So, I said I would produce a few tidbits of info on the ole sweet salt. But before I do I should mention that my "6 cashew nut butter crackers incident" on Saturday night had me waking up at 5am on Sunday morning feeling quite naseous. That'll learn me..........
The English word sugar can be traced back through the Arabic and Persian languages to a root in Sanskrit, "surkara". It is likely that Italian merchants first brought it to these shores, but it is believed that the first place it was domesticated was New Guinea around 8 000 BC. It seems that India and other parts of south east Asia were the natural home of sugar cane where it favoured the warm climate and plenty of rain. Sugar cane was chewed for its sweetness. I can clearly remember being around 6 or 7 at school, when a girl, whose father worked on a sugar cane plantation, brought in a thick, bamboo-like stick of sugar cane for us all to try. Far more exciting than grabbing a bag of Tate and Lyle and I remember feeling like a monkey or something. In a liquid form sugar couldn't travel far. With the discovery of how to crystallise the sweet one came the ability to transport sugar over greater distances and for it to be kept for longer. Indian sailors carrying this sweet treat and ghee traversed trade routes spreading it wider and travelling Buddhist monks are said to have taken crystallised sugar into China. Crusaders brought home sugar after their trips to The Holy Land and Christopher Columbus apparently returned with an armload in the fifteenth century too after a fling on his travels.
Before the eighteenth century sugar was considered a luxury item in the UK and by the nineteenth century this had shifted to it being classed as a necessity. The drive for sugar supplies at this time helped to power forward colonisation of tropical lands to provide the growing space for the crop. In the early days the labour was back breaking and hard, without the machinery to make the job simpler and many Europeans refused to do it. I am skipping lots of detail here but, as you have guessed the labour was sourced in the worst way imaginable by shipping in slave labour from West Africa. Millions worked the plantations, their natural resistance to malaria and other tropical diseases did nothing to dissuade the traders from shipping yet more to places such as Barbados and Jamaica to fuel the industry. Many died thousands of miles from their homeland. So the history of sugar production is a dirty one for sure. During the Napoleonic wars, sugar beet began to be grown in Europe, as the shipping blockades were making it harder for supplies to get in. In the UK however we continued to import from colonies in the West Indies, India and other areas.
The 5 largest producers of sugar in 2011 were Brazil, India, the European Union, China and Thailand.
In 2008 the average per capita consumption of sugars and sweetners in the US weighed in at around 62 kg a year. (There is 2.2 pounds to a kg). So that's just over 2kg a month which is very roughly half a kilo a week (or just over a pound in weight a week. I imagine weighing it at Scoopaway). I think that is pretty hefty. This figure apparently didn't include any artificial sweetners either.
The average yearly consumption per person worldwide of sugar is estimated at 25 kg by 2015, so just 18 months away. Perhaps it is these kinds of figures that Coca Cola have had to closely consider when in January of this year they issued a statement to the tune of "we might be overdoing it and obesity is a li'l bit of an issue" as it became clear to all who didn't already know that several spoonfuls of sugar in each can was beyond overkill. A cry back to 1903 when the same company were forced to admit cocaine on their list of ingredients and that this might be a bit detrimental to public health too.............
The English word sugar can be traced back through the Arabic and Persian languages to a root in Sanskrit, "surkara". It is likely that Italian merchants first brought it to these shores, but it is believed that the first place it was domesticated was New Guinea around 8 000 BC. It seems that India and other parts of south east Asia were the natural home of sugar cane where it favoured the warm climate and plenty of rain. Sugar cane was chewed for its sweetness. I can clearly remember being around 6 or 7 at school, when a girl, whose father worked on a sugar cane plantation, brought in a thick, bamboo-like stick of sugar cane for us all to try. Far more exciting than grabbing a bag of Tate and Lyle and I remember feeling like a monkey or something. In a liquid form sugar couldn't travel far. With the discovery of how to crystallise the sweet one came the ability to transport sugar over greater distances and for it to be kept for longer. Indian sailors carrying this sweet treat and ghee traversed trade routes spreading it wider and travelling Buddhist monks are said to have taken crystallised sugar into China. Crusaders brought home sugar after their trips to The Holy Land and Christopher Columbus apparently returned with an armload in the fifteenth century too after a fling on his travels.
Before the eighteenth century sugar was considered a luxury item in the UK and by the nineteenth century this had shifted to it being classed as a necessity. The drive for sugar supplies at this time helped to power forward colonisation of tropical lands to provide the growing space for the crop. In the early days the labour was back breaking and hard, without the machinery to make the job simpler and many Europeans refused to do it. I am skipping lots of detail here but, as you have guessed the labour was sourced in the worst way imaginable by shipping in slave labour from West Africa. Millions worked the plantations, their natural resistance to malaria and other tropical diseases did nothing to dissuade the traders from shipping yet more to places such as Barbados and Jamaica to fuel the industry. Many died thousands of miles from their homeland. So the history of sugar production is a dirty one for sure. During the Napoleonic wars, sugar beet began to be grown in Europe, as the shipping blockades were making it harder for supplies to get in. In the UK however we continued to import from colonies in the West Indies, India and other areas.
The 5 largest producers of sugar in 2011 were Brazil, India, the European Union, China and Thailand.
In 2008 the average per capita consumption of sugars and sweetners in the US weighed in at around 62 kg a year. (There is 2.2 pounds to a kg). So that's just over 2kg a month which is very roughly half a kilo a week (or just over a pound in weight a week. I imagine weighing it at Scoopaway). I think that is pretty hefty. This figure apparently didn't include any artificial sweetners either.
The average yearly consumption per person worldwide of sugar is estimated at 25 kg by 2015, so just 18 months away. Perhaps it is these kinds of figures that Coca Cola have had to closely consider when in January of this year they issued a statement to the tune of "we might be overdoing it and obesity is a li'l bit of an issue" as it became clear to all who didn't already know that several spoonfuls of sugar in each can was beyond overkill. A cry back to 1903 when the same company were forced to admit cocaine on their list of ingredients and that this might be a bit detrimental to public health too.............
No comments:
Post a Comment