SUGAR CONSUMPTION, TOTAL AND PER CAPITA, AND POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES, 1822 TO 1951 100 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 YEARS The upward trend in the per capita consumption of sugar in the United States has been interrupted only by wars and depressions. Per capita sugar consumption - Pounds products declined following World War II, consumption has remained far above the prewar level; possibly because they are usually sold at prices apparently lower than sugar prices, but actually only relatively so since corn products are substantially less sweet than sugar. In 1949, about 362,000 tons of corn sugar were sold, compared with 180,000 tons in 1935. Sales of corn sirup in 1949 amounted to 686,000 tons as compared with 456,000 tons in 1935. The corn sweeteners, less sweet than sugar, are rarely used in the home. Per capita consumption of corn sugar in 1949 in the United States amounted to about 4.9 pounds, as compared with only 2.8 pounds in 1935. For corn sirup the figures were 9.2 pounds in 1949 and 7.2 pounds in 1935. These increases are more than enough to offset the slight decrease in per capita consumption of cane and beet sugar from 1935 to 1949. Industrial Users of Sugar in the United States-Prior to World War II, between two-thirds and three-fourths of the sugar consumed in the United States was used in homes and in institutions such as hotels, restaurants, and hospitals. The proportion of total sugar consumption in homes had been gradually declining and that in industries had been increasing prior to World War II because of the tendency by consumers to purchase more baked, canned, frozen and other ready-to-eat foods instead of preparing the food in homes. Comparative consumption data beginning in 1929 are presented in Table 10. During the war, rationing cut down home use more drastically than industrial use, which increased percentagewise to about one-half the total quantity consumed in this country. In 1950, it amounted to 42.5 per cent of the total. In 1947, the last year for which detailed statistics of United States Type of Utilization TABLE 10 ESTIMATED UTILIZATION OF SUGAR BY MAJOR INDUSTRIAL GROUPS AND BY HOUSEHOLDS AND INSTITUTIONS, SELECTED YEARS, 1929-1951 1 489 525 630 750 700 679 570 609 648 699 666 1,775 1,913 2,337 3,050 3,100 2,583 2,573 2,964 3,062 3,520 3,238 4,542 4.737 4,370 4,304 3,058 2,522 2,975 4,036 4,527 4,753 4,192 6,317 6,650 6,707 7,354 6,158 5,105 5,548 7,000 7,589 8,273 7,430 28.1 71.9 28.8 34.8 41.5 50.3 50.6 46.4 42.3 40.3 42.5 43.6 71.2 65.2 58.5 49.7 49.4 53.6 57.7 59.7 57.5 56.4 SOURCE: United States Department of Agriculture. Industrial use figures for 1929, 1937, 1939 and 1947 from Bureau of the Census, for 1941, 1944, 1945 and 1946 from Office of Price Administration. Basis for industrial use statistics not exactly identical for different sources. 1 Estimates do not always cover total utilization. CHART XII SUGAR CONSUMPTION IN THE UNITED STATES BY MAJOR CATEGORIES, 1951 Nearly half the sugar used by United States consumers is purchased as an Bureau of the Census are available, 20,497 food manufacturing establishments in the United States used approximately 2,964,000 tons of sugar, raw value, as shown in Table 11 and Chart XII. Manufacturers of bottled soft drinks were the largest industrial users, closely followed by bakers and confectioners. Canners and ice cream manufacturers are other large industrial users. Sugar is an essential raw material for all these and other industries; without it they cannot operate. The 20,479 food industry plants using sugar in 1947 constituted about 8.5 per cent of the total number of manufacturing plants in the United States. They employed 697,000 persons, or 4.9 per cent of the total number of factory workers and paid these workers wages amounting to $1,733,000,000 or 4.4 per cent of all factory wages. Additional statistical information about the industrial use of sugar is given in Table 11, and deliveries of sugar by states in 1951 are shown in Table 12. Sugar's Use in Non-Food Industries-Sugar has many important uses outside the food industries. Large quantities in the form of molasses are required as a raw material for distillation of industrial alcohol. Such use was of especial significance during World War II, when large amounts of alcohol were needed to make vital war materials, particularly synthetic rubber. Molasses is used extensively, too, for livestock feed. Sugar is also essential in the preparation of many kinds of medicine and in the manufacture of various chemicals including acetone, butanol, calcium gluconate, carbon, citric acid, glue, glycerin, kojic acid, methanol, oxalic acid, sorbitol, yeast culture, and many others. Industry employs sugar in making cement, explosives, adhesives, chalk, dental cream, electrodes, embalming fluids, paint, paper sizing, photographic fluids, soaps, textile sizing, insecticides, polishes, varnishes, and in freezing various products. In recent years many new industrial uses for sugar have been developed which are becoming increasingly important. |