Anti-Sweet as a Sign of Status

After constantly being disappointed in desserts at high scale restaurants I noticed they all had one thing in common - they lacked the sweetness of desserts you might be served in middle-of-the-road priced restaurants. The Crème Caramel I had at One Sixty Blue actually disgusted me. It smelled like a hard boiled egg, and I only ate it because I was paying $10 for it. The flourless chocolate cake I had at Mon Ami Gabi had a nice texture to it, but it's taste didn't really appeal to me. I had a chocolate lava type dessert (chocolate cake with a molten chocolate center) at Sweets & Savories and it left me unimpressed.

Back when the Portuguese brought sugar to South America, until America's sugar industry really got booming, sugar was a 'spice' reserved for the rich. But now sugar is readily available to most Americans, and super sweet things are sometimes looked down upon because of America's obesity problem. Is it possible that there is some sort of anti-sweet movement in the higher strata of restaurants, or even the upper class itself?

All of this is assuming richer people go to more expensive restaurants. An important piece of evidence would be weather rich people consume less sugar when their younger, as a way to maintain health, and thus they don't acquire a taste for sugary things.

In poorer communities it seems as though sweet condiments are highly regarded. In inner city Baltimore, ketchup is the main topping for fried chicken. In Washington D.C. frequenters of "fried chicken joints" often get their chicken with "Mambo sauce" - a sweet, sticky, red sauce. At Harold's where I live, the mild sauce is the most popular among non-University students. My one friend who lived in Ecuador for a year told me people would order hot dogs, that would very small to our American standards, but they would just douse them with large amounts of ketchup.

Has anyone noticed a trend that supports or opposes the idea that preference for sugar is related to economic class?

I myself am middle class, but have spent probably more money on food than the average middle class individual, as eating is one of my favorite things to do. My favorite dessert is an Uno's Brownie Sundae, or maybe their Deep Dish Cookie Sundae, both of which I find deliciously sugary.

Below, Nasty Creme Caramel - (I forgive one sixty blue though, because they had the single best cheese I've ever tasted. Mulbier. It was the most memorable thing I've eaten in a LONG time, and it only cost $4 for an ounce!)

I'm very much a non-sweet dessert type. I think it's just a matter of preference of the pastry chef (in places that actually have pastry chefs and aren't microwaving pre-fab desserts).

Also, at more upscale restaurants, there's probably an urge to have the desserts meld with the rest of the meal. Transitioning from rabbit loin to sickly sweet lava cake is probably a little shocking to the palate. If I were creating a menu-as-experience, it'd probably be easier to go with less-sweet desserts.

Finally, if you want to show off your chops as a pastry chef, you might want to have some flavors really pop.. and it can be hard for the taste of strawberry, or rhubarb, or lavender to rise over a sugar bomb.

Those are just my guesses.

The best discussions of the ways in which sugar has been and is related to class come from Sidney Mintz, whose book Sweetness and Power I have praised many times on this board. But more related to your argument about the modern rejection of sugar among the upper class would be this quote from his essay "Sugar and Morality," from Mintz's own collection of essays entitled Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past:

The triad of individualism, romanticism, and consumerism fits well with the picture of a new self [developed in the modern era]. The repudiation of a desired good bestows virtue, while opening the door to additional consumption of different kinds. Exercise of choice heightens the illusion of individuality...the rejection of sugar -- of tobacco, drugs, coffee, TV, cholesterol, unfiltered water, synthetic fiber, irradiated fruit, red meat, whatever -- enables one to march to the beat of a different drummer, made more attractive because one can also believe one is among the first to hear its tattoo. But this individuality is conditioned by the postulation of a “group,” membership in which is attainable among other things by certain consumptions of sacrifice, based on inner will – on difficult choices, freely made, to validate one’s fitness for belonging. Such a “group” consists not of one’s family of health club or alumni association, but of an abstraction from the pages of certain magazines and from television, generated by the best salespersons in world history…Using the products (or, in the case of sugar, not using them) is how the imagined group is joined. By such urgings to “moral” performance, individuals learn to consume with more discipline; morality, detached from society itself, thus becomes a new consumable.

I’d say he agrees with you. “Consumptions of sacrifice” – that’s what you got with your sugarless crème brulee.

After constantly being disappointed in desserts at high scale restaurants I noticed they all had one thing in common - they lacked the sweetness of desserts you might be served in middle-of-the-road priced restaurants.

I haven't observed this; I've had plenty of very sweet desserts at "high end" restaurants. The cotton candy truffle I had at Moto last week being the most extreme example. That was by far the sweetest thing I had eaten since childhood. Think: a casing of Fruity Pebbles held together by extra soft Airheads filled with concentrated high fructose corn syrup eaten in one bite. This is a modest approximation.

Has anyone noticed a trend that supports or opposes the idea that preference for sugar is related to economic class?

So you're looking for something other than the high correlation between socio-economic status and obesity found by Drewnowski and cited everywhere these days?

I'm happy to read deeper sociological meanings into many things (ask me how the ten o'clock news is a form of religious ritual), but I have to disagree with the starting premise in this case-- that the rich have rejected sugar, which presupposes a constant level of sugar in desserts for the non-rich. I think the opposite is true.

I believe that sugar has been dialed up substantially in recent years in commercial food, especially in chain food. And this isn't just in dessert, either-- a hamburger at McDonald's is much sweeter than a hamburger at Joe's Gyros, kung pao chicken at P.F. Chang's is much sweeter than the same dish at Great Wall in the semi-seedy strip mall. Hell, apples and corn, not to mention sugar snap peas which didn't even exist 20 years ago, are all sweeter than they used to be, to satisfy the Frosted Flake-raised palates of postwar Americans. (The one exception to this might be the South, which has always had a much sweeter tooth than the rest of America. In Mencken's day it was known sneeringly as "the Coca-Cola belt," for preferring sugary water to healthy, manly beer.)

As Gleam says, sugar is the easiest way to make cheap ingredients seem like something you really enjoyed eating. Nobody's going to come away from a Milky Way bar raving about the subtleties of the chocolate, so making sure they get a sugar rush is the only way to make people feel like they had something good. When you have really good chocolate, you want to let its flavors stand out, not be overpowered by the sugar. That's even more important with less assertive flavors.

Compare American desserts with foreign/ethnic ones and while there are some exceedingly sweet things like baklava, most are not so sugary, not so strongly sweet-- they taste like pastry, like spices, like fruit. Of course, part of that is because sugar was, until recently, an expensive additive but it's also because you don't need it in the quantities we get it in and after a certain point it fights with other, more expensive ingredients. Pugsley, I would say that while some of what you've had may simply be dud desserts, I would give others a chance and see if at least some are satisfying without an excess of sweetness.

I forgive one sixty blue though, because they had the single best cheese I've ever tasted. Mulbier.

Side question: I've never heard of this cheese. What is it? Where is it from? Not morbier, right?

I don't know if it's a trend, but if so, count me among the pleased.

I'm also in the camp that feels too much sugar can quickly overtake an otherwise interesting dish. And I've always been tough to impress when it comes to dessert, perhaps because I think most "traditional" desserts are two sweet... or at least they are for me. If it's a trend, I suspect it's less of a sociological one, and more a matter of taste. I'm tired of sugar bomb desserts, and I think a lot of other people are, too.

Mike does make a very interesting point, though. It also seems to me that while sweet dishes have been trending* savory, savory dishes have been trending sweet... at least as far as the mainstream is concerned.

* - Please forgive me for using that as a verb

happy_stomach wrote:

I forgive one sixty blue though, because they had the single best cheese I've ever tasted. Mulbier.

Side question: I've never heard of this cheese. What is it? Where is it from? Not morbier, right?

Oops, I meant morbier. I wonder if it's that good anywhere or maybe one sixty blue just had the perfect piece...


I'm in no way saying that people eat certain foods because of conscience recognition of them as a sign of status or because it gains them social acceptance. But, rather that the rich may have a preference, derived from acquired tastes, for less sugary desserts. And moreover that today's high-end pastry chefs are addressing this preference, which satisfies one social group (it's main patrons) while simultaneously neglecting a poorer social group.

If we all agree poorer people consume more sugary foods, whether it be because sugar makes cheaper ingredients more acceptable or for any other reason, and if we believe in acquired taste then it would be logical to say that poorer people have a preference for sweeter desserts. And isn't it likely that a pastry chef at a high-end place would adjust his/her cooking to the taste of his/her primary patrons?

If cheap sugary things are just last resort for poorer people and not craved because of acquired taste, then this hypothesis doesn't hold. But, my post was motivated out of personal disappointments by desserts at more expensive restaurants. If I just had a few 'duds' I would love recs for good, not that sweet desserts (specific ones at specific places please).

Hi,

When I encounter under-sweetened desserts, I don't think finances or class system, I think European.

(Gross generality here perhaps) European desserts tend to be less sweet than American. I happen to find European desserts often not sweet enough for my taste.

In Europe, currants are a favorite summer 'sweet' though as-is it is more sour than sweet. When they do add sugar, it is still too puckerish for me.

I don't especially like scones when prepared to European tastes. The jam and clotted cream heaped on them is the only way they are acceptable to me. When I do make them at home, very rarely that is, I add a few more tablespoons of sugar than the recipe calls for as well as double or more the quantity of raisins or dried currants.

Desserts are like French fries, I know I don't need it, they may not be good for me, but please let my poison taste great.

Regards,

I think the whole sugar thing can go in more than one direction. While my sugar intake was somewhat controlled while I was a kid at home, I went a bit crazy once I was on my own, both in college and in my early years in the business world. I think it became a vicious cycle, trying to keep my blood sugar up as my body fought to get it down. I suspect it is because of this that I don't react all that well to sugar any more. It (sugar and, even more so, high fructose corn syrup) makes me feel bad, so I've cut back dramatically. Having cut back, I find that I really enjoy -- prefer in fact -- desserts with less sugar. Howver, if I start on sweets, I can get sucked back into that craving cycle, but as long as I don't eat much that's sweet, I prefer stuff that's not so sweet.

Oddly enough, if I have to choose between sweet and savory, I'll pick savory every time. Even as a kid, I prefered savory to sweet, buying cheese instead of candy when I stopped at a store with friends on the way home from school. But if I get started on sweets, I'm in trouble.

So it isn't just class, it's also body chemistry and history.

Cathy2 wrote:Hi,

When I encounter under-sweetened desserts, I don't think finances or class system, I think European.

(Gross generality here perhaps) European desserts tend to be less sweet than American. I happen to find European desserts often not sweet enough for my taste.

I agree with your assessment, Cathy. My parents were blue-collar European immigrants and forever disgusted by most cakes and pastries they'd find here. Baked goods were usually homemade, with the occasional torte from Lutz, or pastries from Kennessy's (spelling?). I suppose I'm a product of that environment, and look for desserts where the dominant flavor is from the fruit or chocolate or spice, not a blast of sugar that's there to cover up what seem to be inferior ingredients.

By the way, when I say "Lutz" I'm referring to the Lutz of the 60s through the 70s. We stopped shopping there in the early 80s or maybe even the late 70s. The quality just seemed to drop somewhere around there.

HI,

We're on the same wavelength: Lutz was our special occasion cake provider for many years. It is no longer our dessert of choice any longer. It has even gotten worse over the last 2 years or so.

Regards,

ToniG wrote:The best discussions of the ways in which sugar has been and is related to class come from Sidney Mintz, whose book Sweetness and Power I have praised many times on this board. But more related to your argument about the modern rejection of sugar among the upper class would be this quote from his essay "Sugar and Morality," from Mintz's own collection of essays entitled [i]Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past

My library has a few books by Mintz, most of which are centered around Caribbean and Latin American history (both of which are inseparable from the sugar trade). But, in the texts you mentioned is his main goal to analyze the function and development of taste, or is it to describe the role of sugar in a historical context?

pugsley wrote:My library has a few books by Mintz, most of which are centered around Caribbean and Latin American history (both of which are inseparable from the sugar trade). But, in the texts you mentioned is his main goal to analyze the function and development of taste, or is it to describe the role of sugar in a historical context?

I'm not quite halfway through S&P at the moment. It's anthropology, not biology or physiology, but he does try to cite some science, at least in the first chapter where he basically assays the taste for sweets in cultures around the world. (He also has a bit on Bemba foodways that was very interesting in light of the recent LTH Ghanaian dinner -- the basic outlay of their food is very similar to what we had, although he quotes another scholar as writing that the Bemba despise the European style meal which mixes multiple dishes, something we certainly did!)

pugsley wrote:But, rather that the rich may have a preference, derived from acquired tastes, for less sugary desserts.

I have a suspicion that the pattern you're seeing is more to do about how taste develops generally, and probably even taste in the more aesthetic sense. I think that sweet, salty, fatty tastes are rewarding at a fundamental level, probably because of biological factors. To develop a taste for other than that, one needs time, money, and social context which I think leads to the skew you perceive. I think at a low level you can similarly make simple analogies to taste in music or the arts that reflect the same patterns.

germuska wrote:I think that sweet, salty, fatty tastes are rewarding at a fundamental level, probably because of biological factors. To develop a taste for other than that, one needs time, money, and social context which I think leads to the skew you perceive. I think at a low level you can similarly make simple analogies to taste in music or the arts that reflect the same patterns.

This music analogy is interesting, because it leads to the conclusion that the masses (not just the rich) can have elevated (not limited to primal) tastes if conditions are in place to allow this. We once had music education in our public schools, and we once had a mass media that resisted purveying lowest-common-denominator entertainment, and the result was that what was popular in music was also what was good, and vice versa (with the likes of Sinatra on the charts, and a healthy market for the music of Gershwin, Arlen, Rodgers, Berlin, Kern, etc., and for classical music). Today, while good music exists here and there, there is an antithetical relationship between popular and good. But it wasn't always so. Which suggests the same can be true for food.

I think that sweet, salty, fatty tastes are rewarding at a fundamental level, probably because of biological factors. To develop a taste for other than that, one needs time, money, and social context which I think leads to the skew you perceive. I think at a low level you can similarly make simple analogies to taste in music or the arts that reflect the same patterns.

I actually think there are really substantial parallels between the development of tastes being discussed in this thread and the development of visual sensibilities (i.e. the ability to appreciate images or "art") as discussed by people like Bourdieu. Isn't it all just a matter of cultural capital? I've only read Bourdieu from an art historical perspective, i.e. I don't know if he ever wrote about food, but money buys choice and, for the purposes of this discussion, can buy a relatively diversified (or discriminating, discerning, picky, etc) gustatory palette on which 1) desserts even exist in the first place and 2) there is a spectrum of sweetness about which to think.

I don't know if he ever wrote about food, but money buys choice and, for the purposes of this discussion, can buy a relatively diversified (or discriminating, discerning, picky, etc) gustatory palette

I can't lay my hands on the exact quote, but I think it was Truman Capote who observed something to the effect that the rich are different from you and me in that they live in enormous homes and eat tiny vegetables.

Mintz endeavors to explain the role of sugar in historical, political and economic terms, and doesn’t deal much with the science of taste, and at any rate he is more interested in those aspects of taste that are culturally constructed, rather than inborn. His essay on sugar that I cited deals with an earlier era’s efforts to imbue the consumption of sugar with immorality: the British abolitionist movement, recognizing the connection between the production of sugar and the slave trade, equated the consumption of sugar with murder. One abolitionist wrote that “in every pound of sugar used…we may be considered as consuming two ounces of human blood…” Today, Mintz argues, those who forswear sugar don’t have a political rationale but a status-related one. (That our diets are, in general, far sweeter than they used to be he would be the first to acknowledge. But the sugars contained in processed foods are not what he was addressing above; rather, he was speaking to those who eschew added sugar to register their position in elite, “sophisticated” society. As noted above, that there are class dynamics to the obesity problem is now a fairly common observation, backed up now by lots of scientific research, but Mintz was among the first to make it, I’d argue.) And in Sweetness and Power, of course, Mintz makes the point that the consumption of sugar in the West rose in tandem with the taste for coffee and tea, not coincidently as the Industrial Age flowered; sweetened caffeinated beverages were just what the new legions of factory workers needed to get them up and keep them alert on the job (as opposed to the beverage of choice in the pre-industrial age – ale – which was incompatible with industrial work). So highly sweetened products, at least historically, he would say, didn't increase in popularity just because they were tasty; they served a highly utilitarian function during the Industrial Revolution (and linked the fortunes, and political interests, of sugar plantation owners to the profits made by the owners of the new factories), and you could make the case that the lingering appetite for sweeter foods among the working class has its origins here. For those who enjoy these sorts of debates, I’d really recommend Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, as it includes many provocative essays (many of them related to sugar and some pretty similar to what’s in Sweetness and Power). The one he took the most flak for, however, is called “Eating American,” in which he argues that there is no such thing as American cuisine. That would be a good essay for the LTH book club to fight about!

rather, he was speaking to those who eschew added sugar to register their position in elite, “sophisticated” society.

Which is begging the question, isn't it? He's assuming that motive exists and then finding it.

At least put that way, I find it simplistic, even if not totally off-base.

Obviously, dining choices have a class component. If I like less sugared-up, more European-style desserts and am willing to dine in the sorts of expensive places that have them, class is mixed up in there in lots of ways, how I developed such a continental palate, why I think NoMi is a nice place for a dinner and Baker's Square isn't, and so on.

But I like to think I like these things because I like them for reasons, and have somewhat developed critical faculties, not because I'm robotically doing what it takes to signify my class to outsiders (how do they know how sweet my dessert is, anyway?) Before you decide whether my reason for reducing sugar is political or class-based, shouldn't you ask whether it's culinary?

All I have to add is one general observation.

Most of the men in my family drank alcohol. And they rarely eat dessert or anything sweet.

None of the men in my wife's family drink alcohol and they eat more sweet items than you would believe possible. My FIL's favorite food is homemade vanilla ice cream topped with home raised honey and topped with homemade maple syrup.

My father stopped drinking when he went on Coumadin ten years ago. Now, he has ice cream every night and occasionally bakes a cake or two. He wouldn't touch teh stuff for years.

I don't drink, and I don't like overly sweet desserts.

Sorry for being the exception

Not going for sweets when one has a proclivity for the "sauce" is pretty common, and reaching for sweets when one is "on the wagon" is also pretty common. (I have heard.)
Those misguided souls who don't drink at all are a separate population that probably varies widely in sweet consumption.

stewed coot wrote:Not going for sweets when one has a proclivity for the "sauce" is pretty common, and reaching for sweets when one is "on the wagon" is also pretty common. (I have heard.)
Those misguided souls who don't drink at all are a separate population that probably varies widely in sweet consumption.

Usually during detox, people eat 2-3 times what "normal" people would eat. When I was running the food service department at a detox center, it was amazing that people were consuming in eness of 3500-4000 calories per day. Soem of them, of course, were seriously malnourished

Mike G wrote:

But I like to think I like these things because I like them for reasons, and have somewhat developed critical faculties, not because I'm robotically doing what it takes to signify my class to outsiders (how do they know how sweet my dessert is, anyway?) Before you decide whether my reason for reducing sugar is political or class-based, shouldn't you ask whether it's culinary?

I seems as though you are on the nature side of the nature vs. nurture argument. Someone on the nurture side may argue that your culinary preferences are inseparable from society's influence. That you subconsciously choose what tastes good to you, in order to meet the expectations of the society you wish to assimilate with.

(note: I do not necessarily believe that)

Shaped by my environment? Certainly. The sum of societal influences with no will or aesthetic judgements of my own? Hogswallop.

I can't really tell from the posts thus far, but has anyone noticed a gender factor in sweets consumption? I know that, for as long as I've paid attention to what people eat, which is most of my life, I've found that my male friends have had far less interest in sweets than my female friends. This crossed lines of ethnicity and class. Guys might be polite if I baked cookies, and might nibble at one, but the gals all consumed them with joyous abandon.

Now, I don't know if his is physiological -- related to the greater muscle mass and need for a higher protein diet -- or hormonal, as most women have no trouble finding reasons to eat chocolate -- but it doesn't have anything to do with societal influences.

Maybe it's true that little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice -- but it's because we eat it, not because it's where we started.

But, Cynthia, doesn't your quote suggest that a feminine preference for sweets is in fact culturally influenced? Why would this childhood verse posit that girls are made of sugar and spice and boys are made of snips and snails? As infants, we both start out eating the same thing. Again, to return to Mintz, he has a lot to say about the gendered connection to sugar, but he isn't the only one. Mintz quotes from a 1919 German treatise on the subject, connecting the consumption of sweet things to luxury to women: "This connection between feminism (old style) and sugar has been of the greatest importance for the history of economic development. Because of the predominant role of women during early capitalism, sugar rapidly became a favorite food; and only because of the widespread use of sugar were such stimulants as cocoa, coffee and tea adopted so readily all over Europe." (But I should stop speaking for Mintz. For those who find this topic interesting, I'd again urge finding a copy of his work -- almost any of his books, actually, would be of interest to those who think about food and history.) And today, one only need point to Ethel's Chocolate Lounge as a case in point; I don't think anyone seriously considered calling the place Burt's Chocolate Lounge, at least not with the color scheme they chose. One can hardly get through a sitcom or a "chic flick" without having the main female character soothe herself with a quart of ice cream when she's depressed. In similar moments, men shoot hoops or drink beer. Now I know that in the real world there are women who don't like sweets and men who prefer them to beer, so there's no need to refute me on that point. But until eating disorders affect as many boys as they do girls, then it's safe to assume that both genders are not being being treated to the same messages about food and about their bodies. Do we all have individual agency? Of course, and no serious scholar suggests otherwise; not all women have eating disorders or wolf down chocolate in their unhappy moments. But are our choices continually shaped by forces we are often only dimly aware of, or sometimes entirely in the dark about? Yes, and I'd say the "sugar and spice" quote is a case in point.

Possibly, except for two things.

I went to a very polyglot, international college, and many of the people of whom I was speaking had never heard the verse and had not grown up with the idea.

And just having heard that verse does not indicate social rank, which was the initial point being made -- not just, did you grow up in the U.S., but did you grow up in the upper class.

When I encounter under-sweetened desserts, I don't think finances or class system, I think European.

This reminds me of what a German once told me about why Europeans always have trouble with American beverages: "You always make your soft drinks much too sweet; and then you serve them way too cold so that you can't taste it."