The relationship that the Caribbean had as producers with sugar's consumers - American and English upper class luxury 'needs' - was of interest to me. I found sugar's transition from a luxury for British aristocrats to a food source for ordinary working people worldwide, and the hard manual labour that went into such a process an important story for Mintz to tell. For him, it is the story of the beginnings of capitalism.

I think that the changes in scale that sugar production has made is huge, particularly when you consider how difficult sugar was, and is, to grow, harvest, process and export. The demands of growing sugar cane was surprising to me, combined with the crushing, extracting, heating, supersaturation crystallisation and cooling involved in the process. And this hardship is added to when we as modern consumers consider that after the sugar was to be imported back into the Caribbean again later on for consumption by that population. This is interesting since we rarely think where our food originally came from.

Since “no other food in the world's history has had a comparable performance,” (p.73) I liked how Mintz argued that “what people eat expresses who they are, to themselves and to others”, because I agree, and think it's interesting how, as people, we adjust to new foods, and in this case, sugar. Changes are breaks from tradition and the routine of daily life. The supply of sugar became powerful enough to effect political and economic decisions, this is interesting to compare our attitudes towards sugar, (quite negative due to health concerns) and how much of a change this is from then up to today.