When the National Cultural Foundation (NCF) signalled the return of the Crop Over Festival earlier this year, following a two-year hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency rekindled the festival’s spirit with an interesting tag line.The theme of the launch event for the national celebration was Sugar Mek It Sweet. Of course, the cultural development agency was referencing the fact that sugar and the sugar cane crop were inextricably linked to who we are as a people and our history, that Barbadians were prepared to subvert what was a period of slavery and subjugation into something celebratory and reflective.But the Sugar Mek It Sweet theme also called into question our obsession with sugar and sugary foods, to the point where sugar has become a serious threat to our health. Some may argue that with the global recognition in the danger of too much sugar in our diets, and the declining demand for the commodity, we too should have been weaning ourselves off the sugar crave.
