Sugar, a typical drug of modern societies

D,Anton
While it is a globally spread substance, sugar is a relatively new product. In the Greco-Roman times it was not known. In these cultures the main sweetener was honey which was used as food dressing, and for ceremonial purposes. In Africa and America, as in Europe, honey was historically the main sweetener.
The traditional sugar consumption was limited for a long time to the place of origin of sugarcane, India. There it was used since ancient times as an important component of local diets.
The advance of sugar cane cultivation was slow. From India it spread to Egypt in the eighth and ninth centuries dec. From there ir expanded West.
In medieval Europe sugar was sold in pharmacies, in small quantities and high prices, and consumption was mainly considered for medicinal purposes.
With the advancement of the Muslim civilization, sugar cane cultivation spread to North Africa and finally to Andalusia, in Islamic Spain. 
Indeed, one of the reasons that fueled the economic boom of the Caliphate of Córdoba and other Arab kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula was the production and export of sugar.
Muslin Cordoba fell in 1236, then Sevilla (1248) and finally Granada in 1492. The sugarcane crops of Spain were taken over by the Christian kingdoms which had been the victors of the long war.
The nascent Iberian empires would skillfully exploit this new crop which provided lucrative returns. In the first instance, to continue cultivating sugar cane, cane was planted in Andalucia and Portuguese Alentejo and Moor captives were used as slaves  
Later, as transoceanic expansion of the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon and Portugal progressed Guanche and African slaves were used.
When the new possessions were firmly under control  plantations began to be installed in the conquered territories.

The Madeira Triangle

Since the end of the fourteenth century the Portuguese had visited an uninhabited forested island that was a few days of sailing southwest of Lisbon. They called it “Madeira”. In 1420 the island was occupied by an expedition led by Portuguese navigator Gonçalves Zarco.
As the island had a humid subtropical climate suitable for growing sugarcane., The Portuguese decided to use it to extend their Alentejo plantations to a more productive territory.
As a first step, the Portuguese set out to burn the island forests and in their place they established sugar plantations and mills. It is said that the burning of Madeira forests lasted seven years.
Cane plantations require abundant labor and the island itself did not have native population.  The problem was solved in the same way that was done in Portugal, through the use of slave labor.
At that time the Spanish kingdom was in full conquest of the Guanches (or Canary) Islands close to Madeira. As a result of the conquest wars they had captured numerous slaves that were used for forced labor. Some of them remained in the Canary Islands,  and the rest was sent to Madeira and Andalusia to occupy in the sugar agricultural work.
The Spaniards took advantage of this to sell many guanches captives to the Portuguese, and thereby achieve significant additional income. So “the triangle of Madeira” was defined. Most of the sugar was produced in Madeira, the market was in Europe and the labor was provided (sold) by Spain.
The high value of sugar on the European market allowed Portugal to accumulate much of the wealth obtained, and thanks to it this Kingdom was able to finance both the conquest of Africa and Brazil. In turn, indirectly, Spain also achieved huge profits by selling Guanche slaves, captive Moors and its own sugar cane production was added in order to obtain the necessary resources that would allow him to pay the costs of the American adventure.
Some years later, after 1492 (the beginning of the Spanish conquest of the Taino countries in the Caribbean), and 1499-1500 (arrival of the Portuguese in Brazil), both kingdoms began setting up extensive plantations of sugarcane using the Madeira Island model. In the same way that they did in the Atlantic islands, they subjected native American populations of Taino and Tupi occupied territories to cruel treatment, crushing their resistance with blood and fire, as it had happened in the Guanches islands After the conquest they caught, used or sold all the slaves they could.
As a result of these westward European invasions riding the new horse of the apocalypse, Spain and Portugal would produce one the greatest genocides in history: the slaughter of over two million people in the Caribbean islands, carried out by the Spanish invaders, and the death of hundreds of thousands of natives in Brazil, done by the Portuguese.
These great abuses on human dignity were executed to ensure the increased production and earnings with this new product The story did not end there. 
Sugar was the main element of the Iberian colonial economies for long time. Its production spread along the Brazilian coast, the Caribbean islands, Central America and northern South America, to the island of Sao Tome, occupied by Portugal, in the Gulf of Guinea, and several African coastal territories .
Later, when the Spanish colonies in America and Brazil gained independence, they continued their economies tied to this deforming monoculture.After several centuries, the cultures of many countries are so sugar cane adapted that it very difficult to achieve significant diversification.
Industrialization determined that sugar was consumed worldwide. To a large extent, this was the consequence of increased cultivated areas.
For a not very long period, some countries sought independence from cane developing other sugar producing crops. Chief among them was the sugar beet which was utilized as a substitute in the era of agricultural and industrial protectionism.
Lately, and as trade barriers were demolished, beet producing countries abandoned their crops and cane again increased its predominance (which actually never completely lost).
Globalization also allowed other industrial derived sugars from other crops were used.  It is the case of glucose, dextrose and fructose syrups, obtained mainly from corn, and most especially dietary sweeteners, which are marketed as non calories sugar substitutes.

The new sweeteners

Refined sugar have caused serious dietary disorders in contemporary societies. Excessive consumption has caused problems of obesity, hypertension, heart, kidney, diabetes and other ailments, to a high percentage of the population. For that reason, substitutes were sought to reduce these risks without changing the  sweet “tastes” to which people had become accustomed.
As a result some artificial sweeteners quickly spread throughout the world. 
Several of them were harmful to health.  Some were banned (cyclamates), another one has been considered risky for human consumption (saccharin). Finally, a recently patented sweetener (aspartame) which is being consumed globally, appears to have serious drawbacks that could also restrict its marketing and utilization.
From Peoples, Drugs and Serpents, Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones