Honey and Sugar, 'Principle of scarcity' in these sweeteners

 

High intrinsic value of honey and sugar:

Honey and sugar are the best food sweeteners in the world.

Honey, one of the oldest food sweeteners we've used since time immemorial.

[caption id="attachment_5545" align="alignright" width="323"] Honey and sugar[/caption]

Honey has been popular since the early days of human history thanks to its intense sweetness and unique floral scent, but it was not a commodity that everyone could eat. This is because it was very difficult and difficult to collect.

Therefore, honey at that time fits the definition of a precious commodity because it has a high intrinsic value and is difficult to supply.

Rare things are generally considered extremely valuable.

That's why rare things are expensive.

You may be wondering why we are talking about it for granted, but in fact, it is because this is a natural but not natural phenomenon.

Why are rare items highly valued? And why is it traded so expensively?

When we spend most of our time, we consider rare items to be ‘worth it’.

More precisely, the intrinsic value of the product is high, and it is difficult to supply a product with such high intrinsic value, so it is considered rare and expensive.

Would that be true?

But here is a change. That's where sugar came in.

History of sugar:

Sugar first appeared in history in the writings of Herodotus.

[caption id="attachment_5550" align="alignleft" width="168"] Darius the great[/caption]

It was said that while Darius I of Persia was conquering India, his soldiers found a "honey-gathering reed".

And the Indians also knew that the very honey reed, the sugar cane tree, could be boiled over moderate heat to produce dark brown crystals. This was the first sugar, cane sugar.

It was the descendants of Muhammad who occupied and traded from northwestern India to North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula that advanced this cane sugar.

Adopting sugar and sugar cane cultivation in India, they planted sugar cane in Egypt, North Africa and the Middle East to produce sugar.

 

[caption id="attachment_5551" align="alignright" width="278"] cultivation of sugar cane[/caption]

Muslims were the first to introduce processes in the cultivation of sugar cane and sugar production, and even learn techniques to filter molasses through refining and to make white sugar.

Sugar was basically expensive because it was a crystal that could only be obtained by putting in a lot of manpower and firepower immediately after harvest.

In particular, refined sugar was more expensive because the refining process required many steps.

For this reason, at the courts of Muslim monarchs, sugar crafts, edible and beautiful decorations, were used as a display of the monarch's wealth and power.

Sugar, a world-wide commodity:

With the advent of sugar, the reputation of honey plummeted. Of course, it was still a difficult product for commoners who had to worry about eating right away, but it was evaluated as less valuable than before.

 

[caption id="attachment_5553" align="alignleft" width="204"] Sugar a world wide commodity[/caption]

This assessment will change again after European countries have established sugar plantations around the world.

The process of refining sugar from sugar cane was difficult to produce because it required time, labor, and firepower, but slavery and plantation made it possible.

Since then, sugar has truly become a commodity produced everywhere in the world, and its value has plummeted.

Until then, pure white sugar was highly valued for being the purest white sugar, but as production increased and became common,

 

That value has gone down. Now, sugar production has become much more mass-produced and consumption has become more popular than in the past.

Now, the opposite happens to the past.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, honey, which had not been well received compared to sugar for a while, regained its former status.

Nowadays, white sugar is treated as a low-quality product, while cane sugar, which is unrefined sugar, is suddenly evaluated as a more valuable product for all kinds of reasons.

The essence of the product has not changed, but people's evaluation has changed simply because of its rarity, and from then on, the 'reason that it must have value' is attached to that rarity.

Difference between commonly used form and natural product:

Many people view mulberry and seokcheong as more luxurious products than honey obtained through beekeeping.

However, there is no evidence to suggest that Mulberry and Seokcheong are more luxurious and valuable commodities when taken soberly.

The only difference is whether it is a common product that can be produced through an artificial process or is difficult to obtain.

This is the difference between the commonly used form and the natural product.

Rather, in terms of food safety, natural honey such as mulberry or seokcheong is dangerous in that the sucrose from flowers collected by bees is not clear, and poisons harmful to the human body are often mixed.

 

Honey and sugar were mentioned as examples, but there are countless examples of this.

The key is this that Even if the nature of the product itself does not change, when scarcity occurs due to a change in supply, people will re-evaluate the product.

And as a result of this re-evaluation, it is usually priced much higher than before.

Re-evaluation due to scarcity in 'Honey and sugar':

What has actually changed is scarcity, but when people re-evaluate their values, they find or create justifications for those values.

And product suppliers are also willing to provide valid reasons for their value.

The reason this happens seems to be in the nature of people to differentiate.

People are mostly trend-followers, but even within them, they try to make a difference from others.

The scarcity of the commodities you consume is very well suited to make such a difference.

A scarce commodity with limited access is easy to create characteristics of a group that can access the commodity.

For this reason, in the era of mass production, mass-produced products cannot but suffer from chronic undervaluation.

In an era of oversupply, mass-produced products are not suitable for differentiation.

These days, when consumption has become a means of revealing one's group and class, this phenomenon is getting worse.