Sweetness And Power

Part I of Essay
Why would anyone feel the need to write an entire book on such a mundane topic such as sugar? Look around at some food products you might have and you will realize that many if not all of them contain sugar in some form or another. For example, a can of soda, which mo ....

Part II of Essay
.... as an adaptation of ancestral populations to favor the ripest-and hence the sweetest-fruit. In other words, the selective pressures of times past are most strikingly revealed by the artificial, supernormal stimulus of refined sugar, despite the evidence that eating refined sugar is maladaptive. With such an obsession with sweet foods, there is an obvious desire for an explanation of how such a once unknown substance took center stage on everybody’s snack, dessert, and candy list. That’s where Sidney W. Mintz comes into play. He decided to ....