Which text evidence best supports the authors' claim
that sugar became an essential source of energy to
English workers in the 1800s?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.
Traditionally, English workers had brewed their own
beer, which they drank along with bread, their other
major source of food. A Scottish writer of the late
1700s noticed that tea had become an economical
substitute to the middle and lower classes of society
for malt liquor," which they could no longer afford.
"Tea," which had to be transported from Asia, and
"sugar brought from the West Indies ... compose a
drink cheaper than beer." The new drink soon became
not only cheap but necessary.
O "Traditionally, English workers had brewed their own
beer, which they drank along with bread, their other
major source of food."
O "England was the first country in the world to shift
from making most of its money in traditional places,
such as farms, mines, or small shops, to factories."
O "Starting around 1800, sugar became the staple
food that allowed the English factories—the most
advanced economies in the world—to run."
O "Sugar supplied the energy, the hint of nutrition, the
sweet taste to go with the warmth of tea that even
the poorest factory worker could look forward to."
Why did the English, in particular, need a low-cost,
filling hot drink? In a word: factories. England was the
first country in the world to shift from making most of
its money in traditional places, such as farms, mines,
or small shops, to factories. In the early 1800s the
English figured out how to build machines to weave
cloth and how to organize workers so that they could