Monday, January 31, 2011

Myth about Sugar

Using brown sugar seems to be 'in' at time. There are storys about the 'bleached' white sugar. "They use chloric acid and even worse mercury to bleach the sugar, don't eat the white sugar!"
Interestingly, every one who is warning me because of my white sugar has a straight  answer when I ask them 'why?' But they don't know it.
It is with all these rumors: many believers and no  knowledge.
And then there is Cane and Beet Sugar. Cane is best, no Beet is best.
In fact: sugar is sugar. Sugar is a specific chemical substance. It is the main energy source for nearly every living. Plants produce sugar using CO2, water and sun light. (This is a short description)
Cane, sugar beet and sugar palm all have the same so called 'Disacharid', that is the sugar that we use. And most interesting: clean sugar after crystallizing is naturally white! You can't make it whiter!
So what is brown sugar? It is nothing else than 'harvested sugar' still mixed with soil from the area where it came from. It is not clean sugar. The process of cleaning takes a lot of time. The solved sugar in the water-dirt-sugar solution has to crystallize. For this process is essential a special sort of lime stone. That means producing white sugar takes time and is costly.
Most countries now use beet sugar, especially in the northern hemisphere because the 'modern' sugar beet now contains up to 35% of sugar compared to 2 to 3% of the origin sugar beet and it grows even in colder regions.
The sometimes different taste of brown sugars comes from the soil that you eat. For example the Caribbean soil is different from soil in Europe or North America.
It makes more money to sell not totally cleaned sugar then the white one. And You buy it and use more of it to get your sweetness. But there is one advantage in the brown sugar: with the soil you get some minerals. Whether this is worth the higher price per gram clean sugar, I don't know.

So, why these rumors? Many of them come from 'naturalists' spreading them without knowing the facts. Some of them come from self-appointed healers. When you go to a healer you are eager to hear some bad things in your live, environment or your habits, foods and so on. To not disappointing you, they have an answer. Doesn't matter whether it's true or not. You are happy, now you know what was wrong!
It doesn't take long and they offer you a just discovered secret about a special plant from Africa or Asia that will take all the mercury and other poison out of your body that you got from the dangerous white sugar.
 For sweetening take what you want, it doesn't matter, just compare the price and do the math.
And first of all: don't listen to rumors without questioning them.
Have a sweet coffee!

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