Sugar has become a mainstay of contemporary diets. Sometimes visible in the form of sweets and heaping teaspoons of white powder dumped into coffee and tea, and sometimes invisible in processed foodstuffs and beverages, sugar is a part of daily life for many. More than a “natural” desire for sweets, the spread of sugar into more human bodies and at higher concentrations since the Industrial Revolution has been the result of concerted efforts. Industrialists capitalized on sugar’s energetic properties to increase proletariat working hours and productivity. Military commanders in the World Wars similarly enlisted sugar to boost soldiers’ endurance. And both the food and beverage industry and sugar manufacturers have worked in concert to get sugar into more and more products and more and more bellies around the world. As a result, we are hooked on sugar, a craving crafted through decades of (over-)exposure to the sweet stuff. A look into the history of sugar uses and its bodily impacts reveals human metabolism as a capitalist frontier.
Bosma, Ulbe,
"Human Metabolism as a Sugar Frontier"
(2023).
Commodity Frontiers.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.26300/gheq-yx62
Commodity Frontiers is the Journal of the Commodity Frontiers Initiative (CFI). Edited by a group of scholars and researchers from various disciplines and organizations in the CFI Network, the Journal explores the history and present of capitalism, contestation, and ecological …
