History’s “Built America Presents” usually focuses on bridges, skyscrapers, and dams. This time, however, it’s tackling something even more American: processed sugar. “Food Fights,” a four-hour special, chronicles the sweet, occasionally bitter history of the early 20th-century food industry, focusing on the men — and they were almost exclusively men — who built empires out of chocolate, caramel, and the then-novel concept of mass production.
Forget gilded ages. This was the sugared age, and “Food Fights” profiles two of its biggest titans: Milton Hershey, the man who bet everything on a single Pennsylvania town and a singular confection, and the Mars family, whose ambition was as vast as their eventual product line. The episode doesn’t shy away from the ruthless tactics and casual monopolies that built these fortunes, charting their rise through world wars and economic booms, periods of both scarcity and excess.
While the doc does a solid job of contextualizing these sugar-fueled stories within broader historical trends — the pressures of wartime rationing, the explosion of consumerism in the Roaring ’20s — it truly shines when it digs into the personalities. These weren’t just businessmen; they were obsessive tinkerers, marketing pioneers, and occasionally, outright oddballs. “Food Fights” suggests their quirks were as crucial to their success as any shrewd business decision.
Ultimately, “Food Fights” serves as a reminder that the history of American innovation isn’t always pretty, and it’s often found in the most unexpected places – like the bottom of a chocolate bar wrapper.
“Food Fights” premieres Sunday, December 22nd at 8/7c on History.
