Chapter 10: Crown Kryptonite

The Spell of Sweetness

Sugar has always promised relief. On the plantations it was the ration that soothed exhaustion — molasses stirred into cornmeal, a drop of rum in water, a sweetness allowed after labour. It dulled the bitterness of work and pain and, in doing so, began to shape a deeper appetite. What once kept bodies moving under heat and lash became, over generations, a signal of comfort and reward. The memory of that sweetness may still live in our biochemistry — an echo of survival replayed as craving.

Even the word carries its own seduction. The Sanskrit śarkarā (“grit,” “gravel,” “crystal”) travelled through Persian 'shakar' and Arabic 'sukkar' to French sucre and eventually English sugar — from it’s earthly grit and gravel form to a lineage of refinement and allure. In another tongue, 'Shakhar' meant dawn, the name given to the morning star, the bright deceiver. Like that mythic light-bringer, sugar shines but betrays; it illuminates the tongue while dimming the body.

A crystal of pleasure, it acts as a small enchantment — activating the brain’s reward circuits, binding pleasure to harm. Addiction is a kind of spell, a chemistry of consent we do not recall granting. And each ingredient we take in is, literally, a “walk-in,” from Latin ingredī, “to go in,” a presence invited to act within us. Sugar’s entry was never innocent; it was introduced under coercion, normalised by necessity, and inherited as taste. The sweetness that once masked suffering now sustains its metabolic aftermath.

1. The Epidemiological and Genetic Disparity

The impact of high sugar consumption and the resulting metabolic stress is not distributed equally across all populations. A substantial body of research indicates that individuals of African descent face a higher genetic and epidemiological vulnerability to metabolic disorders — a vulnerability increasingly linked to hair-related pathologies.