Neither sweet nor nutritious

Abstract

[First paragraph]Sugar. GEORGE C. ABBOTT. London: Routledge, 1990. xv + 396 pp. (Cloth £45.00)The Making of a Sugar Giant: Tate and Lyle 1859-1989. PHILIPPE CHALMIN. Translated by Erica Long-Michalke. London: Harwood Academie Publishers, 1990. xvii + 782 pp. (Cloth US$ 57.00 or £32.00)Sugar has about as many facets as there are faces to a sucrose crystal: binder, bulking agent, cariogenic factor, chemical, colorant, commodity, energy source, fermentation substrate, flavor enhancer, medication, preservative, stabilizer, sweetener, and texture modifier are aspects that immediately come to mind. Millions of people and billions of dollars are employed worldwide in the production and marketing of what has become one of the basic foodstuffs of humanity. In the Caribbean and elsewhere, sugar has been the mortar in the building of nations. Sugar is a field of inquiry for all kinds of professionals outside the industry - natural and social scientists; bankers, civil servants, politicians, and trade unionists; journalists and librarians; doctors, engineers, food technologists, and nutritionists - and there has long been a need for an overview that answers their questions (or suggests where answers may be found) and provides a conceptual frame of reference, something along the lines of the outstanding but now dated The World's Sugar: Progress and Policy by Vladimir P. Timoshenko & Boris C. Swerling (1957) or the International Sugar Council's The World Sugar Economy: Structure and Policies (1963).