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ABSTRACT
This article traces the refined sugar industry’s post-World War II efforts to promote sugar as a necessary dietary component through an examination of its selective use of science and engagement with innovative documentary film making. It begins with the sugar industry’s efforts to promote sugar consumption in the early twentieth century, the period when nutrition science emerged and was popularized. It then moves on to analyze the evolving interplay of scientific knowledge and discursive practice in the sugar industry. The Sugar Research Foundation, Inc. (SRF), a group founded in 1943 by sugarcane and beet sugar business interests, provides the empirical case. The analysis focuses on the period from the SRF’s founding through World War II and its immediate aftermath. Evidence for the analysis was gathered from three archival collections. The article documents how the SRF developed “sponsored films” for mass audiences that employed scientists and scientific concepts to discursively construct refined sugar as a natural and necessary part of the American diet. The SRF combined state-of-the-art documentary film making and distribution with selectively chosen scientific findings to successfully defend its product against public health efforts to reduce consumption. The article makes the case that investigating the history of the refined sugar industry’s efforts to shape consumers’ food habits is an indispensable step toward understanding today’s challenge to address metabolic syndrome in public health.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Elizabeth A. Zanoni, journal editor, and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. The article benefitted enormously from them. I am grateful to Roderick Neumann for providing feedback along the way.
Notes
1. Mintz, Sweetness and Power.
2. Ballinger, Sugar During World War II; Griggs, “A Natural Part.”
3. Putnam, “Major Trends.”
4. Documentary evidence was gathered from three archives, the Braga Brothers Collections located at the University of Florida Smathers Library Special and Area Studies Collection, the Archives of the New York Botanical Garden in the Mertz Library, and the National Research Council of the National Academies, 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. USA.
5. Prelinger, The Field Guide.
6. Dinesh Babu et al., “A Short Review.”
7. Ibid.; Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 23.
8. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry, 48–61; Smith, Sugar, 19–20.
9. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry, 61–70; Smith, Sugar, 21–24.
10. Fogel, Without Consent, 21.
11. Davis, Inhuman Bondage, 104.
12. Ibid.
13. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 71.
14. Ayala, American Sugar Kingdom.
15. Fine, Heasman, and Wright, Consumption in the Age; Mintz, Sweetness and Power.
16. Smith, Sugar, 47.
17. Gen. T.S. Jesup, quoted in Hollander, Raising Cane, 32.
18. Hollander, Raising Cane.
19. Mudry, Measured Meals.
20. Atwater, Foods: Nutritive Value.
21. Mintz, “Time, Sugar, Sweetness,” 60.
22. Atwater, Foods: Nutritive Value, 9–10.
23. Mudry, Measured Meals, 9.
24. Cullather, “The Foreign Policy.”
25. Mullendore, History of the United States Food Administration.
26. Nordstrom, “And Serve the Cause.”
27. Veit, Modern Food.
28. Mudry, Measured Meals.
29. Hollander, Raising Cane.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Kearns, Glantz, and Schmidt, “Sugar Industry Influence;” Kearns, Glantz, and Apollonio, “In Defense of Sugar;” and Kearns, Schmidt, Glantz, “Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease.”
33. Kearns, Schmidt, Glantz, “Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease.”
34. Kearns, Glantz, and Schmidt, “Sugar Industry Influence,” 15.
35. Kearns, Schmidt, Glantz, “Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease.”
36. Nordstrom, “And Serve the Cause.”
37. NRC, The Problem of Changing.
38. Ibid., 3.
39. Quoted in Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty, 67.
40. Ibid., 68.
41. NRC, Committee On Food Habits, meeting minutes, January 3–4, 1941.
42. BBC, Ellsworth Bunker to Louis Placé, Oct. 5, 1942.
43. BBC, Louis Placé to Manuel Rionda March 1, 1943.
44. The core founders include: Joseph F. Abbott, President of the Sugar Research Foundation (SRF) and President of the American Sugar Refining Co; Ernest W. Greene, Vice President (SRF); David M. Keiser, Secretary (SRF) and President of the Cuban-American Sugar Company; Ody Lamborn, first Executive Director (SRF) and President of Lamborn & Co., Inc., sugar brokers; Ellsworth Bunker, President of National Sugar Refining Company; Louis V. Placé, Jr., Vice President of the W.J. McCahan Sugar Refining and Molasses Company, an affiliate of the Czarnikow-Rionda Company; and Neil Kelly, Secretary, United States Beet Sugar Association.
45. BBC, Louis Placé to Rionda, March 4, 1943.
46. BBC, Louis Placé to Rionda, June 28, 1943.
47. The Washington-Merry-Go-Round [United Feature Syndicate], November 4, 1943.
48. Ibid.
49. Prelinger, The Field Guide to Sponsored Films.
50. Griffith, The World of Robert Flaherty.
51. BBC, Flaherty, R. to SRF, “Survey by Robert J. Flaherty, Documentary Filmmaker,” December 7, 1944. This is a 7-page letter that presents Flaherty’s ideas for scientific and educational, but entertaining, sugar documentaries.
52. BBC, Robert Flaherty to SRF, Memorandum on Survey. Flaherty in his report recounts a conversation with OPA officials.
53. BBC, Flaherty to SRF, Survey.
54. BBC, Ody Lamborn to Louis Placé, March 19, 1945. Lamborn notes that the establishment of a Committee on Education at the directors’ meeting on March 2nd is “one of the most constructive steps we have taken.”
55. Ibid.
56. BBC, Ody Lamborn, to John Geran, SRF, December 14, 1944.
57. “Tiffany” refers to the luxury jewelry and design house, Tiffany & Co., which at that time had been in Manhattan for over a century and was considered the epitome of fine taste.
58. Ibid.
59. BBC, Ellsworth Bunker to Louis Placé, March 20, 1945.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. BBC, Louis Placé to Ody Lamborn, April 29, 1945.
63. BBC, David Flaherty to Neil Kelly, June 27, 1945.
64. BBC, Neil Kelly to David Flaherty, June 28, 1945.
65. BBC, Ody Lamborn to Geran, December 14, 1944.
66. BBC, Institute of Public Relations, Inc. to Ody Lamborn, January 8, 1945.
67. BBC, Ody Lamborn to Geran, December 14, 1944.
68. BBC, Ellsworth Bunker to Abbott, Neil Kelly, Ody Lamborn, Robert Hockett, Louis Placé, January 17, 1945.
69. Ibid.
70. BBC, Neil Kelly to Ody Lamborn, November 15, 1945.
71. NYBG, William Robbins to Ody Lamborn, August 31, 1945.
72. BBC, Ellsworth Bunker to Greene, Ody Lamborn, Neil Kelly and Louis Placé, June 21, 1945. In his letter, Ellsworth Bunker attributes the idea to Neil Kelly.
73. Ibid.
74. Ibid.
75. NYBG, Ody Lamborn to William Robbins, June 26, 1945.
76. NYBG, William Robbins, “Sugar is the Foundation of All Life,” typescript enclosed with William Robbins to Ody Lamborn, July 2, 1945.
77. NYBG, Ody Lamborn to William Robbins, August 1, 1945.
78. NYBG, Ody Lamborn to William Robbins, August 30, 1945.
79. BBC, Robert Hockett to Ellsworth Bunker, November 2, 1945.
80. BBC, Ellsworth Bunker reporting his conversation with Flaherty in Ellsworth Bunker to Greene, Neil Kelly, Ody Lamborn, Louis Placé (Committee on Education), December 14, 1945.
81. BBC, Flaherty to Sugar Research Foundation Inc. December 1945 [no date given], Memorandum describing his vision for the new film.
82. NYBG, Neil Kelly to William Robbins, November 12, 1946.
83. Kearns, Glantz, and Schmidt, “Sugar Industry Influence;” Kearns, Glantz, and Apollonio, “In Defense of Sugar;” and Kearns, Schmidt, Glantz, “Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease.”
84. NYBG, Mrs. Kendall, Chair, Douglaston Garden Club to William Robbins, March 17, 1953.
85. Barnouw, Documentary: A History of Non-fiction Film.
86. Lustig, Schmidt, and Brindis, “The Toxic Truth;” Johnson et al., “Perspective:” Hatch, Sternlieb, and Gordon, “Sugar Ecologies.”
87. Throsby, “Pure, White and Deadly”; Hervik, Hervik, and Thurston, “From Science.”
88. Throsby, “Pure, White and Deadly,” 21.
89. Hervik, Hervik, and Thurston, “From Science.”
90. Kearns, Glantz, and Schmidt, “Sugar Industry Influence;” Kearns, Glantz, and Apollonio, “In Defense of Sugar;” and Kearns, Schmidt, Glantz, “Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease.”
91. Putnam, “Major Trends.”
92. Page and Friend, “The Changing United States Diet.”
93. Ibid.
94. Smith, Sugar.
95. “Our Company is More than 100 Years New,” Kellanova Company website, Accessed April 16, 2023. https://www.kelloggs.com/en_US/who-we-are/our-history.html.
96. Smith, Sugar.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Gail M. Hollander
Gail M.Hollander is associate professor of geography in the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University. Her research focuses on the geography and history of the global food system, with particular interests in the sugar industry and the history of agricultural plant exploration and introduction. She is the author of Raising Cane in the ‘Glades: The Global Sugar Trade and the Environmental Transformation of Florida and numerous articles and chapters on food and agriculture.