Slave-produced sugar fueled the calories of Britain’s industrial working class by 1850.

Evidence

As production grew and the market increased, the craze for the sweetener gradually trickled down from elites to the laboring poor. By 1850, sweetened tea, the combination of East and West Indian imports of tea and sugar, was a stimulant, calorie boost, and hot meal substitute for English men, who were working more and more in city factories than on country farms. The increasing supply from sugar plantations lowered the cost and made cheap sugar “the single most important addition to the British working-class diet during the nineteenth century,” according to Sidney Mintz. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 276

Categorization

• XREF: This is the strongest causal link between slavery and industrial working-class life — directly relevant to distinguishing the reframing argument (foundational) from peripheral framing.
• ADDENDUM: The slave-produced sweetener that fueled factory workers echoes ‘On Sacrifice’ logic of cheap wealth extraction underwriting a stratified society’s laboring class.