Sugarheads

Lucy Jones, like many of us, has a sweet tooth. But caught in a slump of stress and exhaustion, she started to confront her relationship with sweetness in all its guises. In Sugarheads, she follows the hidden story of sugar, to uncover what this seemingly innocuous food can tell us about our bodies, our mental and emotional health, about ecology, value and power.

Sugar, she discovers, is at the heart of everything: it’s a parental bargaining chip, an emotional crutch, a political football, a sustainer of capitalism, a destroyer of habitats, a symbol of celebration, a colonial export. It is natural and artificial. Shame and reward. Cause and cure.

Drawing on emerging neuroscience, philosophy and economics, Jones puts everyday life under late capitalism beneath her multi-disciplinary lens – revealing a system where we’re overstimulated but undernourished, trapped in cycles of pleasure and punishment. Who holds the power over the sugar industry? Are we eating too much, and does it matter? Why do we need sugar to make our bodies perform and recover quicker than they actually can? How can something represent love and happy birthday, as well as forced labour and environmental destruction? Sugar isn’t the problem, she shows – it’s the symptom.

Sugarheads crystallises the story of a single substance into a landmark investigation of our modern age: of what we desire, what we consume, and what it costs us. Urgent and revelatory, it asks how we might build a world that is fairer, more balanced, and sweeter for us all.