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How this one sweetener affects our bodies, our farming and even housing

  • illustration of a woman looking a table of desserts, a glucose monitor and pills

    Gimme some sugar: a diabetic on love, loss and longing for pound cake

    To survive a deadly cancer, author Ida Harris had to give up her sweet tooth. It’s been an identity-shaking adjustment
  • Students tap a tree for maple syrup in Randolph, Vermont, on 20 May 2024.

    ‘It’s the future of sugar’: new technology feeds Vermont maple syrup boom amid climate crisis

    The season to tap trees is now earlier and longer, but new processes and generations are helping the industry thrive
  • M Dores Cruz, center, and her team carry out an archaeological dig on Sao Tome in 2023.

    White gold, Black bodies: how a tiny African nation shaped the world

    The first archaeological dig of São Tomé and Príncipe’s largest sugar mill sheds light on the birth of plantation agriculture and slavery as a racial system
  • a glass of soda with ice and a straw

    Is aspartame bad for you? What we know about the sweetener’s health risks

    Some studies link the popular soda sweetener to higher cancer risk, but the links are weak and questions remain
  • side-by-side images of a stack of doughnuts and a brain scan

    Your brain sees sugar as a reward. But does that mean it’s addictive?

    Most scientists say no, but some want ultra-processed foods, with sky-high sugar amounts, to count as addictive substances
  • Sugar comes in many different forms. This blend contains sugars from Barbados, Colombia and India, which have variations in color, texture and taste.

    ‘Sugar is brown!’: there’s more to the sweet stuff than its pure white version

    Sugar’s texture and taste can be as individualistic as coffee beans or wine grapes grown in specific regions, but most of us don’t know that
  • A mountain of raw sugar is stored in a warehouse in Santa Rosa, Texas, in 2005.

    Megadrought forces end to sugarcane farming in parched Texas borderland

    The state’s last sugar processing mill closed because there’s just not enough water in the Rio Grande to share between the US and Mexico
  • Dr. Noa Lincoln with native Hawaiian sugarcane on the campus of the University of Hawai'i at HIlo. Undergraduate student Quinn Leggett is studying tropical ag plant production and management.

    Hawaiian scientist’s quest to find and save the state’s distinctive sugarcanes

  • Two hands hold a ramekin and spoon with a creamy dessert inside.

    Can there be delish dessert with less sugar? Absolutely, say these chefs

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