Handout: Ch. 4 Sweet Nexus: Sugar and the Origins of the Modern World

I found the phrase "people produce what they do not consume, and consume what they do not produce" confusing. I'm still unclear by what it means.
In the 4th century, sugar was discovered by Greek conquerors in north western India. Ancient Europeans called it "Honey from reeds."  Sugar became a luxury good that was introduced into western Asia and Europe in the later Middle Ages. By the 15th century, sugar was being grown in southern Spain and in Portugal. The Portuguese brought the sugar plantation from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. There they used African enslaved labor to work the crops. I found this very racist and unfair. It's annoying when people are aware of the discrimination and don't do anything about it. It's not right to degrade people based on skin color or where they are from. The African slaves had to plant, weed, and harvest the cane. The conditions they lived in were nasty and brutal.