Sugar Blues is a book by William Dufty that was released in 1975 and has become a dietary classic. According to the publishers, over 1.6 million copies have been printed. A digest called Refined Sugar: the Sweetest Poison of Them All was prepared by Dufty, see #External links.Dufty uses the narrative form to delve into the history of sugar and history of medicine. He mentions whistle blowers, such as Semmelweiss, to remind readers of the discontinuities in standard science. He also delves into the history of Cuba, history of slavery, history of tobacco and tobacco curing to present the sociology of sugar.
Heroin is nothing but a chemical. They take the juice of the poppy and they refine it into opium and then they refine it to morphine and finally to heroin. Sugar is nothing but a chemical. They take the juice of the cane or the beet and then refine it to molasses and then they refine it to brown sugar and finally to strange white crystals. Later, the euphemism, “made from natural ingredients”, is cited as equally applicable to heroin and sugar.
“Benjamin Delessert found a way to prepare the lowly Babylonian beet into a new kind of sugar loaf at Plessy in 1812. Napoleon awarded him the Legion of Honour. Napoleon ordered sugar beets planted everywhere in France, an imperial factory was established for refining, scholarships were granted to schools for sugar beet crafts; 500 licences were created for sugar refineries. By the very next year, Napoleon had achieved the herculean feat of producing eight million pounds of sugar from homegrown beets.
When Napoleonic armies set out for Moscow, their sugar rations were insured. Like the Moors before them, they were turned back while traveling north. The mighty French army, in the unaccustomed climate, had met their match and more, including the armies of a backward people who had not yet accustomed themselves to sugar in their tea
