Sugar in the Diet

People have embraced sugar for both psychological and physiological reasons. So hard to come by, sugar was initially considered a spice—not a central ingredient but rather one flavoring agent among many in the larder—to be used sparingly. Women who managed the home kept this precious substance under lock and key along with their saffron, cinnamon, and cumin. Physicians considered sugar a powerful medicine, and early medical textbooks recommended its use for everything from curing palsy to aiding digestion. Hard candies in the early nineteenth century were taken for similar reasons and first appeared in apothecaries as medicated lozenges whose hard, sweet coatings concealed often bitter drugs inside. Without the medicinal centers, lozenges became hard candies marketed directly to children by candy makers in the mid-nineteenth century.