The painful, shameful history of sugar cultivation and production
Sugar, we are often told, is bad for us. According to recent health advice, adults should restrict their sugar intake to between six and nine teaspoons daily. But what is more upsetting about sugar is its atrocious history. Western Europe's appetite for "sweetness" helped fuel the horrific transatlantic trade of enslaved peoples, in which at least 15 million enslaved people from Africa were forced to work on plantations in the Americas. To this day, working conditions in sugar are among the world's worst. Given its heinous human rights record, the question becomes: Why do we continue to eat sugar? The answer is complicated. Crucial, however, are the significant profits that sugar represents, together with the low prices that sugar commands. History of sugar For nearly five centuries, European planters made dizzying fortunes in sugar, made possible by enslaving workers in colonized lands. Sugar became so integral to European profiteering that it started being produced on a global scale. Canadian investors, too, have reaped massive sugar profits. During the 1700s and 1800s, most Europeans, in what is now Canada, were implicated in the transatlantic sugar and slave trades. Not only did many consume the fruits of the enslaved sugar industry — including molasses and rum, in addition to sugar, as historian Afua Cooper writes — but some also invested in Caribbean trade, itself powered by enslaved sugar work. Several Canadian banks — including the Imperial Bank of Commerce and the Bank of Nova Scotia (now known as Scotiabank) — have their origins in the West Indies, where their forerunners established themselves early in the 19th century. According to Cooper, the Bank of Nova Scotia exists "in the shadow of West Indian slavery." Western Canadians have also profited from unfree sugar labor. The famed western Canadian brand, Rogers Sugar, was…