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0:23

Hello. After last week's programme

0:26

I rather felt we'd, well, somewhat overdosed

0:29

on the subject of woke, but two

0:31

emails from listeners made me think again. Jan

0:34

Chamier sent me this headline from the

0:36

26th September edition of The Sun. Richie

0:39

Soonack must bite the bullet

0:42

and derail woke HS2.

0:45

Well, what better illustration could

0:47

there be of our contention that the word had now

0:50

become in some hands nothing

0:52

more than a meaningless term of abuse. And

0:55

then came the email from Ashram Pura

0:57

which movingly captured the manner in

0:59

which a person who is the subject of woke

1:02

might actually welcome the type of

1:04

solicitous attention its critics derided.

1:07

Laurie,

1:08

while I'm certainly not woke,

1:10

I feel more seen now

1:13

for my racial and cultural background,

1:15

for the story of my family, and more

1:18

aware of my own blind spots in

1:20

terms of gender and class than

1:22

I ever was as a young man. For

1:24

me, the woke movement has

1:26

improved my life more often

1:29

than it has been an irritation. Now,

1:31

a couple of words in that touching email increasingly

1:34

seemed relevant to me as I read

1:36

a new book with a gloriously comprehensive

1:38

title, The World of Sugar,

1:41

how the sweet stuff transformed

1:43

our politics, health and environment

1:46

over 2000 years. For

1:49

the more I read, the more personal blind

1:51

spots I discovered. But I can

1:53

now hope to remedy some of these deficiencies

1:55

because I'm joined by the author of that wonderfully

1:58

detailed

1:58

volume. Albert Bosmer,

2:00

Professor of International Comparative Social

2:03

History at the Vrij Universitat

2:05

Amsterdam. Albert, your

2:07

book really is a sweeping tour

2:09

de force of global history, which

2:12

fascinatingly places sugar at

2:14

the heart of the genesis of both modern

2:17

capitalism and globalization.

2:20

You suggested a commodity which is as

2:22

significant as oil. Expand

2:25

on that for me. In the 18th century,

2:28

17th and 18th century, sugar dominated

2:30

the transatlantic trade from

2:33

the Americas to Europe and to North

2:35

America. In Asia,

2:37

sugar was also widely traded. So

2:40

sugar was already an extremely important

2:42

commodity in the 16th and 17th and 18th century. And

2:46

in the 19th century, we see a staggering growth

2:50

of sugar consumption in Europe and

2:52

the United States. And

2:54

with that, sugar became

2:57

the fuel for human bodies, whereas

2:59

oil became the fuel for vehicles in

3:02

the 20th century. And sugar was the

3:04

most widely traded, internationally widely

3:06

traded commodity in the 19th

3:08

century. It had also many

3:11

geopolitical repercussions. Sugar

3:13

was the cause of many wars. It

3:15

was the cause of revolutions, like

3:18

all it was in the 20th century. And

3:21

of course, one peculiar capacity

3:24

of sugar is that it are

3:26

pure carbohydrates. So

3:28

they are extremely efficient. Sugar

3:31

is an extremely efficient transmitter of

3:34

calories to human bodies. Tell

3:36

me a little bit more about that early

3:38

history and the way in which sugar

3:40

was transformed from a luxury

3:43

good into a product of mass consumption.

3:46

Until 1870, most of the world's sugar

3:49

was produced in Asia, in India,

3:51

China, and Egypt. And

3:54

Caribbean sugar and European history of

3:56

sugar was a kind of appendix of this

3:58

wider Eurasian world. history

4:00

of sugar. For thousands

4:02

of years, peasants in Bengal

4:05

probably discovered how to squeeze

4:08

sugar cane and obtain juice

4:10

from it, boil the juice into kind of thick

4:12

mass, sugary mass. It was not absolutely

4:15

not a nice, stable sugar as

4:17

we have it today. This

4:19

history of crystalline sugar

4:22

is actually quite recent. It's only in

4:24

the fifth or sixth century after Christ

4:27

that scientists in India

4:29

or in Persia, we do not know exactly,

4:32

discovered how to let

4:35

boiling sugar juice crystallize

4:38

to get this nice white particles which we

4:40

call sugar today. Sugar

4:43

was very difficult to make. It was also

4:45

very costly. So initially, white

4:48

sugar, our white table sugar, was

4:51

only used by the very wealthy, the very

4:53

rich, the very powerful of this world. So the

4:55

emperor of China or the

4:57

Caliph of Baghdad or Cairo

4:59

or the mogul of India. What

5:02

they did was they made beautiful statues which

5:04

separated for their guests. You

5:07

can use sugar perfectly

5:09

for sculpting purposes. It's still

5:11

done today in fact. Another wonderful

5:13

quality of sugar was that

5:16

if you dissolve a bit of sugar

5:18

in water and you give it to patients

5:20

of diarrhea who are seriously weakened,

5:23

these people will recover from it. So this is something

5:25

which hospitals in Cairo for example,

5:28

discovered in the 11th century.

5:29

So gradually via

5:32

display of the great people of this

5:34

earth and via hospitals, sugar became

5:38

known in Europe as well. Finally,

5:41

what you see and that also starts

5:43

in China in the 13th century and India

5:46

and a bit later in Europe is

5:48

that sugar enters the cookbooks, as

5:51

part of the recipes. First

5:54

of course, only of the very wealthy of this

5:56

earth. But gradually also the

5:59

urban elites began to

6:01

use sugar as part of their diet.

6:04

And then we talk about the 14th, 15th

6:06

century in Europe. So we're talking about

6:08

the Europeans beginning to love sugar.

6:10

So its demand had to be

6:13

met. And that's, I think, where

6:15

you want to say the story of slavery

6:17

and sugar plantations begins. When

6:19

Europe started to love sugar, it obtained

6:22

the sugar in Egypt. And in the 15th

6:24

century, all kinds of calamities

6:27

befell on Egypt. There were rates, there

6:29

were climate change, the plague, the

6:31

robotic plague came. So the Europeans

6:33

had to look for other locations

6:36

where sugar could be procured. And

6:39

of course, that could not be done in the temperate

6:41

climate of Europe. So this is the moment

6:43

that sugar crossed the

6:46

Atlantic and that the

6:48

Atlantic sugar plantations emerged.

6:50

And the tragedy of this story is that

6:53

about two thirds of the 12 and

6:55

a half million people who made the Middle Passage

6:58

from Africa to the Americas

7:00

panned it up as sugar plantations.

7:03

And you want to say that the actual lives

7:05

they led on these plantations was

7:08

even worse than for those who

7:10

worked on tobacco and coffee

7:12

production, Princeton. Cutting of sugarcane

7:14

is one of the most arduous jobs you can think

7:16

about. The cane stalks are sharp,

7:19

a lot of injuries on feet and

7:21

legs, but also there are rats, there are snakes

7:24

in these fields. And during the harvest

7:26

season, sugar has to be processed

7:29

very, very quickly because cut cane

7:31

can only be kept for about 48 hours

7:34

because fermentation sets in

7:36

very quickly. People in the mills

7:38

and in the boiling houses work for 18 hours. They

7:41

sometimes fell asleep and then the sleeves

7:44

and with that their arms came in between

7:46

the cocks which milled

7:48

the cane. So the most terrific

7:51

accidents happened and of course people fell into

7:53

the boiling sugar maus. The working conditions

7:55

were really horrific, worse than of any

7:58

other crop. And if that was not enough

8:00

the Caribbean were a war zone in the 17th

8:03

and 18th century so the Spanish and the French

8:05

and the Dutch and the British were warring and were

8:07

trying to capture these others sugar

8:10

islands. That means that a fleet

8:12

with food for a sugar island was

8:14

captured by pirates or by buccaneers

8:17

people were starving. These two factors

8:20

combined led also to a constant

8:22

demand for new enslaved people from

8:24

Africa. For example in

8:27

North America the enslaved

8:29

population reproduced itself so

8:31

at a certain point it was no longer necessary to

8:34

kidnap people from Africa. There

8:36

was absolutely not a case in sugar plantations.

8:38

The possibility of relief from these

8:41

appalling conditions that you so graphically

8:43

described came with the

8:45

abolitionist movements in the late

8:48

18th century onwards when sugar

8:50

I believe became one of the main targets in

8:52

which British people especially women regularly

8:55

organized boycotts of West Indies

8:58

sugar and then we did see of course the

9:00

abolition, formal abolition

9:02

of slavery in the British Empire in 1834 but

9:04

you point out that

9:07

this didn't actually do away with slave-grown

9:10

sugar. What happened then? The

9:13

protest and the boycott by the

9:15

British women of slave sugar was

9:18

a beautiful example of fair

9:20

trade movement early on in the 19th

9:22

century and what these women said is well

9:24

let's get sugar from India and as I said

9:27

India was the largest sugar

9:29

producer in the world at that time and became

9:31

a British colony and

9:33

so far until 1830 the

9:36

West Indies plant that had managed to keep

9:39

all the sugar that did not come from the

9:41

West Indies out of England so there

9:43

was stiff tariffs on sugar that came

9:46

from India so this was abolished in 1834 but India

9:48

could not supply

9:52

the sugar that was needed for the working

9:54

classes in England at the time so

9:57

sugar prices has stayed high at the

9:59

British government felt compelled to

10:02

allow sugar from Cuba and

10:04

from Brazil, where it was abused abundantly

10:06

and also cheaply, until the British

10:09

market, it was in the 1850s. But this

10:11

sugar was still

10:12

made by enslaved workers.

10:15

So by the 1960s, this whole optimism

10:18

that the humanity could do away

10:20

with slave-produced sugar had

10:23

vanished and half of the British

10:25

proletariat's working classes consumed

10:28

sugar that was produced by enslaved workers.

10:31

There was a lot of optimism in the early

10:34

19th century that the industrialization

10:36

would do away with arduous manual

10:38

labor. There was even one utopian

10:41

thinker who spoke about iron slaves

10:44

with cement machines driven

10:46

by steam power. Even though

10:48

steam power brought about a far

10:51

more efficient way of crushing

10:53

cane and of boiling cane juice,

10:56

the crane cutting actually

10:58

continued to be a manual affair

11:00

well into the 20th century. Let's turn

11:02

away from the workers for the moment, because

11:05

let's turn to the sugar dynasties, a

11:08

major element in your book. You document a long

11:10

history of these sugar dynasties, as

11:12

well as the corporations that in

11:14

many cases remained influential over very

11:16

long periods. And they had profound

11:19

influence on the actual policies of states.

11:22

Tell me about their impact. Yeah, you

11:24

have a couple of them are very famous. You have the Harpenmarie

11:27

family in New York, Taiten Lyle

11:29

and Bucher McConnell in the

11:32

United Kingdom, the Rubeck family

11:34

in Germany. Almost every country

11:37

has a couple of these families. And

11:39

they were capable of concentrating

11:42

the power of the sugar industry.

11:45

They were famous for building cartels or

11:47

infamous for building cartels, in

11:49

fact, monopolizing the market and

11:52

convincing the governments of their countries

11:54

that the sugar sector had to be protected,

11:57

because sugar became a very

11:59

large... economic sector in Europe

12:02

and the United States, these dynasties

12:04

had profound effect on the government

12:06

in keeping up overproduction of

12:08

sugar. And how did they do it? For

12:10

example, in Germany and

12:13

France, by convincing the government

12:15

that taxes that people had to

12:17

pay on sugar, that these taxes had

12:20

to be given back as soon as sugar was exported.

12:22

And as a result, for example, the

12:24

British families got their sugar

12:27

much more cheaply on the kitchen table

12:29

than, for example, in Germany where

12:31

the sugar was produced. So what you

12:33

see that is to these protectionist

12:36

measures, situations of overproduction

12:38

continued. Your book points out that

12:40

the marriage between expansive global

12:43

capitalism and increasingly powerful

12:45

nation states artificially

12:47

cheapened sugar. So this in turn

12:50

facilitated sugar's introduction in massive

12:52

quantities into industrially

12:55

produced food and beverages.

12:58

Tell me a little bit about how that presence

13:00

of sugar has expanded into

13:02

our own lives, where it is present in our

13:05

own lives. You can flood

13:07

the market with a certain commodity,

13:09

with sugar in this case, but that still

13:12

does not mean that people will consume

13:14

it. So the eating habits of people

13:16

had to change. People, until

13:18

the early 19th century, they had a few

13:21

spoons of sugar per week, but not a

13:23

kilo which people consume today

13:25

in many countries in the world. So the

13:28

taste of the people rather quickly

13:30

changed over the course of the 19th

13:33

century. And one of the ways for example

13:35

was that the army leaderships

13:38

put more and more sugar in their soldier's

13:40

rations because they realized that

13:42

sugar was a perfect way of enhancing

13:45

the endurance of soldiers.

13:47

So young men became accustomed

13:49

to relatively high intakes

13:52

of sugar. It happened in Germany,

13:54

in France, in the United States, and even

13:57

a bit later in Japan.

14:00

Another way was that in the course of the 19th

14:02

century many people moved from the countryside

14:05

to the city. The test in fact

14:07

from the food base didn't know where the

14:09

food came from and often

14:12

this food was polluted, it was sometimes

14:14

even poisoned of low quality.

14:17

But then the food industry came in

14:19

and produced packaged foods but

14:22

it's industrially manufactured food and that's

14:24

still the case today. Often it contains

14:26

a lot of sugar. It gives a nice taste

14:29

of course and it's a way to preserve

14:32

food. Food can be kept on the

14:34

shelf much longer. And then the third

14:36

step in this whole history is that it

14:38

began to start with the drink beverages.

14:41

The soda fountains came in, well the famous

14:43

Coca-Cola and other beverages. Over

14:46

the past 150 years we became

14:49

mass consumers of sugar and just

14:51

from let's say a few spoons full

14:53

of sugar a week to almost

14:55

a kilo a week in some countries.

14:58

As early as the 1600s you point

15:00

out European doctors were drawing a link

15:02

between an elite penchant for

15:04

sugary sweets and the shocking

15:07

dental hygiene of Queen Elizabeth.

15:10

Yet centuries later here we are health

15:12

risks which we now know to include obesity

15:15

and diabetes were scarcely

15:17

on the public agenda. Why? Why

15:20

didn't we learn more about these risks? It's

15:23

interesting that already in the 1860s

15:26

the British higher classes they

15:29

consumed a lot of sugar, discovered that

15:31

sugar was not good for their bodily weight. So

15:34

there was one British undertaker, it was

15:36

a high end undertaker because he would also work

15:38

for the royal house. Got pretty obese

15:41

and his doctor said you have to stop consuming

15:43

sugar. And so he did that and

15:46

he got his normal weight back so

15:48

he did not become his own customer immediately

15:51

and he wrote a thesis on it

15:53

and it was a diet guideline

15:55

and this became quite popular in the 19th

15:58

century but at the turn of the 20th.

17:11

visited

18:00

the island, having been shocked to learn

18:02

that her ancestors had been compensated

18:06

by the UK government when slavery was

18:08

abolished in 1833. But

18:11

freed African slaves got nothing.

18:13

When I went to Grenada and I saw

18:16

for myself the plantations where

18:19

slaves were punished, when I saw

18:21

the instruments of torture that

18:23

were used to restrain them, when I looked

18:26

at the neck braces, at the manacles,

18:29

at the system of dehumanization that

18:31

my family had profited from

18:34

as absentee slave owners of

18:36

these sugar plantations, I

18:39

felt ashamed. The Trevelyan

18:41

family

18:41

has decided to apologise.

18:44

In a public letter, they write, slavery

18:47

was and is unacceptable and

18:49

repugnant. Its damaging effects

18:52

continue to the present day. We

18:54

repudiate our ancestors'

18:56

involvement in it. They go on,

18:59

through a donation by Laura Trevelyan, we

19:01

have been able to contribute to the setting up

19:04

of the Reparations Research Fund at

19:06

the University of the West Indies to

19:08

look into the economic impacts

19:10

of enslavement. A

19:12

reminder there that the legacy of slavery

19:14

and of the sugar plantations

19:17

is still very much with us today. Sugar

19:20

does exist in nature, so our

19:22

desire for it is, I suppose, to an extent,

19:24

I suppose, it could be said to be also natural.

19:27

Could you imagine a world in which

19:29

the mass production of sugar hadn't

19:32

happened and what that world might have

19:34

looked like? First of all, sugar

19:36

is actually sweeter than nature,

19:38

so it's something, of course, we did without

19:41

for most of human history. And

19:44

there's only about 150 years that sugar emerged

19:46

as a mass consumption article. So

19:49

indeed, it's not difficult to imagine

19:51

a diet without sugar. But

19:53

that's not the same as imagining

19:56

a history without sugar, because sugar

19:58

has been too fundamental. in the

20:00

emergence of global capitalism, in the emergence

20:03

of global trade. And if there

20:05

was not the slave trade to the Americas

20:07

and the horrific conditions there, I think that

20:10

the British East India Company and

20:12

the Dutch East India Company would have managed

20:14

to transport sugar from Asia to

20:16

Western Europe and a bit later the

20:19

beet sugar industry would have come in. So

20:21

I think sugar capitalism and the role of

20:23

sugar in capitalism was too important

20:25

to be completely wiped out. If

20:27

one chapter of it, the ugly chapter

20:30

of American slavery, could have been

20:32

deleted. It's a very double

20:34

thing. On the one hand we don't need

20:36

it as such and on the other hand it

20:38

has become such an important element

20:41

of our history. A perfect summary.

20:43

Ulbert Bosman, thank you so much. If you'd

20:45

like to comment on anything in today's programme I'd

20:47

be delighted to hear from you at thinkingaloud

20:50

at bbc.co.uk

20:57

The role of sugar has permitted to

20:59

die, permitted to

21:02

die, permitted to

21:04

die. Julie Andrews' lyrical portrayal

21:06

of sugar's very special ability

21:09

to counter unpleasant circumstances.

21:13

But as I now recognise after reading a new research

21:15

article, this is a very restricted

21:17

account of sugar's function in

21:20

everyday life. And that article, which

21:22

will appear in a forthcoming edition of Medicine

21:24

Anthropology Theory, draws

21:26

on a PhD thesis entitled

21:29

Bitter Sweet Living with Sugar

21:31

and Kin in Contemporary Scotland.

21:34

And its author, who now joins me, is

21:36

Imogen Bevin, who's Research Fellow in

21:39

Social Anthropology at the University

21:41

of Edinburgh. Imogen, one of the first

21:43

things you want to suggest is that sugar

21:45

consumption is not simply an individual

21:47

choice. What do you mean by that exactly?

21:50

There is a dominant narrative both in public health,

21:52

in the media, that if we choose what we eat, we could quite

21:54

easily eat less sugar, we just need to not buy sugary

21:57

things. But when I was studying this

21:59

ethnographically, really capture people's experiences.

22:01

People were getting children through a car

22:03

journey with sweets, they were grabbing energy, jinxing at

22:05

them through the workday, they were busy celebrating other people's

22:08

birthdays, they weren't sort of sitting, choosing

22:10

or reading labels which was a very particular kind of

22:12

social activity in itself. What they were doing

22:14

was engaging in social relationships, managing

22:17

social situations and sugar consumption is embedded

22:19

in these relationships. Sugar was an ethically

22:21

ambiguous substance that people I spoke to not because

22:24

of sugar's history in terms of colonialism and slave

22:26

trade, but because it is bad for bodies

22:28

and in particular children's bodies. People

22:31

talked a lot about the dangers of sugar but at

22:33

the same time there's a message both in advertising and public

22:35

health that some sugar is fine in moderation.

22:38

It's not only safe that you actually should have some

22:40

sort of sugar otherwise you're being cruel to

22:42

your children as one parent puts it or somehow puritanical.

22:45

But most people found it impossible to actually measure how much

22:47

sugar they were eating even if they did have time for that in

22:49

the very busy lives that people eat.

22:51

So let's turn to the details

22:53

of your study. You explored

22:56

sugar consumption in a North Edinburgh

22:58

neighbourhood that involved I think 13 months

23:01

of field work in primary schools, homes

23:04

and community groups. What were

23:06

you hoping to find out with your research?

23:09

I wanted to learn about people's wider eating practices

23:11

in this community and within this the role of sugar,

23:13

so how people think about sugar, how they consume

23:15

it, how they will say work to avoid it, the

23:17

processes through which they attribute values to sugar.

23:20

I was immersed in people's everyday lives, eating

23:22

with them at home, going food shopping, our family outings

23:24

and I was observing children's lives at school.

23:26

Your research suggests that in Scotland

23:28

sugar creates closeness or kinship

23:31

between children, parents and grandparents.

23:34

Tell me more about that.

23:35

Sugar is an essential part of many family rituals

23:38

across the life course, birthdays, christenings,

23:40

weddings, christmas. People

23:42

talked about how sweet tooth might run in the family,

23:44

how a child might have got this from a father, from

23:46

a grandparent for example. Children

23:50

were exposed to too much sugar in the room

23:52

through their own eating and this was how they developed the

23:54

same liking for sugary things. But

23:56

most importantly for parents, I found that in Scotland managing

23:58

sugar or more than a year of eating sugar was a big

23:59

hamstring sugar consumption has become a key

24:02

part of

24:02

how you raise children, and the work

24:04

of controlling sugar was picked up more

24:06

usually by women. It wasn't that men didn't feel strongly

24:08

about sugar, but mothers seemed to feel the

24:10

most responsibility over it and the most guilt

24:13

over it.

24:14

And in terms of producing closeness and distance, perhaps

24:16

the clearest example of this was in one family I spoke

24:18

to where the grandparents had become primary carers

24:21

for their grandchildren who'd gone to divert them, and

24:23

they'd quite quickly realised they could no longer keep

24:25

giving out so many sweets and soft drinks and

24:28

things that pertain to a grandparent relationship. They'd

24:30

kept that relationship with the other set of grandchildren.

24:33

Another mother described her mother-in-law trying

24:35

to help with potty training by saying, I'll get you a big

24:37

chock-cla if you go on the potty, and her trying

24:40

to counter that with, I'll buy you some big boy trousers,

24:42

but finding it really hard to confront

24:44

the mother-in-law over this and come to an agreement.

24:46

You note that sugar

24:48

is this sweet. It's

24:51

got those dark and light sides.

24:54

Tell me about home-baking, about birthday

24:56

cakes, as examples of this so-called

24:59

light side of sugar.

25:00

So sugar has this negative public

25:02

value linked to ill health, to poor choices,

25:05

to bad parenting. But there are

25:07

other moments where sugar's brighter side signed through,

25:09

and one thing that people really did want to show

25:11

me was home-baking and children's birthday cakes.

25:14

Sugar that's been transformed into home took on a lot more positive

25:16

value. There's emotional attachments to the

25:18

home and to women's labour, which can then be transported

25:21

out to other places and situations. So

25:23

I saw lots of cakes travelling into schools, with

25:25

bake sales to base money for school trips. So

25:28

cake becomes not only about ritual, about generosity,

25:30

care, charity,

25:30

everyday acts of doing good in

25:33

the community.

25:33

Well, let's turn to what you call the dark

25:35

side of sugar. They acknowledge health risks

25:37

of consuming too much. I mean, how

25:40

did your interviewees navigate

25:43

these risks?

25:44

People in this community were highly conscious that

25:46

sugar is bad for you, and children themselves were

25:48

often aware of this negative public value of

25:50

sugar. And people talked a lot about weight gain,

25:52

diabetes, dental decay. But alongside

25:54

this, there was an almost worse risk, which was

25:56

that of demonising sugar, that children

25:58

might think too much about

25:59

sugar and diet and become anxious and to stop

26:02

being children as one parent put it. And this

26:04

could lead to sort of disordered eating, body image problems,

26:06

so these were other concerns that people had that

26:08

children were supposed to have innocent childhoods.

26:10

I mean you also found that sugar

26:12

is used to teach children

26:15

values, what kinds of values? To teach

26:17

children about sharing, about kindness

26:19

and to teach children about moderation and balance

26:21

and self-control, about what pleasures are acceptable

26:24

or not, also about personal responsibility

26:26

and about family and togetherness and about belonging

26:29

and heritage. So one family I met made a black

26:31

bun, every year this is quite a dense cake with

26:33

dried fruit and pastry, not necessarily

26:35

because everyone enjoyed eating this cake but because it taught

26:37

about the importance of family and about Scottish heritage.

26:40

And they take a piece to grandparents, important family

26:42

friends, during Covid when people couldn't see each other,

26:45

people actually posted pieces of a Christmas

26:47

pudding for example to one another. A last

26:50

example maybe sugar is used to teach about creativity

26:53

and to foster imagination. If you think of all the

26:55

sort of fairy tales and children's stories that involve

26:57

sugary treats, Hansel and Gretel, Charlie and the

26:59

Chocolate Factory and there are lots of school activities

27:02

around sort of imagining your own unusual chocolate bar

27:04

or baking dragon snacks in fairyland, this

27:06

sort of thing. You use the term living

27:09

with sugar because that's intended

27:11

to sort of in a way convey the paradoxes

27:14

of sugar.

27:15

Living in this society where sugar is always omnipresent,

27:18

over abundant, always available, always being

27:20

advertised, always being supplied at work,

27:22

from relatives, where it's the cheapest

27:24

option but also perceived as the less good option

27:26

I think makes life quite difficult for

27:28

parents because they're navigating this

27:31

environment where sugar is both harmful and harmless,

27:33

it's unnecessary but it's also really needed.

27:35

I think these are the paradoxes and

27:37

so I used living with sugar to describe this

27:39

kind of balancing task, fragile balancing

27:41

task of controlling sugar while also

27:44

permitting sugar sometimes in

27:45

the right context and working

27:47

out essentially what is the right balance between

27:49

health and pleasure essentially. So sugar

27:51

consumption isn't a black-and-white matter

27:53

and in some ways it would be really impossible

27:56

I think to regulate it not only for parents

27:58

but also for polymacy makers and one more.

27:59

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