Sublimations of Sugar

Our lust for sugar is an undeniable biological fact. Yet, a biological craving is neither a necessary, nor a sufficient condition for the consumption of food. Sugar consumption varies dramatically across contexts and often exceeds by large margins what is biologically needed. In order to be considered edible and socially appropriate, sugar, like all food, needs to be translated into culture first. But how does sugar enter culture? By analyzing 20 years of folders (1984 - 2004) by ‘Tiense suiker’: the biggest industrial producer of sugar in Belgium, we aim to map the 'translations of sugar', asking: How is sugar; a substance extracted from nature and transformed through industry, not only turned into a product, but also into a symbol: a carrier of meaning and morality? The results show how the domestication of nature, the extraction of sugar from sugar beets, the transformation of the substance into ‘purer’ and 'purer' forms, and the sublimation of the substance into shapes, textures, and social situations with cultural value (a coffee, a cookie, a birthday cake, etc.) is realized through shifting discursive articulations, drawing on different, yet interlocking, orders of justification. Some of these orders persist through time, while other orders show higher degrees of variability. The meaning of sugar changes each time as a function of its ‘translations’. To conclude: sugar does not just enter the body from a mere physical need, but is realized through interlocking discourses that sublimate sugar into culture.