Sugar: The High Cost Many Pay So You Can Consume the Sweet Stuff

Note from Connie: Thanks to a new documentary, "The Price of Sugar," Americans will now have a chance to get the real scoop about their beloved, but destructive sweetener.

This film gives people a shocking, horrifying, inside look at the many hardships workers endure just so the sweet white powder makes it to our supermarket shelves. For a sneak preview, watch the trailer now. SUGAR SHOCK! Blog researcher/writer Jennifer tells us about this eye-opening film, which I'm hoping to catch very soon.

People already have a chance to learn about sugar's many health dangers by reading Connie and Dr. Sinatra's book, SUGAR SHOCK!

Now Americans need to learn the sour truth about sugar-growing and gathering, because if they did, I believe that they'd be a lot less likely to buy this sweetener.

Now, thanks to the new documentary "The Price of Sugar" -- which has been reviewed by New York Times and a number of other publications -- people are discovering the harrowing conditions workers endure just to gather sugar cane.

The film -- which is directed by filmmaker Bill Haney and narrated by Oscar-winning acting legend Paul Newman -- teaches us, for example, that Haitian workers are basically forced into indentured servitude in the sugar cane fields in neighboring Dominican Republic.

These Haitian workers are snatched from their homes, herded into barracks and forced to do the back-breaking work of harvesting sugar cane 14 hours a day, seven days a week, for less than $1 a day.

And because they earn so little, these workers can only afford one meal a day. So the majority of their calories come from the one food they can get: sugar.

All of this so that people in America, which the New York Times says imports a great deal of Dominican sugar, can have all the ice cream, cookies, and candy they want.

Heartbreaking doesn't even begin to describe this.

Jennifer Moore for SUGAR SHOCK! Blog