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Unlike alcohol, which was the only commonly available psychoactive substance in the old world until they arrived, sugar, nicotine and caffeine had at least some stimulating properties, and so offered a very different experience, one that was more conducive to the labour of everyday life. These were the "18th-century equivalent of uppers", writes the Scottish historian Niall Ferguson. "The empire, it might be said, was built on a huge sugar, caffeine and nicotine rush – a rush nearly everyone could experience."
在它们到来之前，酒精是旧世界唯一常见的精神活性物质，而糖、尼古丁和咖啡因不一样，它们至少有一些刺激作用，因此能够提供一种非常不同的体验，一种对日常生活的劳动更有益的体验。苏格兰历史学家尼尔·弗格森写道，它们都属于“18世纪的上流社会”。“可以说，这个帝国是建立在对糖、咖啡因和尼古丁的强烈刺激上的——几乎每个人都能体验到这种刺激。”
Sugar, more than anything, seems to have made life worth living (as it still does) for so many, particularly those whose lives lacked the kind of pleasures that relative wealth and daily hours of leisure might otherwise provide. Sugar was "an ideal substance", says Mintz. "It served to make a busy life seem less so; it eased, or seemed to ease, the changes back and forth from work to rest; it provided swifter sensations of fullness or satisfaction than complex carbohydrates did; it combined with many other foods … No wonder the rich and powerful liked it so much, and no wonder the poor learned to love it."
糖似乎比任何东西都更能让很多人的生活变得有意义(现在仍然如此)，尤其是那些生活中缺乏相对财富和每日休闲时间所能提供的那种乐趣的人。糖是“一种理想的物质”，明茨说。“它让忙碌的生活看起来不那么忙碌，它减轻了(或似乎减轻了)工作与休息之间的变化。与复合碳水化合物相比，它能更快地提供饱腹感或满足感。它和许多其他食物结合在一起……难怪有钱有势的人这么喜欢它，也难怪穷人学会了喜欢它。”
What Oscar Wilde wrote about a cigarette in 1891 might also be said about sugar: It is "the perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?"
奥斯卡·王尔德于1891年写的一篇关于香烟的文章也可以说是关于糖的：它是“完美的愉悦”。它是精致的，让人不满意。一个人还想要什么呢？”
Children certainly respond to sugar instantaneously. Give babies a choice of sugar water or plain, wrote the British physician Frederick Slare 300 years ago, and "they will greedily suck down the one, and make Faces at the other: Nor will they be pleas'd with Cows Milk, unless that be bless'd with a little Sugar, to bring it up to the Sweetness of Breast-Milk".
孩子们对糖的反应当然是瞬间的。300年前英国医生弗雷德里克·斯拉曾写道：如果让宝宝们从糖水和纯净水里选，“他们会贪婪地吮吸完一个，然后对着另一个做鬼脸：他们也不会喜欢喝牛奶的，除非在牛奶里加一点糖，使它的甜味和母乳的甜味一致。”
One proposition commonly invoked to explain why the English would become the world's greatest sugar consumers and remain so through the early 20th century – alongside the fact that the English had the world's most productive network of sugar-producing colonies – is that they lacked any succulent native fruit, and so had little previous opportunity to accustom themselves to sweet things, as Mediterranean populations did. The sweet taste was more of a novelty to the English, and their first exposure to sugar occasioned a population-wide astonishment.
为什么英国人会成为世界上最大的食糖消费国并且一直保持到20世纪初(同时英国人还拥有世界上最多产的制糖殖民网络)？通常被用来解释这一问题的命题就是，英国本地没有多汁的水果，所以之前很少有机会像地中海人那样习惯吃甜食。对于英国人来说甜味是一种新奇的东西，所以糖初次到英国时便惊艳了全英国人。
