Sugar by James Walvin

This book, unsurprisingly, is about the history of sugar. Known to us as such a simple commodity, yet with such a deep and complex history. I read this book so avidly, I simply couldn’t get enough! This book gives a detailed analysis of the history and expansion of sugar from early Islamic culture to our current obesity epidemic. Walvin also speaks about how the slave trade revolutionised what we think of sugar; the mere presence of a sugar bowl was a sign of immense wealth. The slave trade converted this luxury into a necessity, and this is when it started to rot the teeth of the masses and lead us to this global obesity epidemic we are currently experiencing today.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book from cover to cover! In this first section Walvin talks about how the spread of sugar/honey began in the Middle East and the Islamic empire. The love for honey in Islamic culture originated from the Prophet Mohammed’s adoration of sweetness and honey due to its association to the afterlife with God. Honey was a vital part of their culture, therefore, when the Islamic empire began to spread, so did honey. This honey obsession grew into the sugar obsession we know now but was exclusive only to the wealthiest of people and royalty. This is evident if you look at paintings of the royal families across Europe, they are usually not smiling and in the rare paintings that they are they have very few teeth. I could not believe what I was reading! Following from this, as the slave trade grew and sugar became ever more popular, the demand for sugar was sky high meaning that the plantations would increasingly grew sugar to meet this demand. Once the demand began to be met, sugar became a necessity in all households across Britain and France especially. Never could anyone have imagined that sugar could have had such a strong impact globally. The transformation of sugar’s status meant that it was easy to get a hold of in Britain and France, which eventually led us to where we are now: global obesity epidemic and poor dental hygiene.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book to everyone! I would especially recommend this to anyone interested in history, health and nutrition, or simply how sugar has managed to infiltrate almost every food in our supermarkets. Sugar is so prevalent nowadays that it is almost impossible avoiding it. Even in dietetic foods we can find sugar in all sorts of disguises, convincing us to buy it and subsequently creating an addiction. I truly found that this book opened a whole new set of doors to me, leading me to question why this simple commodity was able to conquer our palettes so easily. If you do go ahead and read this book please let me know what you think of it! I would love to hear what you guys think of it!