The Sweet (and Not-So-Sweet) Story of Sugar
Taught by Andrew F. Smith
Culinary historian Andrew F. Smith, who teaches food studies at the New School, has made numerous television appearances (most recently on the National Geographic Channel’s six-part miniseries, Eat: The Story of Food). He has written or edited 27 books, including his just released Savoring Gotham: The Food Lovers Companion to New York City, an encyclopedia published by Oxford University Press with 570 entries written by 170 authors.
Sugar has been on our minds for millennia. First cultivated in New Guinea around ten thousand years ago, but unknown to the Ancient Greeks and Romans, and extremely expensive from the Middle Ages until the Industrial Revolution, this addictive sweetener has come to dominate our appetites—whether in candy, desserts, soft drinks, processed food, or even pasta sauces. Sugar’s past is chock-full of determined adventurers: relentless sugar barons and plantation owners who worked alongside plant breeders, food processors, distributors, and politicians to build a business based on our cravings. In both the sugarcane and sugar beet industries, men have made fortunes and met their demise, all because of sugar’s simple but profound hold on our palates.
Copies of Sugar: A Global History will be available for purchase at the talk!
