Tourists visiting Maui can no longer ooh and aah at the spectacular flames – and choking smoke – from burning sugar cane after the harvest. The last shipment of sugar from Hawaii was recently unloaded at the C & H (California & Hawaiian) plant in the tiny town of Crockett, northeast of San Francisco. After 145 years – one year less than Ringling Brothers Circus – the sugar industry is no more in Hawaii. Government subsidies and cheap labor have made sugar from Florida the winner in the marketplace.
Tag: sugar
Just a Spoonful of Sugar…
Many years ago my food-writer mother gave me a copy of the book “Sugar Blues” by William Duffy. The author blamed sugar for everything from acne to loose stools. We knew sugar was empty calories and was bad for our teeth. We all knew the real villain in an unhealthy diet was saturated fat. The USDA told us so with its Food Pyramid.
Guess what – sugar is bad, much worse than we’ve been led to believe. Turns out the sugar industry spent a lot of money commissioning purported studies to convince us that sugar wasn’t so bad. The National Confectioners Association claimed children who ate candy carried less poundage than those who didn’t. Coca-Cola funded a non-profit group to fight obesity, but claimed it had nothing to do with it.
Besides, making us a nation of fat people, sugar is also responsible for diabetes and heart disease. The scientific journal JAMA Internal Medicine has published a report disputing the sugar industry’s claims. Something to think about when you’re ordering that venti coffee-flavored beverage with whipped cream on top.
In fairness to my mother, she also introduced me to Calvin Trillin, with “American Fried,” a collection of pieces he wrote while travelling the country as a roving correspondent and trying to find something decent to eat.