
MAIN TASTE
H
umans perceive only a limited number of different tastes. But this number is growing — until recently, most believed there were only four basic tastes, and now hardly anyone doubts the existence of a fifth taste, umami (the taste of monosodium glutamate, a common additive in Eastern cuisine). And that’s not even mentioning secondary tastes — Wikipedia lists nine, and those are far from all possible options.
However, the familiar four tastes we’ve known since childhood already represent progress. Aristotle believed there were only two basic tastes: sweet and bitter, while flavors like savory, salty, spicy, astringent, pungent, and sour merely complemented them. And which of the two did Aristotle prefer? There’s no need to guess — sweet, of course! It’s no coincidence that proverbs from around the world describe a good life as «sweet» and a bad one as «bitter».
Did the ancients have much that tasted sweet? Hardly, except for honey, which wasn’t strictly widely available. Fruits and berries with a sweet taste are relatively recent additions to our gardens. They grew sweet beans, and the sap of some trees had a sweet flavor. But the loveliest of all was the core of the sugarcane, brought to India from New Guinea even before our era.
Europeans first encountered sugarcane in India when they arrived with Alexander the Great’s army. His admiral, Nearchus, wrote that in India, sugarcane produced honey without the involvement of bees, and people made a drink from it, though the cane had no fruit. It was thanks to Alexander’s soldiers that sugar made its way to Egypt, and from there, the Romans received it. Back then, sugar was called «Indian salt».
EXPENSIVE AND RARE
Thus, sugar made its way to Europe — transported in army supply trains along the roads of war. This characteristic became typical for sugar: being a cause of wars, obtained through exhausting labor and cruelty. The entire history of sugar confirms this, and by tracing it, we may better understand why the sweet life comes at such a high price.
In India, sugar first got its current name — the word sarkara has roots in Sanskrit and means «sand». The name of the Sahara Desert shares the exact origin (naturally, from the word «sand», not «sugar»). From India, sugar quickly reached other Southeast Asian states — by 200 BC, the Kingdom of Funan (in the area of present-day Cambodia) was paying tribute to China with sugar sand.
In the Roman Empire, sugar, if used at all, was not for food but as medicine (though it’s unclear for what ailments). In Persia, however, where they developed advanced irrigation systems, Nestorian Christians used the rare combination of a warm climate and abundant watering to produce sugar in commercial quantities.
When the Byzantines looted the palace of the Persian king in Dastagerd, among the spoils were sugar supplies, which spread to many countries. Both the Byzantines and the Persians, weakened by their mutual conflict, were soon pressed by the rise of Islam. The Islamic Empire, having conquered vast territories, quickly spread the profitable crop — sugarcane. By the end of the first millennium, sugarcane was already growing in many Mediterranean states.
ISLANDS IN THE OCEAN
As people explored their planet, they gained valuable knowledge about distant lands. Marco Polo amazed Europe with his accounts of the East (so much so that many didn’t believe him, though they should have), and he mentioned countries producing sugar several times in his book — by then, sugar was already a familiar crop in the East.
Columbus’s discovery of America, among other things, initiated the process known as the Great Columbian Exchange, where numerous plants and animals from the Old World were brought to the New World and vice versa. Sugar was part of this exchange, arriving on Spanish caravels to the islands of the Caribbean. Before that, sugar had already taken root in the Canary Islands and Madeira.
As a cultivated plant, sugarcane is quite demanding. Its production requires a large scale to be profitable. Storing sugarcane is difficult — it must be processed quickly, or the losses will be significant. Boiling sugar requires vast amounts of fuel — at the time, primarily wood. And worst of all, it demands a large workforce.
In the West Indies, enormous sugarcane plantations could be established. The tropical forests provided enough wood to fuel the sugar refining process. However, not nearly enough people lived on the islands to supply the labor force needed to operate the sugar mills. Tragically, for many, a solution was found.
THE SPONSOR OF SLAVERY
It wasn’t just that church leaders made a decision inconvenient for the colonizers by proclaiming that Indigenous people were not livestock but humans too. Despite this, Indigenous people were still exploited relentlessly, though the sons of their chiefs were allowed to bear the title «Don» and study at the University of Salamanca. However, the concern of the clergy led to something even worse.
Bishop Las Casas, while angrily condemning the enslavement of Indigenous people, himself suggested a simple solution to make these atrocities unnecessary: bring enslaved Black people from Africa to the New World and let them work instead of the Indigenous people! Why it was acceptable to enslave Africans but not Indigenous people, he didn’t explain, and no one asked — after all, he had devised a brilliant way to get rich!
With the introduction of free labor, sugar production in the West Indies flourished! It became even more profitable when sugar production by-products were used to make rum. The cost of an enslaved person was so low that when an African worker’s hand got caught in the press squeezing juice from the sugarcane, it was simply chopped off so the work could continue — an axe hung conveniently next to the media for this purpose.
Cheaper sugar became popular in Europe, especially in England. The German traveler Gentzner wrote about Queen Elizabeth, noting that her teeth were black, a flaw common among the English because they consumed so much sugar. However, this didn’t always cause dismay. Sometimes, women would blacken their teeth intentionally as a sign of wealth, implying, «Envy me, for I am so rich I can afford so much sugar that my teeth have rotted».
We can hardly imagine the scale of the tragedy today — over 17,000,000 enslaved people were transported across the Atlantic. They weren’t brought to Europe, as it wasn’t profitable; unskilled labor yielded the highest returns in warmer climates. About 200 years after the beginning of the slave trade, sugar was finally replaced by its main sponsor — cotton. But it was still costly. Was there no other sugar-bearing plant?
THE OVERTHROW OF CANE
Sugar is not exclusive to sugarcane. The Canadian sugar maple, for instance, is so cherished that its leaf adorns the Canadian flag. However, extracting sugar from maple is more complex and more expensive. Corn syrup, on the other hand, is even cheaper than sugar and is often used as a substitute in confectionery, especially across the ocean. Yet, these plants never posed a threat to the hegemony of sugarcane.
The discovery by German chemist Andreas Marggraf, who found sugar crystals in the roots of white beets under a microscope, proved to be very significant. His successor, Franz Achard, who became the director of the Physical Division of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, did even more — he developed a technology and, in 1801, built the world’s first beet sugar factory in Silesia.
There are reports that this news caused such panic among sugarcane producers that they offered Achard 200,000 thalers (a considerable sum at the time!) to declare his experiments a failure and not ruin their business. But Achard refused — by then, Napoleon had declared a continental blockade, making it harder for cane sugar to reach Europe, and beet sugar came in handy.
Cane sugar remained on the market, and today, 70% of the world’s sugar is produced from cane, with only 30% coming from beets. However, this 30% is significant — consumption of sweet products has increased, and today, the average person consumes 30–40 kg of sugar per year. Now we are being told that sugar is the «white death» and that we should eat less of it… But it’s better to have plenty of sugar available — it’s easier to choose not to eat what’s there than to eat what isn’t.
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