Sugar Changed the World

Reading Check questions are designed for in-class review on key plot points or for quick verbal or written assessments. Multiple Choice and Short Answer Quizzes create ideal summative assessments, and collectively function to convey a sense of the work’s tone and themes.

Prologue and Part 1

Reading Check

1. What do the authors call the era before sugar spread around the world?

2. What “sweet reed” did Alexander the Great’s expedition find growing in India?

3. What was sugar used for, besides cooking, in sixth-century Iran?

4. What innovation in sugar production occurred in Egypt?

5. What tradition began when a French count opened his land for public gatherings?

Multiple Choice

1. What did a member of Marc Aronson’s extended family invent a way to do?

A) get sugar from beets

B) standardize honey flavors

C) color sugar

D) store sugar for long periods

2. Where did sugar cane originally come from?

A) Turkey

B) Iran

C) Guyana

D) New Guinea

3. What language does the word “khanda,” the origin of the word “candy,” come from?

A) Farsi

B) Sanskrit

C) Arabic

D) Greek

4. What was Jundi Shapur?

A) an ancient Persian medicine

B) an ancient Indian temple

C) an ancient Persian university

D) an ancient Indian dessert

5. What historical event spread important knowledge from the Muslim world into Europe?

A) the Crusades

B) the Siege of Constantinople