Sugar.Indian.Diabetes

Ironically, sugar cane is not a native plant to most Americans. It is a perennial grass whose tropical species seems to have originated in New Guinea and India. During the invasion of India in 326 B.C., Alexander the Great’s soldiers became the first Europeans to see sugar cane; honey was the primary sweetener of the Western world at that time (Aronson and Budhos 11). Sugar offered a stronger sweet flavor. From New Guinea, knowledge of the sweet plant spread slowly to Asian mainland. It was in India that we had the first written record of sugar, where it was used for offering in religious and magical ceremonies (Aronson and Budhos 4). The history of sugar is one that is bittersweet filled with brutality, slavery and indentured labors. Sugar is a taste we all want, a taste we all crave. People throughout the world are willing to do anything and everything to get a touch that sweetness. Sugar cane plantations were run through the uses of slaves and indentured laborers. Indentured laborers were Indian labor workers who set sail to the Caribbean and agreed to a five year contract during which they were to be paid a daily wage and were given a promise of return passage back to India. Most lost their rights to see their family. The novel design to continue cheap labor workers was called “indenture.” Indentured labors were a new way to find people to work in sugar fields for less to nothing (Aronson and Budhos 102). Today though there is no need for slaves and indentured labors to work on plantation. The process of making ready-to-eat sugar is complex. To refine sugar, it takes hours of intense labor. During harvest season the cutters work brutal, seemingly endless shifts. Cane is taken to the factories where it is processed and crushed by hand. A stream of pale ash-colored syrup gushes out from the sugar mills, bubbling white with foam. The liquid syrup is captured and lugged off the boiler house. Over and over it is boiled under intense heat; the liquid