Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.

We all crave sweetness, now more than ever since there are so many ways to satisfy that need. And there are still sugar plantations where the work is brutal. In places like the Dominican Republic (Haiti's island neighbor), some sugar work is not very different from what it was for Marina's Indian ancestors in British Guiana: hard, poorly paid labor by people who are often mistreated. But for most of us, chemists have more to say about how we satisfy that taste than do overseers. When sugar is in the headlines, critics speak about how much of it we eat, not who picked the crop. Doctors warn that young people are gaining too much weight from eating sugary snacks; parents learn that kids who drink too many sweet sodas can cycle between manic sugar "highs" and grinding sugar "crashes." No one worries about where the sweetness comes from. Our diet was transformed by the Age of Sugar, but that era is over.

Which statement is the most objective summary of the passage?

Craving sweetness leads to developing poor habits around food.
New sources of sweetness use better techniques than the old sources did.
Chemists conduct work that is not interesting to much of the public.
Sugar cane is no longer the main source of sweetness for most people.

Why were the English the first to build factories to mill cloth? Because of the wealth they gained, the trade connections they made, and the banking systems they developed in the slave and sugar trade. Indeed, the cheap cloth from the factories was used to clothe the slaves. English factories, you might say, were built, run, and paid for by sugar.

In 1800, when the English were consuming their eighteen pounds of sugar a year, around 250,000 tons of sugar was produced worldwide—almost all sent to Europe. A century later, in 1900, when sugar was used in jams, cakes, syrups, and tea, and every modern country was filled with factories, world production of sugar reached six million tons. By that time, the average person in England ate ninety pounds of sugar a year—and in the early twentieth century, that number kept rising. (Americans today eat only about 40 pounds of cane sugar a year, but that is because other forms of sweeteners, such as corn syrup, are now cheaper than cane sugar. If you consider all forms of sweetener, Americans eat an average of 140 pounds every year.)

How do the details in this passage support the authors’ purpose?

The authors include details about how much sugar Americans consume to persuade readers that modern diets are unhealthy.
The authors include details about the changes in diets over time to inform readers about how sugar has transformed what we eat.
The authors include details about how much sugar people have eaten over time to entertain readers with surprising statistics.
The authors include details about American and British diets to persuade readers that eating habits now are healthier than they were in the past.