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Unlike alcohol, which was the only commonly available psychoactive substance in the old world until they arrived, sugar, nicotine and caffeine had at least some stimulating properties, and so offered a very different experience, one that was more conducive to the labour of everyday life. These were the "18th-century equivalent of uppers", writes the Scottish historian Niall Ferguson. "The empire, it might be said, was built on a huge sugar, caffeine and nicotine rush – a rush nearly everyone could experience."
在它們到來之前，酒精是舊世界唯一常見的精神活性物質(zhì)，而糖、尼古丁和咖啡因不一樣，它們至少有一些刺激作用，因此能夠提供一種非常不同的體驗，一種對日常生活的勞動更有益的體驗。蘇格蘭歷史學(xué)家尼爾·弗格森寫道，它們都屬于“18世紀(jì)的上流社會”。“可以說，這個帝國是建立在對糖、咖啡因和尼古丁的強(qiáng)烈刺激上的——幾乎每個人都能體驗到這種刺激。”
Sugar, more than anything, seems to have made life worth living (as it still does) for so many, particularly those whose lives lacked the kind of pleasures that relative wealth and daily hours of leisure might otherwise provide. Sugar was "an ideal substance", says Mintz. "It served to make a busy life seem less so; it eased, or seemed to ease, the changes back and forth from work to rest; it provided swifter sensations of fullness or satisfaction than complex carbohydrates did; it combined with many other foods … No wonder the rich and powerful liked it so much, and no wonder the poor learned to love it."
糖似乎比任何東西都更能讓很多人的生活變得有意義(現(xiàn)在仍然如此)，尤其是那些生活中缺乏相對財富和每日休閑時間所能提供的那種樂趣的人。糖是“一種理想的物質(zhì)”，明茨說。“它讓忙碌的生活看起來不那么忙碌，它減輕了(或似乎減輕了)工作與休息之間的變化。與復(fù)合碳水化合物相比，它能更快地提供飽腹感或滿足感。它和許多其他食物結(jié)合在一起……難怪有錢有勢的人這么喜歡它，也難怪窮人學(xué)會了喜歡它。”
What Oscar Wilde wrote about a cigarette in 1891 might also be said about sugar: It is "the perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?"
奧斯卡·王爾德于1891年寫的一篇關(guān)于香煙的文章也可以說是關(guān)于糖的：它是“完美的愉悅”。它是精致的，讓人不滿意。一個人還想要什么呢？”
Children certainly respond to sugar instantaneously. Give babies a choice of sugar water or plain, wrote the British physician Frederick Slare 300 years ago, and "they will greedily suck down the one, and make Faces at the other: Nor will they be pleas'd with Cows Milk, unless that be bless'd with a little Sugar, to bring it up to the Sweetness of Breast-Milk".
孩子們對糖的反應(yīng)當(dāng)然是瞬間的。300年前英國醫(yī)生弗雷德里克·斯拉曾寫道：如果讓寶寶們從糖水和純凈水里選，“他們會貪婪地吮吸完一個，然后對著另一個做鬼臉：他們也不會喜歡喝牛奶的，除非在牛奶里加一點糖，使它的甜味和母乳的甜味一致。”
One proposition commonly invoked to explain why the English would become the world's greatest sugar consumers and remain so through the early 20th century – alongside the fact that the English had the world's most productive network of sugar-producing colonies – is that they lacked any succulent native fruit, and so had little previous opportunity to accustom themselves to sweet things, as Mediterranean populations did. The sweet taste was more of a novelty to the English, and their first exposure to sugar occasioned a population-wide astonishment.
為什么英國人會成為世界上最大的食糖消費國并且一直保持到20世紀(jì)初(同時英國人還擁有世界上最多產(chǎn)的制糖殖民網(wǎng)絡(luò))？通常被用來解釋這一問題的命題就是，英國本地沒有多汁的水果，所以之前很少有機(jī)會像地中海人那樣習(xí)慣吃甜食。對于英國人來說甜味是一種新奇的東西，所以糖初次到英國時便驚艷了全英國人。
