---
title: "Sugar and Sugar-Free: An Endless War"
description: "From its discovery to its abuse and subsequent boycott, sugar has gripped the entire food industry. Its evolution is a game among sugar itself, capital, and humanity."
author: "商隐社"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2022-05-16"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/sugar-and-sugar-free-an-endless-war-e222a2c5/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/sugar-and-sugar-free-an-endless-war-e222a2c5.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/UW7fVxJ4nXsG-A_LABgC0A"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E7%B3%96%E5%92%8C%E6%97%A0%E7%B3%96-%E4%B8%80%E5%9C%BA%E6%97%A0%E9%99%90%E6%88%98%E4%BA%89-e222a2c5.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/sugar-and-sugar-free-an-endless-war-e222a2c5/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# Sugar and Sugar-Free: An Endless War

> From its discovery to its abuse and subsequent boycott, sugar has gripped the entire food industry. Its evolution is a game among sugar itself, capital, and humanity.

From its discovery to its abuse and subsequent boycott, sugar has gripped the entire food industry. Its evolution is a game among sugar itself, capital, and humanity.

**The Crazy Sweet Worship**

The novel "White Deer Plain" contains a striking scene:

One of the protagonists, Heiwa, is given a crystal-clear object by his wealthy friend Lu Zhaopeng. Mistaking it for a stone, Heiwa is about to throw it away until Zhaopeng tells him it's edible rock sugar. Curious, he takes a bite.

This leads to the following description:

 _Heiwa popped the rock sugar into his mouth and stood frozen, not daring to move. What an indescribably wonderful feeling!_

The incomparable sweetness made his whole body tremble, and he burst into tears. Zhaopeng, startled, grabbed Heiwa's cheeks, fearing the sugar might be stuck in his throat. Heiwa turned away sadly, then suddenly jumped up and said:

 _"When I earn money in the future, I'll buy a whole bag of this damn rock sugar."_

This is what a boy felt upon tasting sugar for the first time—it's also humanity's instinctive craving for sweets.

When something is scarce, only the wealthy and noble can enjoy it. Once it becomes common, others can too.

Heiwa tasted the sweetness of rock sugar but also the bitterness of not being able to afford it. A tiny piece of sugar revealed his innate desires and the pain of class disparity.

**In any era of "sweet scarcity," sugar is a luxury.**

It was the Indians who first boiled sugarcane over two thousand years ago to produce sucrose, ending humanity's reliance on honey and fruit for sweetness.

Later, the trade-savvy Arabs introduced sugar to Europe. On that damp continent, this sweet crystal was wildly sought after upon arrival.

But due to immature refining techniques, sucrose production was extremely low, making it rare—at its peak, it was worth its weight in gold. Only a tiny elite at the top of the pyramid had the means and wealth to buy it.

Sugar truly entered the public eye after the opening of new sea routes.

After Columbus discovered the New World, sugarcane was brought to the Americas. Although the Caribbean was suitable for growing cane, production still couldn't leap forward.

The reason lay in the entire chain—from planting, cutting, and milling to multiple processing steps—which required vast land and labor. The Americas were sparsely populated, with limited labor.

So, shiploads of bound Black slaves were transported across the Atlantic by the Spanish to this new continent.

Sugarcane plantations sprang up like mushrooms, and production soared.

Of course, these colonies were merely production and processing sites; the consumers of sugar were mainly in the British Isles.

At that time, European aristocrats were already addicted to sugar.

It's said that in 16th-century England, aristocrats took pride in rotten teeth, and even Queen Elizabeth I had a mouthful of decayed teeth. For commoners who couldn't afford daily sugar, they "kept up with fashion" by blackening their teeth.

Driven by immense demand, the Portuguese, British, French, and others established sugarcane plantations while vying for colonies in the Americas. The New World became a giant sugar factory.

A sinful trade triangle connecting Britain, Africa, and the Americas gradually formed.

After the Industrial Revolution, early industrial machines like juicers and steam boilers were introduced to American plantations, transforming slave estates into factories.

But the fate of Black laborers didn't change much; they just swapped the scorching sun and mosquito bites of the fields for round-the-clock toil in the workshops.

Sugar production multiplied daily, and sugar joined the tide of global trade, irresistibly dominating people's diets. By the mid-19th century, ordinary households could finally afford sucrose.

By then, sugar production was becoming excessive, and American plantation owners finally stopped boasting that "sugar is a symbol of power and status."

Over the past few centuries, sucrose was like a sweet-scented maiden stepping out of her boudoir onto the stage, captivating the world.

Unfortunately, like Helen of Troy in Greek mythology, she stirred frenzy and cheers but also attracted brutal possessiveness and slaughter.

 _"Where there is sugar, there are slaves!"_

In 1962, Trinidad and Tobago, at the southern end of the Caribbean, gained independence from British colonial rule. During its time as a British colony, most of the country had been turned into sugarcane plantations. Eric Williams, the first prime minister after independence, uttered these words indignantly.

Centuries of history prove this statement is no exaggeration.

**Industrial Food That Indulges Human Nature**

By the 20th century, the Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain, had spread globally. With the industrialization of sugar refining, batches of sucrose were shipped out of production workshops.

The surge in sucrose production drove prices down, and people exploited sugar's functions to the fullest—as decorations, preservatives, medicines, and more.

As a sweetener with explosive sweetness and excellent taste, sugar-addicted Westerners began adding large doses of sucrose to various foods.

Subsequently, food factories sprang up, and more sweet foods appeared on dining tables. They dominated with ingenious recipes and advanced production technology, with globally renowned names like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Nestlé.

Sodas, juices, cakes, chocolates, ice cream, and other high-calorie foods were readily available on shelves. Sweet sucrose melted in mouths, satisfying taste buds like never before.

More and more people became trapped, unable to extricate themselves.

At the time, few could explain why sugar was so irresistible, even addictive, nor did they understand the health costs of excessive intake.

But processed food companies knew this very well and used it as the lifeblood of their industry.

In the movie "Kingsman: The Golden Circle," there's a line:

 _"Sugar's addictiveness is eight times that of cocaine, and its lethality is five times greater, but sugar is legal, so go ahead, add as much as you like."_

Though the numbers in the line are debatable, the word "addiction" has always been a red line that food companies avoid discussing.

Science has confirmed that sugar can make food nearly addictive, and there are no strict limits on its dosage. Therefore, food companies can use "added sugar" to win over consumers' taste buds and ensure product sales.

Walk into any supermarket, grab a few snack packages, and check the nutrition labels—you'll find that many foods have large amounts of added sugar. Even breakfast cereals touted as "healthy and nutritious" contain a full tablespoon of sugar.

But blindly adding sugar isn't good for food manufacturers either. While the brain prefers sweetness, it also tires of intense flavors, eventually suppressing the craving.

How to scientifically add sugar to achieve "sweet but not cloying" became a key focus for the entire food industry.

Coca-Cola, the epitome of industrial sweetness, is a master of sugar ratio research.

Coca-Cola spent vast sums and effort on experiments and finally discovered a perfect formula. Cola mixed to this ratio not only delivers a pleasant sweetness but also leaves no bad aftertaste, making you want more.

Many other processed foods—like chips, ice cream, and cheese—carefully calibrate the ratios of salt, sugar, and fat during production to hit the balance point that consumers love without getting tired. This optimal balance is the "bliss point" for sugar.

**As for so-called product development, it's about using psychology and neuroscience to study consumers, controlling variables like sugar, fat, and salt to form a complex matrix, and finding the formula that hits consumers' "bliss point."**

These industrial foods can then satisfy consumers' sugar addiction from belly to soul.

People lived peacefully in the sweet dreams crafted by food companies for decades, their waists and arms thickening, shoulders and hips rounding.

**The Game Between Capital and Health**

It wasn't until September 23, 1955, that a shocking and sorrowful announcement came from the White House: U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower had suffered a heart attack.

At the time, some doctors believed sugar was the culprit.

Meanwhile, another phenomenon began to attract medical attention: the rising proportion of obese Americans.

The illusion of sugar's harmonious coexistence with humanity began to crack.

Suddenly, medical scientists mobilized en masse to study the causes of cardiovascular disease.

The sugar industry was suddenly in the spotlight. The Sugar Association and food manufacturers were on tenterhooks. As the instigators of various chronic diseases, if sugar's reputation were ruined, they would face a crisis of public trust.

They had to do everything possible to clear sugar of suspicion and shift the blame to fat.

The most jaw-dropping move was paying scientists to write "soft articles" (advertorials) to vindicate white sugar in the name of science.

Among the many pseudo-scientific studies, the most notorious was Dr. Ancel Keys' "Seven Countries Study."

Starting in 1958, based on his hypothesis—the fat hypothesis—he selected 7 of 22 countries that fit his theory (Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, Finland, the Netherlands, Japan, and the U.S.) and collected data on diet, physical condition, and mortality rates from 16 groups of adults for "scientific analysis."

He then declared to the world: Dietary fat, especially animal fat rich in cholesterol, is the culprit behind heart disease!

His accomplice, Harvard nutrition professor Mark Hegsted, published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1976 to support this, downplaying sugar's harm and pointing the finger at saturated fat and cholesterol for cardiovascular disease.

For decades, most academic articles avoided the dangers of sugar.

These research findings gave a sigh of relief to those anxious about sugar.

Based on these results, the U.S. federal government drafted a "Dietary Guidelines." In the following decades, supermarket shelves were stocked with countless low-fat, high-carb products, influencing the diets of hundreds of millions worldwide.

Meanwhile, John Yudkin, who insisted on the "white sugar is harmful" theory, was besieged, and his views were dismissed by the World Sugar Research Organization as "science fiction," ruining his reputation.

It wasn't until later that people discovered Ancel Keys had been receiving money from his sugar daddy—the Sugar Association—since around 1943.

And Harvard nutrition professor Hegsted only began writing his paper after secret correspondence with a sugar company executive.

This covert operation wasn't revealed until 2016.

**In the end, academic authority bowing to money hides a massive interest group behind it.**

But as John Yudkin said in his book "Pure, White and Deadly":

Only time will tell if I'm telling the truth.

And time proved that during the decades of low-fat, high-sugar diets, people's health declined sharply.

After the official promotion of low-fat, high-sugar diets, obesity rates rose almost without exception worldwide. The evil consequences of the food industry's manipulation of human nature gradually emerged, with consumers bearing the brunt.

This struggle revealed how capital changed public eating habits. Decades later, these taste preferences became "ancestral dietary habits," influencing generation after generation.

People living before the 21st century could never have imagined that the sweetness they craved would one day burden their descendants' health.

**Children, Sugar, and Chinese Snack Brands**

Human preference for sugar is a result of natural selection, and there's a balance point in sugar consumption that allows it to exert its control appropriately. However, worse still, children's threshold for sugar's "bliss point" is even higher than adults'.

Compared to adults, children naturally tend to consume more sugar, and being more driven by instinct, they naturally become the ultimate drivers of snack consumption.

Looking at the entire history of China's industrial food, you'll find that the rise of traditional Chinese food giants is largely built on the "children" demographic.

White Rabbit creamy candy, the first generation of Chinese milk candy, became a hot commodity as soon as it appeared, even hard to find.

The scarcity was due to domestic consumers' fervent pursuit of candy—maltose and other casual snacks couldn't meet demand—and also due to a lack of raw materials and production technology, resulting in low output.

Children from ordinary families could only enjoy it occasionally during festivals.

At a time when milk resources were scarce, White Rabbit candy was even seen as a substitute for milk. The slogan "Seven White Rabbit candies equal a cup of milk" made it a nationwide sensation, and it was considered the first nutritional snack for children in Chinese eyes.

This was followed by a wave of children's snacks, with major brands all jumping into the fray.

It can be said that when snacks first entered Chinese consumers' lives, some products gained parental approval under the banner of "helping children grow healthily." By today's health standards, these snacks are quite unhealthy.

Some companies won over parents with claims of "nutrition and growth," while others used various tricks to attract children's attention.

In 1994, the Chinese brand Hsu Fu Chi officially entered the mainland market and became the top choice for holiday gifts thanks to its sweet and delicious taste. Today, when we mention Hsu Fu Chi, we still recall Eric Tsang's infectious laughter and his baby-like antics in ads.

It's fair to say that the sugar-deprived yet sugar-craving post-90s generation propped up the growth of traditional snack companies. Soon, Chinese society was pushed into an era where "every household had sugar."

After that, the post-90s, who achieved sugar freedom, grew up to become the generation that parents say "ruined their teeth at a young age" and the first generation in research data with "soaring obesity rates."

According to public data, from 1985 to 2014, the obesity rate among school-age children over 7 in China rose from 0.5% to 7.3%. And this figure has since hit new highs, with the overweight and obesity rate for the same group exceeding 10%.

The culprits behind rising childhood obesity are precisely these snacks and sweet drinks that don't control sugar.

Forty or fifty years ago, Chinese people rarely encountered the word "beverage." Traditional Chinese tables featured tea, plain water, and mung bean soup.

But later? Restaurants began imitating Western countries and offering sweet drinks, with every small eatery having a beverage cooler.

Seemingly fashionable sweet drinks are among the most detested foods by nutritionists worldwide.

People often joke that those prone to weight gain "gain weight even from drinking water." But the sugar in sweet drinks can indeed make you gain weight—a 355ml can of cola contains 38 grams of sugar.

Beverages flooded the market, becoming unstoppable, even a must-have gift during holidays.

Today, the sweet fairy tale spun by Ancel Keys and industrial food capitalists has collapsed, and traditional food companies are seeing their living space squeezed.

Coca-Cola's performance continues to decline, Want Want has diversified into knitwear, White Rabbit now sells ice cream and perfume, and Wahaha has launched AD calcium milk-flavored milk tea...

From a macro perspective, sugar, salt, and various additives have indeed made "great contributions" to the development of China's food industry and even the global food industry.

Or rather, without these tiny crystals, the food industry couldn't have reached such scale—even if it came at the cost of health.

But currently, as consumer attitudes shift, high salt and high sugar have become the "gravediggers" of traditional food companies.

**The Battle to Reduce Sugar**

Entering the 21st century, persistently high global obesity rates and related diseases have forced everyone to re-examine the sugar issue.

In 2009, Professor Robert Lustig delivered his famous lecture "Sugar: The Bitter Truth," sparking a worldwide anti-sugar, sugar-reduction war.

From the following year, more than 30 countries, including Denmark, Hungary, and Mexico, successively introduced sugar taxes to curb sugar consumption.

In China, sugar-reduced living has also become a consensus.

Relevant data shows that on Xiaohongshu, searches for "sugar control" and "sugar-free" yield over 330,000 and 1.24 million posts respectively, sharing science and recommendations for sugar-free foods. "Sugar control" has become a new trend in expressing a healthy lifestyle.

Genki Forest, founded in 2016, was among the first to tap into this demand before the concept was fully popularized. Within just three years, it tore a crack in the traditional beverage empire's map, sparking a major revolution in the beverage market with its "zero sugar, zero fat, zero calorie" sparkling water.

A single stone stirred a thousand waves—new consumer brands offering "low sugar, low fat" drinks, children's snacks, healthy meals, and diet meals emerged.

However, sugar adds rich flavor to food. Anyone who's tried sugar-free diet meals knows that without sugar, food tastes like chewing wax. How can the food and beverage industry maintain flavor while meeting consumer demand?

Sugar substitutes, also known as sweeteners, thus came to the forefront.

According to Wang Xufeng, president of the Capital Health Nutrition and Food Society, sugar substitutes can provide sweetness to food but are barely digested or absorbed by the body and don't participate in metabolism, so they have very low or no calories, making them good substitutes for sucrose.

To date, sugar substitutes have been around for over 140 years. In 1879, the first-generation sweetener "saccharin" was born, and five years later it was commercially applied. Since then, cyclamate, aspartame, acesulfame, sucralose, erythritol, and other artificial sweeteners have been developed and marketed.

In marketing ads, these sugars are promoted as "healthy sugar" or "won't make you fat." Among them, erythritol is widely recognized for its safety and sweetness standards.

The entire sugar substitute industry, as well as related consumer product industries, is booming. In mainland China, erythritol is widely used in sugar-free sparkling water, which is popular among young people.

At this stage, everyone views "sugar" as a scourge, and sweeteners have become the new "darling" of companies and consumers because they satisfy taste buds without excessive calories.

Turning back to traditional food manufacturers, those that initially made their mark with high salt and high sugar are at a loss in the face of sudden changes, struggling at the crossroads of life and death.

To follow the trend, more and more brands, including traditional beverage makers like Wahaha and Nongfu Spring, are quickly entering the sugar substitute track.

So far, this global "sugar-reduction war" has found a buffer through the widespread use of sugar substitutes.

**Adding or Reducing Sugar: The Essence Is Profit-Seeking**

From adding sugar to reducing it, food companies have waged successive "sugar wars" to chase profits.

In the past era of sugar-dominated business logic, we often saw muscular sports stars sweating profusely and then enjoying cola after training.

In contrast, at a press conference before the 2021 European Championship on the 14th, Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo moved aside the Coca-Cola bottles in front of him and held up water, urging everyone to drink more water.

This move drew praise from many netizens who admired Ronaldo's frankness, but others noted that Coca-Cola was a sponsor of the tournament, and regardless of his dislike for soda, he shouldn't disrespect the sponsor.

In fact, many food company spokespeople don't eat the products they endorse. Even some management members refuse to eat their own company's food, opting for sugar-free, all-natural meals.

At Kraft, the world's second-largest food company, an executive named John said he had long abandoned soda and fattening snacks. Nestlé's head of health science at the time ate only fish for dinner. A PepsiCo executive named Bob never ate chips or most heavily processed foods.

**This is the stark reality of the food industry today: many companies create products that founders, executives, and spokespeople don't eat, yet they aggressively market them to consumers.**

Take an extreme example: Unilever, the world's largest ice cream manufacturer, cleverly used research showing sugar is as addictive as caffeine in a marketing campaign. They twisted the concept, claiming science proved eating ice cream makes you happy.

Similar marketing is everywhere, pushing high-sugar foods into the public eye.

Some say the public can choose not to eat these high-calorie foods, but do they really have the right to choose?

Supermarket shelves are stocked with a dazzling array of products, with every kind and brand imaginable. Choosing and combining daily foods is one's own right.

But in reality, with carefully crafted formulas and perfect marketing, the public finds it hard to resist.

From street vending at first, to securing prime shelf positions, to partnering for bundled sales, to dumping in other regions, to precisely budgeting and cultivating teenage consumer groups, to building a unique corporate image and capturing consumer mindshare—

**To be precise, food giants make it easier for the public to eat what they want them to eat, and consumers lose at least half their choice.**

The currently touted sugar-reduced foods have abandoned sucrose, making sugar substitutes the wiser choice.

After nearly a century of struggle, industrial food formulas have finally made concessions. But marketing hype has intensified.

A post-90s young man, Xiao A, bluntly stated: "I don't like Genki Forest; it tastes like marketing."

Many professionals have pointed out that, scientifically, sugar substitutes aren't perfect either. Recently, a flood of online articles questioned whether "zero sugar" and "sugar substitutes" are pseudo-concepts, and the safety of sugar substitutes is hard to guarantee, with many netizens expressing concern.

Currently, most sugar substitutes are zero-calorie, but the side effect of overconsumption is that some people may experience diarrhea due to indigestibility.

But whether sugar substitutes are good is both a scientific and a commercial question.

In daily life, we unconsciously consume excessive sugar, leading to societal obesity. The most direct solution is to reduce intake of such foods—eating less sugar solves the problem of excessive calorie intake.

But the logic of capital is that the food industry tempted consumers to eat more decades ago, and now the fitness industry, medical industry, and sugar substitute industry are solving the problem. Health is secondary; the main thing is that new opportunities have arisen.

For consumers themselves, it's impossible to completely "break up" with white sugar. The only lucky thing is that today's consumers don't have to choose between sugary drinks and plain water as extremes; at least there are more options.

For food manufacturers, when high salt and high sugar were making big money in the past, they kept quiet about health.

Now, society has developed to the point where it needs to address the obesity and chronic disease problems left by the previous stage. The sugar-free industry and fitness industry are booming, and "in the name of health" has become a new trend.

Source: Shangyin Society (ID: shangyinshecj) Author: Lingzhu

 _-END-_


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671