What is the historical and cultural significance of sugar?

In the historical context of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, culturally, having sugar meant that one was of higher economic and, thus, social class. Middle and upper class people in Great Britain consistently enjoyed sugar (as well as molasses and rum) as a result of one the most brutal examples of slavery in human history. Manufactured goods were traded in West Africa in exchange for enslaved African people who were sent to work in sugar plantations in the West Indies. Conditions were horrific on the plantations, from the sheer daily amount that enslaved Africans worked to the brutality they experienced at the hands of plantation owners and overseers. Mortality rates were extremely high and the enslaved Africans were treated as a mere commodity that fit into the Triangle Trade scheme of the Europeans. While well-to-do folks in England enjoyed sugar, enslaved Africans suffered immense atrocities.
Additionally, the indigenous peoples of the islands were killed in mass and enslaved as well. Because the indigenous people knew the lay of the land, however, they were harder to enslave as they were able to escape easier and didn't have to adjust to foreign territory. As such, Europeans chose to commit a genocide against the indigenous people of the West Indies, instead, in order to secure the land for sugar plantations. Today, sugar is a source of unhealthiness and chronic health conditions. Sugarcane workers today in Central America are not much better off than the slaves of the seventeenth century. Workers experience harsh working conditions and minuscule pay. Child labor is also prevalent in the sugar cane industry. Just as the English enjoyed the fruits of brutal labor from enslaved Africans, sugar consumed through Central American sugarcane production comes from conditions that can only be described as a step above slavery conditions. In Central America, the sugarcane crop is known as "the hunger crop" because workers receive such little pay for their grueling work that they and their families often go hungry.

Sugar played a role in the development of the transatlantic slave trade. The Portuguese started sugar plantations with slave labor in Brazil, and, in the 17th century, sugarcane plantations were introduced in the Caribbean. Sugar became immensely popular in Western Europe. Sugar is a labor-intensive crop that resulted in the wide-scale use of slaves, imported mainly from West Africa, to cultivate. During the 17th-19th centuries, approximately 12 million Africans were brought to the New World as slaves, mainly first to the West Indies to grow sugar cane. 
In the resulting "triangle trade," Europeans produced manufactured goods such as textiles, rum, and guns to trade for slaves, who were then forcibly brought to the New World in the brutal "Middle Passage." As a result of this trade, new cultures developed in North, Central, and South America, and, as result of the growth of manufactured products for export, Western Europe's manufacturing and banking sectors developed, particularly in England. 
Sugar also holds an important role in Western culture, as the commodity now makes up a large percentage of our diet. We eat an estimated 100 pounds of sugar per person per year, and sugar is an ingredient in many of the foods we love, including fast food and products made by the candy industry. Partly as a result, Western society is also faced with an obesity epidemic.