sweetness and power by mintz

in the beginning mintz discusses the importance of food in our diet not just as a biological need but a social one as well. Mintz explains that through colonization, sugar went from being for the wealthy people of England and into the everyday food of the poor. because more sugar is being consumed now in England they needed more slaves to do the work, so they got slaves from africa and brought them to plantations located in british west indies. even though other countries at this time were also producing sugar like the arabs had different way of producing some sugars, but still no country at the time imported more slaves then britain or consumed more sugar. this also leads to mintz discussion of slavery and brings in Marx's point of view that slavery in the plantations were a form of capitalism. mintz later on states that european plantations were not capitalist  because "the capitalist mode of production" is based on free labor (59). later on scholars started saying that the plantations was taking up the english wealth but mintz said that's not true because it helped britain gain wealth. but he also says that they were people who at the time were convinced they needed sugar to survive so they did all they could to keep the plantation going, mintz called these people capitalists and the slaves proletarians (61).