Sweet Dominion: The Rise of Sugar, Corporate Power, and the Hidden Cost of Global Sweetness

Foreword — The Sweet Engine of Empire

A child bites into a candy bar; a teenager sips a soda on the way to school; a tired worker drops a cube into morning coffee. Sweetness seems so ordinary today that it is hard to imagine a time when it was rarer than silver, locked in royal pantries and guarded like treasure. For centuries, sugar reshaped landscapes and human lives: it drove the expansion of empires, fueled the brutal machinery of slavery, and later powered the rise of processed food industries that still dominate global diets.

What was once a symbol of privilege became a staple of every cupboard. It sweetened revolutions, bankrolled industries, and seeped into every corner of daily eating. This is the story of how sugar turned from rarity to necessity, how the industry crafted myths to protect itself from scrutiny, and how the world was persuaded to consume far more sweetness than health could bear.

Chapter 1 — Sacred Cane and Early Sweetness

Before modern refiners, honey was humanity’s primary sweetener. Egyptian priests sealed jars of honey in tombs, seeing it as food for the afterlife. Greek physicians prescribed it as medicine, while in the Americas, agave and maple syrup filled the role of local nectar.¹

Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum), first cultivated in New Guinea around 8000 BCE, was refined in India into crystalline śarkarā, a Sanskrit term that gave rise to “sugar.”² Arab expansion carried this knowledge westward, spreading the technology of boiling cane juice into crystals across North Africa and into southern Europe. By the time of the Crusades, Europeans encountered sugar not as a kitchen staple but as an exotic drug sold in apothecaries—tiny spoonfuls prescribed for digestion, energy, and even melancholy.³

Chapter 2 — Empire, Slavery, and the Sugar Economy

When Columbus’s second voyage brought cane to the Caribbean, the plant found its perfect climate. Portuguese planters had already honed plantation systems in Madeira and Brazil; soon the Caribbean was a vast engine of sugar. The price of sweetness was brutality: enslaved Africans worked cane fields from sunrise to collapse, their labor driving an economy that linked Europe, Africa, and the Americas.⁴

By the 18th century, sugar consumption in Britain had soared. Sweetened tea fueled industrial workers, and molasses fed rum stills in New England. The “triangle trade”—enslaved people from Africa, sugar from the Caribbean, rum and goods from Europe and the colonies—was the circulatory system of early capitalism.⁵

Sidebar: Sugar and Revolution

  • Boston, 1773: Molasses-fed rum was as central to colonial economy as tea. The Sugar Act of 1764 sparked unrest long before the Tea Party.

  • Haiti, 1791: The world’s first successful slave revolt erupted on sugar plantations of Saint-Domingue, collapsing France’s richest colony.

Sugar was never just food; it was politics, violence, and revolution crystallized.

Chapter 3 — From Rarity to Household Staple

The 19th century changed sugar’s destiny. Napoleon’s blockade of Caribbean trade spurred beet-sugar research in Europe, ending cane’s monopoly.⁶ In the United States, cane fields in Louisiana and beet operations in the Midwest supplied domestic markets. By mid-century, industrial refiners like Domino in New York scaled up to feed growing cities.⁷

Per capita sugar consumption in the U.S. exploded: from a few pounds annually in 1700 to nearly 100 pounds by 1900.⁸ The transformation was cultural as much as culinary: cakes, preserves, and candies became everyday indulgences. Sugar shifted from a token of status to the background sweetness of daily life.

Chapter 4 — Marketing the Modern Sugar Fix

The 20th century sugar boom wasn’t inevitable—it was sold.

  • Candy Empires: Milton Hershey industrialized milk chocolate, turning what was once a European luxury into an affordable bar for every child.⁹

  • Soft Drinks: Coca-Cola and Pepsi used aggressive branding to tie sweetness to youth, refreshment, and patriotism.¹⁰

  • Breakfast Cereals: Kellogg’s and Post began as “health reformers,” but by mid-century, cereals were sugar-coated cartoons in a box.¹¹

Advertising turned sugar into an emotional product: energy for workers, comfort for families, fun for children.

Case Study: Coca-Cola Goes Global

In World War II, Coca-Cola promised a nickel drink for every U.S. soldier, anywhere in the world. Bottling plants followed the troops, seeding global infrastructure. After the war, Coke stayed behind. By the 1980s, its red-and-white logo was recognized across Africa, Asia, and Latin America—an empire of sugar disguised as bubbles.

Chapter 5 — The Science Wars and the Cover-Up

As early as the 1950s, medical journals hinted at sugar’s ties to obesity, tooth decay, diabetes, and possibly heart disease. Yet the industry orchestrated a cover-up.

  • Harvard’s Sweet Deal: In 1967, the Sugar Research Foundation secretly paid Harvard scientists to publish a review blaming fat—not sugar—for heart disease.¹²

  • Suppressed Studies: Industry-funded projects halted when animal studies showed links between sugar and cancer risk.¹³

  • Public Messaging: Ads pitched sugar as slimming: “Sugar can help you lose weight by curbing appetite” read one 1960s campaign.¹⁴

  • Lobbying Muscle: USDA dietary guidelines of the 1970s warned about fat but said little about sugar—a framing shaped by industry influence.¹⁵

The parallels with Big Tobacco were striking: denial, doubt, distraction. Decades were lost.

Sidebar: The Harvard Connection

The 1967 review in the New England Journal of Medicine, authored by prominent Harvard nutritionists, shifted the blame for heart disease from sugar to saturated fat. Only in 2016 did documents reveal the funding behind the paper—what public health historians now call one of the great scandals of 20th-century nutrition science.

Chapter 6 — Processed Food and the Sugar Deluge

The late 20th century brought a tidal wave of sugar in new forms. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), developed in the 1970s, became the cheap backbone of sodas, snacks, and condiments in the U.S., boosted by corn subsidies.¹⁶ By the 1990s, HFCS sweetened nearly every soda and countless packaged foods.

By the early 21st century, the average American consumed about 150 pounds of added sugar annually, hidden not only in sweets but in bread, ketchup, salad dressing, and yogurt.¹⁷ Globally, Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola saturated developing markets with sweetened beverages and processed foods, tying sugar consumption to modern identity.¹⁸

Chapter 7 — Adulteration, Fraud, and Power

Sugar’s profits bred corruption.

  • 19th-Century Britain: Ground chalk and plaster were sometimes added to stretch sugar supplies.¹⁹

  • Honey Fraud: Modern labs uncover counterfeit honey bulked with rice or corn syrup, often crossing borders undetected.²⁰

  • Labeling Tricks: “Evaporated cane juice,” “brown rice syrup,” “fruit concentrate”—multiple aliases conceal total sugar on ingredient labels.²¹

  • Political Power: U.S. sugar quotas and tariffs enrich a handful of giant producers, keeping prices high and channeling billions in subsidies.²²

Chapter 8 — The Sugars of the World

Not all sugars are created equal in taste or cultural meaning, but nutritionally most are little more than glucose and fructose.

Industrial Staples

  • Refined white sugar (cane or beet) — 99.9% sucrose; empty calories.²³

  • High-fructose corn syrup — Cheaper for manufacturers; strongly implicated in overconsumption.²⁴

Less Refined

  • Brown sugar — White sugar with molasses added; slightly more minerals, negligible difference.²⁵

  • Turbinado/Demerara — Large golden crystals with molasses film; minor potassium and calcium.²⁶

  • Jaggery/Gur (South Asia, Africa) — Unrefined cane blocks; some iron and minerals, culturally vital.²⁷

Regional Traditions

  • Panela/Piloncillo (Latin America) — Cone-shaped unrefined cane; trace minerals.²⁸

  • Palm sugar (Southeast Asia) — Lower glycemic index; small amounts of zinc and potassium.²⁹

  • Maple syrup (North America) — Manganese, zinc, antioxidants; still mostly sugar.³⁰

  • Honey — Antimicrobial compounds, antioxidants; nutrient content varies widely.³¹

  • Agave nectar — Marketed as healthy but very high in fructose, taxing the liver.³²

Alternatives

  • Artificial sweeteners (aspartame, sucralose) — Zero calories, controversial.³³

  • Natural low-calorie sweeteners (stevia, monk fruit) — Plant-based, growing in popularity.³⁴

Better options: jaggery, panela, maple syrup, and honey (for trace nutrients and cultural use).

Worst options: refined white sugar, HFCS, agave nectar (for metabolic reasons).³⁵

Chapter 9 — Sweetness and Power Today

Sugar is more than an ingredient—it is a business model. It shaped colonial economies, fueled industrial food systems, and continues to anchor multinational profits. Its political clout still blunts health policy; its marketing still associates sweetness with childhood, pleasure, and freedom.

Yet science and activism chip away at its empire. Soda taxes spread across cities from Mexico City to Berkeley; dietary guidelines finally warn explicitly against added sugars; consumers turn toward alternatives. The battle is not over, but the narrative is shifting.

Conclusion — A Bitter Legacy

From apothecary jars to vending machines, sugar’s story is the story of modern history itself—conquest, slavery, industrialization, marketing, denial, and now public reckoning. Each spoonful carries centuries of labor, profit, and controversy.

To taste sweetness today is to taste empire, and to recognize how power, profit, and politics still hide in every grain.

Endnotes

  1. Andrew Dalby, Food in the Ancient World from A to Z (London: Routledge, 2003), 171–72.

  2. Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Penguin, 1985), 19–25.

  3. Noel Deerr, The History of Sugar, vol. 1 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1949), 56–61.

  4. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 74–76.

  5. Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 89–102.

  6. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 99–112.

  7. Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944), 51–67.

  8. Deerr, History of Sugar, vol. 2, 144–150.

  9. Kenneth T. Jackson, ed., The Encyclopedia of New York City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 367.

  10. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Historical Consumption of Sweeteners, 1700–2000 (Washington, DC: USDA, 2003).

  11. Deborah Cadbury, Chocolate Wars (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 54–60.

  12. Harvey Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 139–144.

  13. Meg Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 213–15.

  14. Cristin Kearns, Laura Schmidt, and Stanton A. Glantz, “Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research,” JAMA Internal Medicine 176, no. 11 (2016): 1680–1685.

  15. Kearns, ibid., 1683.

  16. Marion Nestle, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 162.

  17. Nestle, Food Politics, 174–180.

  18. Stanton Glantz et al., The Cigarette Papers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).

  19. Michael Jacobson, Liquid Candy: How Soft Drinks Are Harming Americans’ Health (Washington, DC: Center for Science in the Public Interest, 2005), 23–29.

  20. USDA, Sweeteners Consumption Trends, 2003.

  21. World Health Organization, Guideline: Sugars Intake for Adults and Children (Geneva: WHO, 2015).

  22. Robert Foster, Coca-Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2008), 77–81.

  23. Caroline Lieffers, “Adulteration and the Politics of Pure Food,” Journal of Social History 48, no. 2 (2014): 416–439.

  24. N. Tuksun, “Global Honey Fraud,” Food Chemistry 307 (2020): 125–138.

  25. Nestle, Food Politics, 187–190.

  26. Jonathan Fox and Frank Schapiro, The Politics of Sugar (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989).

  27. Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking (New York: Scribner, 2004), 651–656.

  28. Jacobson, Liquid Candy, 18–22.

  29. McGee, On Food and Cooking, 654.

  30. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 212.

  31. S. Achaya, Indian Food: A Historical Companion (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 233–236.

  32. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 210.

  33. C. Brunschwig et al., “Palm Sugar Composition,” Journal of Food Science 77, no. 10 (2012): C1076–C1082.

  34. M. St-Pierre et al., “Nutritional Composition of Maple Syrup,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 63, no. 23 (2015): 5356–5362.

  35. P. Bogdanov, “Honey Composition and Properties,” Apidologie 28 (1997): 305–313.

  36. S. Whitehouse and A. Rivera, “Agave Nectar Metabolism,” Nutrition Reviews 69, no. 2 (2011): 92–99.

  37. Susan Swithers, “Artificial Sweeteners and Health,” Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism 26, no. 9 (2015): 431–438.

  38. M. Carakostas et al., “Stevia and Monk Fruit: Natural Non-Caloric Sweeteners,” Nutrition Today 47, no. 3 (2012): 129–138.

  39. Nestle, Food Politics, 192–195; WHO, Sugars Intake Guideline (2015).