Food

Food Information

Miscellaneous

SUGAR

Most people and animals love sugar. That's why Mother Nature made ripefruits sweet to entice animals to eat them and disperse the undigested seeds.And bitter plants are generally poisonous, so sweetness has served as nature'sgreen light. Every year in the U.S. about 65 pounds of sugar in variousforms are consumed for every man, women, and especially child. To get thefull impact, dump 13 five-pound bags of sugar onto the kitchen counter andbehold your personal quota for the year. Our lives are sweetened sometimessubtly, in candies, breads, pastries, beverages, and preserves, and a surprisingvariety or non-sweet processed foods from salsa to pickled herring. Thesupermarket would be left with acres or empty shelves if all the sugar-containingfoods were removed. And that's saying a lot for a relative newcomer to theWestern world.

HISTORY

Until sugar came along, honey was virtually, the only sweetener known tomankind. Sugar cane was enjoyed in India at least three thousand years ago,but it didn't find its way to northern Africa and southern Europe untilaround the eighth century A.D.. Christopher Columbus' mother-in-law owneda sugar plantation, and even before he married he had a job ferrying sugarto Genoa from the cane fields in Madeira. All of which probably gave himthe idea of taking some sugar cane to the Caribbean on his second voyageto the New World in 1493 . The rest is sweet history.

WHAT IS SUGAR

Technically speaking, there are many kinds of sugars, just as there aremany kinds of alcohols. But far and-away the best-known sugar is sucrose,which is found in large amounts in sugar cane and sugar beets, and to alesser extent, in every fruit and vegetable in the plant kingdom. Thosebeautiful sparkling crystals in the five pound bags at the grocery storeare pure sucrose, and that's what everybody refers to as just plain sugar.Supermarket sugar may have been obtained from either cane or beets; there'sno difference. Maple sugar is the sucrose-rich sap of the maple tree. Othercommon sugars are the fructose in ripe fruits and the lactose in milk. Allsugars are sweet and fructose is even sweeter than sucrose. Ever since Cubansugar became politically incorrect, corn sweeteners have replaced sugarin most American prepared foods. While ripe ears of sweet corn contain somesugar, that's not the source of the corn sweeteners that you see on foodlabels. These sweeteners are made by using acids and enzymes to break downthe corn starch molecules which are made up of thousands of sugar moleculesall joined together. In the body most starches and sugars are further brokendown into glucose, a fundamental sugar that can go directly into the bloodstream and is our major source of energy.

SUGAR SUBSTITUTES

For various reasons both economic and nutritional, quite a few substitutesfor natural sugar have cropped up over the years:

Saccharin was the first of several non-nutritive no carbohydratevirtually zero-calorie substitutes for sugar to come along in response toweight obsessed America's dread of sugar's 15 calories per teaspoon. Thislaboratory developed artificial sweetener, which is hundreds of times sweeterthan sucrose, was discovered back in 1879, and was used as a sugar substituteduring World War I.

Cyclamates came onto the scene in 1937 but disappeared quickly inthe 1960's when they were suspected of causing cancer.

The latest sugar substitute, aspartame, a mixture of amino acids,was discovered in 1965 and trademarked as NutraSweet and Equalamong others. About 160 times as sweet as table sugar, aspartame containsabout a tenth of a calorie per teaspoon and dominates the packaged foodand soft drink market.

PROCESSING SUGAR

Sugar cane is a giant grass that thrives in a warm, moist climate.Like all green plants, it grows through the process of photosynthesis, convertingsunlight, carbon dioxide and water into sugars and other chemicals. Sugarcane is the world's champion sugar producer, storing prodigious amountsof sugar in the stalks. It's a long, fascinating road from the cane fieldto the sugar bowl. At the sugar mill. the sweet juice is pressed out ofthe shredded cane, clarified and boiled under a vacuum, until it thickensinto a brown syrup and the sugar crystallizes out as a solid. The thick,dark liquid left behind is molasses. The wet sugar crystals are then spunin a centrifuge; a spinning perforated drum just like the drum in a washingmachine that flings the water out of your laundry during the spin cycle.This leaves behind brown raw sugar which contains a bacteria laden assortmentof miscellaneous plant junk and is declared by the FDA to be unfit for humanconsumption. The raw sugar is then shipped to a refinery, where it is carefullywashed and centrifuged to produce light tan tubinado sugar, which is nowalmost pure sucrose. Although its mineral content is quite negligible itis revered by health food fans as being more natural and health full thanwhite sugar. It does have a mildly "brown" flavor that some peopleprefer. You can buy it in health food stores and some supermarkets. Whitetable sugar is the end-product of further crystallization, and is the purestsucrose of all about 99. 9% pure Considering the fact that even raw sugaris already 96% to 98% sucrose, it's hard to understand the claims of somehealth-food enthusiasts that granulated table sugar causes all sorts ofdiseases, while the slightly less-pure sucrose doesn't. Light and dark brownsugars are made up or sugar crystals coated with varying amounts of molasses,which lends a slightly grainy, moist texture and a strong flavor. They areproduced either by leaving a small amount of molasses in the sugar or byadding a little molasses to refined white sugar. Dark brown sugar has astronger flavor than the light, but the two are generally interchangeablein recipes. Sugar beets grow best in a temperate climate, storingtheir sugar in white roots that look like fat carrots in need of a shaveand a haircut. At the refinery, the beets are sliced and soaked in hot waterto get most of the sugar out. The resulting liquid is similar to one ofthe later stages in cane sugar refining, so there is no molasses or raw-sugarstage

THE MANY SIDES OF SUGAR

Besides imparting a sweet taste, sugar performs many culinary feats. Didyou ever wonder why many cake and cookie recipes begin with instructionsto cream sugar with the butter? The process of creaming whips airinto the dough. The air becomes trapped on the facets of sugar's irregularcrystals. When sugar is mixed with the shortening this air becomes incorporatedas very small air cells. The result is a fine-textured baked product. Whenyou ice your cakes, the sugar gives not only sweetness. but flavor, bulkand structure to the frosting. Sugar contributes both color and textureto baked goods by caramelizing when heated; the brown color of toasted breadis the result of caramelization. This doesn't happen in a microwave oven.because microwaves heat the food uniformly throughout and the surface doesn'tget the extra heat it needs to caramelize. Sugar is needed by yeast forfermentation, which causes bread and other baked goods to rise. Fruitsand berries are preserved by sugar, because a strong sugar solution drawswater out of bacteria and yeasts, dehydrating them and either killing themor preventing them from reproducing. Ice cream products rely heavily onsugar. Besides adding sweetness, sugar performs a remarkable job. It lowersthe freezing point of cream to make a colder product. The caramel swirlsand raspberry royales in ice cream are smooth because they are essentiallysugar syrups And successful berry ice creams depend on soaking the berriesin enough sugar to keep them from freezing too hard Sugar imparts a satisfyingbody or mouth-feel to beverages Compare a sugar-sweetened drink to one madewith artificial sweetener and notice how thin the latter feels. In foodssuch as salad dressings. sauces, and condiments, a small, undetectable amountof sugar enhances flavors and balances the acid contents of tomatoand vinegar based products.

THE COFFEE CONNECTION

An old sweetie named Benjamin Eisenstadt, who died in 1995, at the age of89, was responsible for two major coffee world revolutions. In the early1950s. this innovative businessman changed the way Americans dispensed sugar,Before that time. restaurants used open sugar bowls or those heavy glassjars with the metal trapdoor spouts that you can still see on the countersof some diners Eisenstadt came up with the bright idea of putting sugarinto little sanitary paper packets. These days. it's hard to find restaurantor coffee bar sugar in any other form. Then in 1957, working with his sonMarvin, Eisenstadt began to experiment with saccharin. When saccharin becamepopular in the 1950s, it was available only as a liquid or as tiny effervescentpills. But when the Eisenstadts mixed saccharin with dextrose (a form ofglucose) and a few other ingredients to make a convenient, powdered sugarsubstitute, in little paper packets. Viola, another coffee revolution. Theynamed their product Sweet 'N Low.

...AND A BOTTLE OF RUM

When fermented, the starches and sugars in barley and cactus make whiskeyand tequilla respectively, while the sugars in grapes make wine and brandy.Just let some molasses ferment for a while and some of the sugar will turninto alcohol. Then distill it to increase its alcoholic strength and-yo.ho. ho! You've made a bottle of rum. Rum is a favorite way to consume theannual 65-pound sugar quota Drink it neat in a brandy snifter in the winter,and in the summer, nothing beats a pina colada by the pool. A little rumsocked into dark coffee after dinner improves any mood, and adding a jiggerof rum to a pot of tea is a common aid to those feeling cold symptoms. Itmight be said that rum is a beverage with a unique distinction, it is botha cause and a result of raising cane .

TYPES OF SUGAR

White Granulated Sugar, also called table sugar, is the most commonform, and the kind we most often use in recipes. The Individual grains areactually transparent and colorless crystals, but they look white when massedtogether.

Coarse Sugar is granulated sugar with extra large crystals. It Ismost often used for decoration, rather than sweetening, because the crystalsare slow to dissolve.

Crystal Sugar is similar to coarse suger, but the crystals are shapedlike cylinders. It is often sprinkled on baked goods to give sparkle andcrunch.

Superfine Sugar (castor sugar in Britain). In the U.S. it'ssometimes called bartenders sugar. Superfine sugar is similar to regulargranulated, except that it consists of much tinier crystals that dissolvequickly and completely, leaving no graininess. This makes it a food choicefor fine textured cakes, meringues and drinks.

Confectioner's Sugar is also called icing sugar or powderedsugar, but is not to he confused with superfine sugar. Because it tendsto hold moisture, confectioner's sugar contains a small amount of addedcornstarch to prevent clumping, so it won't dissolve completely and willmake a cloudy solution in iced tea or other drinks. Always sift before using.When sifted over the top, It dresses up plain cakes or bars.

Sugar Cubes are made by pressing moist granulated sugar into moldsand drying. A must for the tea table. One lump or two?

WHICHEVER FORM, SUGAR HAS 15 CALORIES PER TEASPOON