Not So Sweet
Something that I’ve noticed is being left out of the conversation around glucose stabilization is the cultural impact of processed foods and how we got here. We have collectively agreed to a food system that values profit over health and profit over people as has been the case in America since 1619. Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and folks facing poverty or houselessness are exceedingly vulnerable to the intensity of dysmetabolism caused by highly processed foods and those with added sugars. They are more likely to have lacking access to whole foods, fresh vegetables, and fruits.
Processed foods have been designed and marketed to exploit our biological drive for sweets while simultaneously exemplifying the myth of personal responsibility and victim blaming those that fall ill under the current food system. This is compounded by the daily added stress of institutional racism, food apartheid, and experiencing poverty or bigotry which has been shown to be as disease-provoking as diet through the same ROS pathways that are triggered by a high glucose intake. There’s even a term for it - inflammaging; when inflammation causes you to appear older or to have diseases earlier than expected.
We, my teenage mother and toddler self, were homeless. She would leave me with friends while she stayed on the street. When I was four we got our first tiny apartment. Me on a loft bed in the living room and her in the bedroom. Reagan cheese quesadillas fried in margarine were dinner most days. She worked. We moved. Always struggled. Always worked. When I was old enough to internalize advertising I became keenly aware of all the things we were ‘missing’. Fast food, sweetened cereals, Lunchables. I begged for these. My unformed brain quickly realized the riches that awaited in a drive-thru. Costco muffins, Kool-aid, and Ramen became gold to me as I became more independent and was left home alone. Soon I would develop asthma and severe seasonal allergies likely precipitated by this low fiber, high sugar diet and its brutal effects on my gut microbiome. I am still trying to heal.
I cannot talk about the individual issues of sugar without also speaking about the way sugar became prevalent enough to be an issue. According to Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a professor of history, race, and public policy at Harvard, “Sugar was the most dominant economic incentive for the European colonization of the Americas” (1). Sugar and cotton explain the history of our modern capitalist structure. Though somewhat popularized in Europe, sugar remained a rare and expensive commodity until the forced migration of 11 million Africans and the destruction of countless Indigenous peoples made it more widely available. Even before domestic sugar production, the seeking of sugar drove commerce through the exploitation of peoples in the name of economic efficiency. First as part of the triangular Atlantic trade, enslaved peoples from Africa, sugar from the west indies and Brazil, and money or goods from Europe. By 1720 half of all ships in New York were engaged in this trade. Later through the use of ‘free’ land and enslaved peoples we were able to gain a deeper financial competitive edge.
Sugar cane is difficult and dangerous to process and required a massive around-the-clock workforce prior to automation. In 1795, sugar began to be processed in Louisiana. Parishes that produced sugar had significantly higher numbers of enslaved peoples and those working in sugar manufacturing lived an average of 7 years (2). Deaths exceeded births. Sugar has always been tied to the subjugation and death of Black and Indigenous peoples in America.
I am not Black. As the granddaughter of a white-passing Black man from Louisiana, I would have been considered an octoroon a century ago. I have never experienced racism. My pale skin and light brown wavy hair along with history have protected me. But the connection is real. The reality exists for me that not very long ago my experience could have been much different.
Our society continues to be built on the exploitation of vulnerable populations through food policy as seen in the allowance of targeted ad campaigns, the subsidization of corn, soy, and wheat, and dismally low subsidies for fresh fruit and vegetables. Our government chooses to control the prices of processed foods that utilize high amounts of sugars and oxidized fats while keeping wages low and underfunding fresh or whole foods thus keeping many in a cycle of deep poverty and undernourishment.
Stepping away from these foods not only heals ourselves but is also a direct and powerful way to disengage and promote change in the entirety of a system built on suffering and disease.
References:1. PBS Newshour. Before cotton, sugar established American reliance on slave labor. YouTube.com/watch?v=BLzgD11RwEc. August 22, 2019. Accessed May 6, 2022
2. Muhammad, Khalil Gibran. The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the ‘white gold’ that fueled slavery. New York Times Magazine. August 14, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/sugar-slave-trade-slavery.html. Accessed May 6, 2022