“Archana Ashok Chaure has given her life to sugar. She was married off to a sugar cane laborer in western India at about 14 — ‘too young,’ she says, ‘to have any idea what marriage was.’ Debt to her employer keeps her in the fields. Last winter, she did what thousands of women here are pressured to do when faced with painful periods or routine ailments: She got a hysterectomy, and got back to work. This keeps sugar flowing to companies like Coke and Pepsi.” NYT (Gift Article) with a bitter look at the modern-day slavery that puts the sugar in our sweets. The Brutality of Sugar: Debt, Child Marriage and Hysterectomies. This might come as news to you, but it’s old news to the companies that benefit. “Sugar producers and buyers have known about this abusive system for years. Coca-Cola’s consultants, for example, visited the fields and sugar mills of western India and, in 2019, reported that children were cutting sugar cane and laborers were working to repay their employers. They documented this in a report for the company, complete with an interview with a 10-year-old girl.”