Sugar: The Grass That Changed the World [Hardcover]

...pulls the material together in an accessible and interesting way...exposing sugar's impact on health, economies, landscapes politics and culture.

An amazing insight into the development of the first sweets...with some brilliant evocative descriptions.

...absorbing and illuminating history of sugar.

The story of sugar is a story of life and death. As glucose it's the fuel that drives us. It also causes obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Sugar's rise in popularity led to the global spread of slavery, the destruction of indigenous cultures, the proliferation of colonial economies and the growth of multinationals. Sugar is a part of everyone's daily diet, lusted after and craved, at once a luxury and a necessity. It is produced in 121 countries worldwide and global production exceeds 120 million tonnes annually. We are literally drowning in sugar. In the last decade consumption in the West has increased by a third, American teenagers eat 34 teaspoons of sugar every day.

Sugar is produced in 121 countries worldwide and annual production, which already exceeds 120 million tonnes globally, is increasing year on year. Sugar has been described as a medicine, a necessity, a drug, but its tale is one of both life and death - it is in every cell of our bodies. Humans are all dependent on sugar for life, but it was responsible for the enslavement and death of millions of Afticans and is at the root of one of today's most serious health problems: over one fifth of adults in the UK and third of adults and half of the children in America are clinically obese.

Our lust for sugar has changed the shape of the world economically culturally and scoially. Sanjida O' Connell reveals, in accessible and scintillating prose, the extraordinary and illuminating story of sugar's journey from a grass to world domination.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Sanjida O’Connell is a scientist and documentary writer. She is an award-winning author who has published two novels with Transworld and one non-fiction book, Mind Reading: How we Learn to Love and Lie. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.