...luck and one for over-production'. (1) Unlike today, many Australians seventy years ago did not consider large amounts sugar in their diet to be harmful. Moreover, the Australian sugar industry was viewed favourably by sections of the community and deliberately protected by an embargo on sugar imports. Politicians argued that the successful European occupation of the semi-tropical and tropical parts of the continent and the defence of the country was considered to be dependent upon a strong and thriving sugar industry, which relied upon its domestic consumers to purchase the industry's products. (2)

At the time of McGuire's visit to North Queensland, the apparent annual consumption of sugar by Australians was around fifty-five kilograms per capita. They continued to consume roughly this amount annually until the late 1970s, placing Australians consistently among the top-ten consumers of cane sugar throughout the world. However, in the early 1980s apparent sugar consumption per capita in Australia began falling, dropping to forty-eight kilograms in 1984. Domestic consumers began to reduce their sugar intake, and the practice of adding an extra teaspoon of sugar in cups of tea or coffee to support the Australian sugar industry began to wane. The product was increasingly portrayed by health professionals as 'white and deadly', and Australians heeded their warnings. To combat sugar's growing negative image, the Australian sugar industry mounted a vigorous campaign to reverse declining sugar consumption in Australia.

An analysis of apparent sugar consumption patterns of colonial Australians has been completed. (3) A very brief examination of the apparent sugar consumption habits of Australians since 1958 has been undertaken, and some publications have noted that twentieth-century Australians did eat large, if not excessive, amounts of sugar. (4) The Australian sugar industry's campaign to reverse declining Australian sugar consumption during the 1980s, however, has not been documented, despite the fact that the television and print advertisements that formed the basis of the campaign won a number of national awards. (5) Hence, this article aims to redress this omission in the historiography of the Australian sugar industry and broaden the literature on the history of food in Australia generally.

I begin this account by examining the patterns of Australian sugar consumption since the 1880s. The growing concern among health professionals about such excessive sugar consumption is discussed in the second part of this article. 'A Natural Part of Life', the Australian sugar industry's campaign to reverse declining domestic apparent sugar consumption per capita during the 1980s is outlined in the third section, and an evaluation of the campaign is presented in the final section of this article. The conclusion drawn from this evaluation is that the Australian sugar industry failed in its aims to reverse declining Australian apparent sugar consumption per capita, despite more Australians by the early 1990s believing that the product was not particularly harmful.

Throughout this account, figures will be provided for the apparent consumption of sugar per capita by Australians. These figures need to be considered with caution. Apparent consumption figures are calculated by summing total annual production, adding the amount of imports and subtracting exports. According to a team of Australian nutritionists headed by Katrine Baghurst, apparent consumption data have 'a large error component when they are used to describe the actual intake of individuals in the population because of the losses that can occur between the production of a foodstuff and its consumption by individuals in the community'. The National Dietary Surveys of adults and children carried out in 1983 and 1985 indicated that sugar intake was 148 grams per day for children (approximately 54 kg per annum) and 107 grams for adults aged 25-64 years (approximately 39 kg per annum). Average apparent sugar consumption per capita over 1980-84 was 49.9 kg, or approximately 3.4 kg higher than the average of the figures obtained for adults and children in the National Dietary Surveys. Therefore, the figures presented in this article overestimate actual per capita consumption, but they do provide some indication of the trends that have occurred in sugar consumption in Australia since 1900. Moreover, this data is the best available, as there was little information available from surveys of individuals before 1980 and no consistent dietary intake monitoring system has been place in Australia since Federation. (6)

Patterns of consumption 1880 to 1980

European Australians from the outset of settlement in this country consumed large quantities of sugar, using it to sweeten their beverages, in the brewing of their beer and distillation of rum, as an ingredient in many recipes, and even as a medicine. In 1882, the British authors Charles Lock, George Wigner and Robert Harland, in their survey of sugar-growing and refining across the globe, reported that colonial Australians in 1878 used 35.7 kg (78.7 pounds) of sugar per capita annually, more than in any other part of the world. (7) Four main reasons can be advanced to explain why Australians led the world in apparent sugar consumption per capita towards the end of the nineteenth century. First, many rural workers throughout Australia received a standard weekly ration that contained two pounds of sugar. (8) Second, most Australians had access to regular supplies of high-quality white sugar, a result of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company's well-run and technologically advanced refining facilities in Australia and its extensive network of distributors throughout the country. (9) Third, from the late 1850s onwards, prices for all types of sugar declined, reaching on average of two pence per pound in the late 1890s. Prices were driven down as importers of sugar and Australia's sugar-refiners engaged in fierce competition, reducing prices as each sought to dominate the market and eliminate rivals. (10) Fourth, as falling Australian sugar prices in the mid-nineteenth century made sugar more affordable, wage levels and average income per capita for Australian workers rose. Mid-nineteenth-century Australian society was fluid, with considerable upward mobility leading to the formation of a large middle class with the capacity to spend their income on consumer goods, including more sugar and products containing sugar (such as biscuits, jams, aerated water and confectionary). (11)

The willingness of Australians to eat ever-increasing amounts of sugar continued during the 1880s and 1890s. By the mid-1900s, apparent sugar consumption by Australians stood at around 51 kg per capita annually (Table 1). The Queensland government statistician produced figures in 1909 showing that Australians still remained the world's leading sugar consumers per capita, using five kilograms per annum more than their relatives in Great Britain. (12) Australian apparent sugar consumption per capita remained around 50 kg during the period 1905-1915, but rose again by nearly 10 per cent during the late 1910s and averaged approximately 56 kg during the 1920s (Table 1).

A survey of global sugar consumption for the 'League of Nations Memorandum on Sugar' found that Australia had the highest sugar consumption per capita of the twenty-three countries surveyed during the period 1923-24 to 1927-28. The geographer Charles Robertson claimed that such a rate of consumption had been attained due to...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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