Radioactive Donuts

(---thanks to Brad Delany for the title) After impulsive indulgence, the totality of choices must be weighed in the gut... At such times the dark colonial history of sugar comes back to haunt us: The triangular traffic that got our market system up and running: slavery, rum inebriation and pastries for London's shops… [1] What about our misgivings when we quiet a whining child with a monster cookie? Surely it weakens the ability to delay gratification. Don't we have second guesses over the flood of sweetness we invited, only to find that it undermines a precious means of motivation? Mother Nature gave us this set of sensory bells and whistles, to deliver an unmistakable reward... this was our way to visualize heaven by somatic means, so that body and mind can be uplifted together... Wage slavery is still happening in the Dominican Republic, chronic kidney disease in cane fields is still a by-product of the trade… [2] Omo Valley tribesmen and Tigray farmers are still the odd men out in a stacked labor market… [3] If appetites really do push us to the edge of a conflagration, then maybe all this gratification won't have been worth it… In the midst of a sugar buzz we suddenly realize: we weren't careful what we wished for. .................................... [1] 'The Barbaric History of Sugar in America, ' NEW YORK TIMES, Aug.14,2019 [2] 'Burning Sugarcane Possible Cause of Mystery Kidney Disease in Agricultural Workers, ' CU Anschutz Medical Campus Website. [3] 'State-led modernization of the Ethiopian sugar industry: questions of power and agency in lowland transformation, ' Journal of East African Studies: Volume 16,2022 - Issue 3