Quotes from Elizabeth Abbott

Sugar historian Noel Deerr estimates that per capita sugar consumption was four pounds in 1700, eight pounds by 1729, twelve by 1789, the year of the French Revolution, and eighteen pounds by 1809.

At the same time, African-American males, many of them slaves, had an estimated life expectancy of twenty-three years, 40 percent lower than for whites.)

Sugar as consolation—the ultimate comfort food—gave it a psychological dimension that transcended taste and caloric force. The wage-earning worker's ability to buy this previously unattainable luxury connected the "will to work and the will to consume.