Sugar for sustenance: Nutrition studies in French colonial Morocc

Abstract

In interwar Morocco, French colonial policies aimed to transform the country into an export-oriented agricultural economy in which one-time small farmers became wage labourers on large-scale monoculture enterprises. But as a rapidly urbanising population lost its own means of food production, Protectorate efforts to alleviate 'colonial malnutrition' and low standards of living focused on the accessibility and affordability of sugar for the indigenous population. Sugar provided not just an economically and physiologically efficient calorie source, it also meshed with the French ethnographic constructions of the Moroccan diet. This article shows how French officials struggled to reconcile scientific ideas about Moroccans' biological needs with their foundational belief in Moroccan cultural difference.