Is sugar cane endangered

Answer 1

Our bodies crave sweet, high-calorie foods. Prehistoric humans would have come across sugar infrequently, in seasonal fruits or wild honey, and would have probably gorged on the occasional calorie boost.

But since we started intensively farming and manufacturing sugar from beets and cane, it has become pervasive in diets the world over. Unlike our hunter-gatherer ancestors, most of us now have control over how often we can eat sugar. The trouble is we haven't yet evolved any change in our craving for it, so we consume far too much of it.

Dr Ana Claudia Araujo is a plant researcher at the Museum. After a career in Brazil studying tropical plants, she now researches biodiversity loss and studies plant species threatened with extinction.

She says, 'Sugar cane itself shouldn't be demonised. It's just a plant trying to survive and reproduce, but humans took advantage of what it could offer. Now we have become addicted and want more and more of it. It has become an issue for the planet and for our own health, but it's an issue of our own making.'

Answer 2

No, it is a cultivated crop, like corn. As long as people want sugar, there will be sugar cane.