Sugar: an Aesthetic, Cognitive, and Sensorial Learning Experience

Sugar has played a pivotal role in human history, both in biology and civilization. Sugar provides the essential energy and pleasure but it also played a crucial role in the history of colonialism and slavery.

Have you ever thought about these questions while you enjoy some tasty sweets? Does a spoonful of sugar help the medicine go down or increase the chance of needing more medicine? How does the dark colonial history of sugar production and consumption affect our current world? What does our conception, knowledge, and sensorial experience of sugar help us understand our culture, society, health, and well-being?

Join us in a unique learning experience of sugar through music and theatrical performance, lecture, and food.

Marketa McCoy (PhD student, Drama) and Daniel Richardson (PhD student, Music) will present "Something Sweet, Something Fatal," an original piece with live jazz and dramatic monologue that explores the life and untimely death of jazz legend Eric Dolphy. This powerful performance exposes the hidden dangers of excessive sugar consumption and confronts the devastating echoes of medical bias across generations.

Professor Mahtab Jafari (Pharmaceutical Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) will present a brief lecture on the dual impact of sugar and discuss how high sugar intake contributes to metabolic disorder and may affect mental health. While natural sugars in whole foods provide necessary nutrients, limiting added sugars is essential for reducing disease risk and maintaining physiological homeostasis.

To enhance your learning experience, Chef Daniel (Demonstration Kitchen, ARC) will prepare a menu of healthy dessert made of all natural ingredients, with no added sugar. You will have a chance to learn about nutrients, eating habits, healthier dietary choices, and the best ways to optimize human health span.

Directions: Go to the ARC, let the front desk know you’re here for the event, and go up the stairs and turn left, follow that hall all the way down and then turn right, the Kitchen is the last door down that hall. You will see our check in desk. See you there!

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