May 28, 2024
Sugar's Dark Shadow
Mind Map
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Summary
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Chapters
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Transcript
- SSPEAKER_03
Thailand kids all love that cane, it grows so clean and sweet.
- SSPEAKER_03
They eat it when it's freshly cut.
- SSPEAKER_09
These commercials from the 1960s advertising sugar cane are super cheery and fun, and they make me think that everything about sugar is unicorns and rainbows.
Shownotes
Your pantry's sweetest ingredient has an extremely bitter history. The sap-producing grass known as sugarcane has been grown and enjoyed by humans for at least 10,000 years, but it was only relatively recently that it went from a luxury to an everyday ingredient—a change that also triggered genocide, slavery, and the invention of modern racism. In this episode, how the Crusades got Europeans addicted to the sweet stuff, and how that appetite deforested southern Europe and kicked off the trade in enslaved Africans, before decimating indigenous populations in the New World and codifying racism into law. It's a dark story that involves Christopher Columbus' mistress, the early human rights advocate whose campaign to save indigenous people encouraged the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade, and a trip to southern Louisiana, where we met Black sugarcane farmers to explore sugar's troubling legacy there. No sugar coating here: join us for the fascinating and horrifying history of this household staple.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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