Sugar Incredible Gold Summary

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Sugar, an Edible Gold
Since sugar contains an addictive sweet flavor and a lot of energy needed for the human, its usage has been increasing since before the industrialization of sugar production. Furthermore, an anthropologist, Sidney W. Mintz, wrote a book called Sweetness and Power describing the journey of making sugar a necessity for almost everyone in the world. As a result, according to Mintz’ book and other researches, after the discovery of sugar by the Europeans in the Middle Ages, the sugar consumers had expanded from only the elites of England then became a necessity for everyone, including the working class. The Crusades of the 1096 resulted in the finding of sugar. The Crusaders brought sugar back to Europe and the people treated it like a luxury spice. Since the English diet used to contain a lot of starch and dairy, when sugar arrived, it became an industrial breakthrough (Mintz, 75). The European saw the potential of sugar, and started mass-producing it in the colonies including Central America and the Caribbean (Mintz, 28). Slavery also got involved into the sugar plantations in the early 1500s as free-labors; thus it caused the drop in sugar’s price (Mintz, 32). …show more content…

In order to decrease the price of sugar, the English provided ships and refined sugar for the Brazilian (Mintz, 62). Therefore, sugar’s price dropped, allowing the popular class to consume more. The Commercial Revolution in the 1600s was when the English’s merchants started to recognize the profits from sugar with the technology changes so they invested more into sugar plantations, increasing the production rate and lowering the price of sugar (Mintz, 64). The England’s government abolition of taxations for sugar imports and exports also encouraged reducing the price of sugar, expanding its consumption to the popular class in the 1700s (Mintz,

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