Sugar Me Sweet

photo by JadeGordon

by Chewy

When you hear the word “sugar”, what comes to mind? Perhaps, for most of us, it is the white flowing crystals in the 5 pound bag, suitable for strength training. I soon discovered how limited a view this was and really quite modern. When I started doing research for this article, I did not realize the volume of  information that I would  be delving through that has widened my perspective.

   
Let’s break this down into two groups. First, we have the sugars that come from nature that man has “discovered”  feeds his natural desire (from birth!) for a little sweet. Second, we have sweeteners that are created in the lab for the sole purpose of “fooling” that natural inclination into thinking it has ingested something luscious without the subsequent feelings of guilt. For the purposes of this post, we will be considering only the first.

Honey

Perhaps the earliest and one of the most natural forms of  sweetener, due to its lack of processing, is honey. While noted quite often in the Bible, my favorite example is that of John the Baptizer, who, while in the wilderness, dined on locust and wild honey. Now, it doesn’t say if he ate these items as a combined product, but in my mind, this would make the locusts go down easier. Makes that whole cicada ice cream thing seem more natural now, doesn’t it? The only problem with honey is that you have to compete with the bees and they can be a formidable obstacle. Coming in literally endless flavors and varieties, it has antibiotic and antioxidant properties that may appeal to the consumer who desires more than a quick sugar fix.

Maple Syrup

Maple syrup is derived from the sap of various maple trees. These trees store starch in their trunks and roots before the winter. Come spring, this starch is converted to sugar that rises in the sap and it is at this time that the trees are bored and the sap collected. It then goes through a refining process by heating and causing most of the water to evaporate. This leaves a heavy syrup that took gallons of sap to create one pound of sugar. First produced by the aboriginal people of North America, they valued this sap as a source of  energy and nutrition. Culinary experts have praised its unique flavor, although the chemistry responsible is not fully understood.  Similar syrups can be made from birch and palm trees (one of my favorites and will discussed in further detail at a later date) .

Sugarcane appears to have first been cultivated in the Indian subcontinent and one of the earliest historical references comes from 8th century BC Chinese manuscripts that refer knowledge of sugarcane to be derived from India.  Extraction of sweetness, at this time, was limited to chewing on the raw sugarcane. But circa 500BC, there was a sucrose epiphany and India began making sugar syrup from sugarcane, cooling it in large flat bowls and thus creating crystals that were easy to store and transport. These crystals were called khanda and is the origin for our word candy. Unlike honey and maple syrup, sugarcane’s sole purpose appears to be to delight the palate and appease the sweet tooth.

The sugar beet is a tuberous root, cultivated in temperate regions and requires adequate rainfall and fertile soil. The root is harvested, washed, sliced and the sugar extracted by diffusion (going from higher concentration to lower concentration). The raw juice is purified in a number of stages, water is evaporated by boiling under a vacuum and the resulting syrup cooled and seeded with sugar crystals.

Brown sugar, which comes in light and dark varieties, gets it’s deeper taste and color from adding molasses syrup  to fully refined sugar. This also adds more moisture resulting in the clumped texture. The less common free-flowing brown sugar goes through a unique crystallization process that loses the moisture but retains the color and taste. Turbinado is a type of raw brown sugar. Muscovado is an unrefined, darker natural brown sugar that is produced without spinning in a centrifuge.

photo by JadeGordon

Undeniably, the least expensive and most widely used sugar in this country is the traditional free flowing white crystals. Hopefully, this information will encourage you to think beyond the norm and experiment with the wide variety of sweeteners available.