In the Raw: Sugar Exposed

Dear Readers,

Welcome back and thank you for joining us again this year! I am absolutely delighted to present our first issue of the year. Before I introduce this issue, I’d like to take a moment to thank all the members of the 2006-2007 Editorial Board for their hard work and commitment, and welcome our new team of Editorial and Administrative board members.

To start off this year, we will be examining a sweet theme that will cater to scientists, economists and sweet-tooths alike! Craved by many and traded in every region of the world, sugar has had a pervasive, wide-ranging impact on areas such as human health, global economics, and world history.

We begin this issue with an article by Steven Thorne which introduces diabetes – an on-going health issue relating to the consumption of sugar. The impacts of sugar and socioeconomic status on human health are further analyzed by Farheen Shaikh and Harisha Sivalinkam in our cover story “Close to Home: Is Diabetes your friendly new Neighbour?” To continue our popular Regions in Perspective mini-series, we will take you to Mexico, where Laura Elmhirst examines how a nation which profits from sugar exportation is now struggling to meet the increasing costs of healthcare in her article “The Bitter Effects of Sugar on Mexico.” Shifting gears, Catherine Tsalikis considers the plight of sugar workers in her article “The Exploitation of Sugar Workers : Then and Now,” while Farhana Rahman discusses the impacts of sugar on the environment in her article “Bittersweet Sugar: Environment at Risk as Productions Rise.” Finally, we will also feature an opinions piece by Natalie Krajinovic entitled “Sugar Leaves Bad Taste in Mouth of Consumers,” and a photographic report by Amanda Boyce on the Redpath Sugar Factory in Toronto.

As always, we hope that you will enjoy this issue as much as we have enjoyed producing it. We welcome any comments and feedback, and encourage interested readers to join The Toronto Globalist by emailing us at toronto.globalist@utoronto.ca. A heartfelt thanks goes out to the University of Toronto’s Student Union, the Hart House Good Ideas Fund, the New College Student Council, and to all our staff, writers, and supporters for making this issue possible. Happy reading!

Sincerely,

Alexander Lim
Editor-in-Chief and Executive Director
The Toronto Globalist