A symbol of luxury?
James Gillray, Anti-Saccharrites, coloured etching, 1792
From Luxury Item To Bulk Commodity
When sugar was first discovered, it was a delicacy and often displayed in lavish silver tins. Before long, with the help of the industrialisation process, it became a bulk commodity. Jam sandwiches, sweetened tea and coffee, bars of chocolate and muesli bars only began to be a part of the European diet as a result of sugar becoming less expensive.
Even today, we sweeten our everyday lives with biscuits and sweets. These are habits which originated in a time when sugar was a symbol of luxury. But is sugar a basic nutritional requirement or a health risk?