30 pages • 1 hour read
Sidney W. MintzSweetness and Power
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1985A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “Eating and Being”
As sugar became a ubiquitous ingredient in developed countries during the 20th century, “the diet of a whole species was gradually being remade” (187) in terms of the kinds of food we were eating and the new methods and meanings associated with eating.
The 20th century came with a sharp rise in consumption outside of the home (in restaurants, for example) and an increase in prepared foods (especially quick snack foods) eaten within the home. This kind of eating is associated with increases in both sugar and fat consumption in developed nations like England and the United States. Manufacturers of processed foods, aware of sugar’s extreme versatility, often add it to products for preservation and texture rather than taste: “[I]ndeed, many food manufacturers would dearly love a chemical having all of the qualities of sucrose without the calories and, in some cases, even without the sweetness” (206).
“Meals,” in the traditional sense of families eating together at set times to consume food prepared by a single cook inside the home, became increasingly rare in the 20th century. Mintz associates the trend toward “desocialized, aperiodic eating” (213) with the growth of free market capitalism in the developed world and its emphasis on individual freedoms and freedom of choice.
Chapter 5 Analysis
Twentieth-century sugar consumption in England and around the world is tied up with the success of capitalism and the subsequent majority changes in eating habits. Despite regional differences (for example, Mintz discusses how, in comparison to England and the United States, French sugar interests were less successful at overwhelming the national cuisine with sucrose), “modern eating habits have altered the place of sugar” (209-10) yet again.
The decline of the “meal” typifies the kind of freedom afforded by the capitalist mode of production: the appearance of enhanced consumer choice, but at a hidden cost. The inherent constraints of a communal mealtime demonstrate “that social eating is precisely that: social, involving communication, give and take, a search for consensus, some common sense about individual needs, compromise through attending to the needs of others” (201). Mintz wants readers to appreciate the heavy cultural loss that the disappearance of communal eating signifies; for example, the earlier invocation of !Kung and Bemba eating practices illustrates just how integral food can be to the sociality of small groups of traditional people.
The social sacrifice accompanying the meal’s decline corresponds with the omnipresence of sucrose (and increasingly, high-fructose corn syrup) in the snack foods that have come to replace traditional meals. In the 20th century, sugar is “almost irresistible” (192); this is true from both a consumption point of view in sugar’s affordability and availability, and a production standpoint for its usefulness and desirability. When Mintz writes that sugar is “at the contact points of capitalist intent” (196), he is noting a perfect correlation: Capitalism’s characteristic drive for profit and consumption coincides with the trajectory of sugar and its presence in the processed snack foods eaten at home (instead of sharing meals) and even in snacks and restaurant foods outside the home.
The appearance of freedom in matters of food choice evaporates in light of the inherent constraints of the capitalist system that solidified in the 20th century: “The changing nature of the industrial workday, the cheap calories (both in cost and in resource use) provided by sucrose, and the special-interest groups intent on pushing its consumption make such cumulative pressure difficult to resist on an individual or a group educational basis” (213). Something as simple sounding as a dietary change comprises a host of societal and economic structural changes regarding the nature of work and leisure. In the center of these changes, we find sucrose “[epitomizing] the transition from one kind of society to another” (214).
