On Food and Cooking

At present, beet sugar accounts for about 30%
of the sucrose produced in the world. Russia,
Germany, and the United States are the major
beet growers, with California, Colorado, and
Utah the leading states. The Caribbean is now
a minor source of cane sugar, its role having
been assumed by India and Brazil. Florida,
Hawaii, Louisiana, and Texas also produce
sugar cane. Spurred by the demand of an
increasingly populous and affluent West,
world sugar production increased sevenfold
between 1900 and 1964, a rate matched by no
other major crop in history. And thanks to the
development of methods for making
sweeteners from corn, an even less expensive
source, sugar has never been cheaper or more
abundant in our diet. This is not necessarily
good for our long-term health (p. 657), and
one of the major developments in 20th-
century food manufacturing has been the
development of ingredients that mimic the
flavor and physical characteristics of sugar