By Tim Lambert
Sugar cane first grew in South Asia. Later, it was grown in India and in China. The Ancient Greeks and Romans knew sugar but used it as a medicine rather than a sweetener.
By about 600 AD, sugar was grown in Persia. Later, it was grown in North Africa and in Spain and Portugal. The Crusaders brought sugar to England at the end of the 11th century. However, in England in the Middle Ages and Tudor times, sugar was expensive, so most people used honey to sweeten their food.
At the end of the 15th century, sugar cane was taken to the New World. Vast numbers of slaves were taken from Africa to the West Indies, and they were forced to work on sugar cane plantations.
Sugar was first made from sugar beet by a German chemist called Andreas Marggraf in 1747. For centuries, people used the licorice plant as a medicine, but in 1760, an Englishman named George Dunhill added sugar to it and made it into a sweet.
Inventor Norbert Rillieux was born in 1806. In 1843, he invented a machine that revolutionised the Sugar industry. He helped to turn sugar from a luxury into something ordinary people could afford.
A Swiss named Jakub Kryštof Rad invented the sugar cube in 1843. They used to sell sugar in a conical loaf, and you had to cut a piece off. His wife complained when she cut herself, so Rad invented a press for making sugar cubes. He has a granite sugar cube as a memorial.
Saccharine was invented in 1879 by Constantin Fahlberg.
In April 1942, sugar rationing was introduced in the USA. It was the first food item to be rationed. Each person was allowed 26 pounds of sugar a year. Sugar rationing in the USA ended in June 1947 (5 years after it started).
In January 1940, butter, sugar, bacon, and ham were rationed. Sugar rationing ended in Britain in September 1953. Sugar Puffs went on sale in Britain in 1954.
The song Sugar, Sugar by the Archies was released on 24 May 1969.
