Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History

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What forces beyond the nakedly military and economic ones maintained this intimate interdependence [between colony and metropole]; how benefits flowed, relative to the ways power was exercised" (xvi)

This was an interesting read … but I’m not sure that the structure’s quite right. Lots of jumping around and repetition. It’s like you’re only supposed to read one of the chapters. Johns, T. (1990). With Bitter Herbs They Shall Eat It: Chemical ecology and the origins of human diet and medicine. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Sweet" and "Sweetening" redirect here. For other uses, see Sweet (disambiguation) and Sweetening (disambiguation). Sweet foods, such as this strawberry shortcake, are often eaten for dessert. In the book, Mintz summed up a fixed rule: humans are born with an obsession and deep love for sweetness. According to research done by some American scholars, nearly all mammals produce milk with a sweet taste, including humans. Doctors feed newborn infants with glucose-and-water solutions to test the postpartum functioning of the infants. These solutions also determine whether the infant’s small intestine can perform normal peristalsis. Maldistribution of food within poor families may constitute a kind of culturally legitimized population control, since it systematically deprives the children of protein.”He makes broad generalizations, like "meaning arises out of use," but then doesn't really delve much into what the meanings are, except that early uses were for spice (they put it on everything, including vegetables and meat), or construction (think mints or icings), while later ones were more for heavier use in puddings, custards, pies, etc. Some of the wealthy & festival uses do continue (think wedding and birthday cakes, or glazed carrots and sweet potatoes with sugar at Thanksgiving). But to say that is hardly to delve into meanings. Indeed, it is as we offer these reverses to the Lord that they are taken up and turned around for His purposes and our own wounds begin to be healed. We have good reason to pray for our persecutors. The sweetness of 20% solution of glycine in water compares to a solution of 10% glucose or 5% fructose. [14]

The best bits were perhaps the detailed discussions in Chapters 2 & 3 on the details of production and consumption. If only more space had been devoted to these. The thesis about non-European aspects of industrialization and capital accumulation might have gained more depth and explanatory power that way. Altman, S. (1989). "The monkey and the fig: A Socratic dialogue on evolutionary themes". American Scientist. 77: 256–263. Sugar cane first domesticated in New Guinea around 8000 BC (which is extremely early; wheat was domesticated 10,000 years ago). 2000 years later was taken to Philippines and India, though may also have been domesticated in Indonesia (19). Middle class people invested in the kidnap and transport portions of the slave trade, but had no comparable opportunity to invest in plantations (168). Slave trade centered in Liverpool.Mintz argues that it was in the plantations that the first experiments in the capitalist mode of production were attempted -- a controversial position, since the plantations were also based on a captive labor market (slaves) who were considered no more than capital investment. But in every other respect, the nascent elements of capitalism were evident in the plantation economy: the reliance on investments raised from the capital markets, systematization of production, close attention to profit margins, specialization and division of labor, and vertical integration between raw material production, processing and distribution. The development of organic chemistry in the 19th century introduced many new chemical compounds and the means to determine their molecular structures. Early organic chemists tasted many of their products, either intentionally (as a means of characterization) or accidentally (due to poor laboratory hygiene). One of the first attempts to draw systematic correlations between molecules' structures and their tastes was made by a German chemist, Georg Cohn, in 1914. He hypothesized that to evoke a certain taste, a molecule must contain some structural motif (called a sapophore) that produces that taste. With regard to sweetness, he noted that molecules containing multiple hydroxyl groups and those containing chlorine atoms are often sweet, and that among a series of structurally similar compounds, those with smaller molecular weights were often sweeter than the larger compounds. As mentioned previously, sugar was initially a costly item because it was rare and difficult to obtain. In the earliest days, people relied on fruits and honey for sweetness. Eventually, they discovered a plant providing a large amount of sweetness: sugar cane. Sugar cane emerged a very long time ago. Since prehistoric times, humans had established plantations of sugar cane. Historically, people's descriptions of the sugar cane depicted forms of sugar.