Attitudes Towards Sugar and Sweetness in Historical and Social Perspective

Abstract

In the social psychology and the cultural anthropology of sweetness, one of the basic issues at stake is how individuals relate to pleasure and how their own society views that relationship. In most Western societies sweetness, in much the same way as sex, has raised the question of whether the pursuit of pleasure per se is socially and ethically acceptable. In recent decades the trend has been towards increasing tolerance of sexual pleasure, even when dissociated from reproduction. It may be seen as a paradox that, as far as pleasure from sweetness is concerned, there seems to have been comparatively less permissiveness.