Sweet And Sour

The original question that I set out to investigate about sugar was to do with its environmental impact, specifically the claim made by the cake maker Geraldene Holt on BBC Radio 4, that beet sugar was worse for the environment than cane sugar.

“Lovely natural Muscovado Sugar, this is healthy of course.” …”Well, I think it’s healthier for the environment; it’s not sugar beet.”

Since then, I have spent hours reading about sugar.  I have looked at its taxonomy, its cooking properties and above all the social and environmnetal effects.  Much of what I have discovered is truly shocking.  In ecology terms, sugar has probably done more damage to our environment than any other crop.  Habitat destruction, abstraction of water, intensive application of agrochemicals, discharge and run-off of polluted effluent and air pollution caused by the sugar industry continue to threaten many of the most precious ecosystems in the world.  Much of the damage is historical but sugar production is still growing and the environmental damage is getting worse.  However sugar beet and sugar cane are about as different from one another as two arable crops can be.  They grow in different parts of the world, present entirely different biological profiles and share almost nothing in common except a high sucrose content.  So let’s consider them separately.

Sugar Beet

Sugar beet is grown in temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere.  The biggest beet producers are The EU, USA, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey, with smaller quantities produced in Japan, Canada, China, and sporadically around the Middle East and central Asia.

I am quite familiar with sugar beet production.  There’s a field of beet growing no more than a quarter mile from my front door right now. I have watched it growing from the day it was planted and no doubt I’ll be around to see it carted off in trucks to the refinery 43 miles away in Bury St Edmunds.  Now I recognize that all economic activity has an environmental impact, and farming has a bigger impact than most, but it wasn’t clear to me that sugar beet, which looks so benign, was significantly worse than any other arable crop grown hereabouts.  What is it that makes sugar beet so ecologically damaging?  The clue came from another BBC broadcast where I heard Prof. Dennis Murphy of The University of Glamorgan make the following statement, “We grow sugar beet here [UK] which doesn’t make any sense at all environmentally.  We should be importing it from places where sugar cane grows which has a lower carbon footprint.”

OK so that’s the problem, the Green House Gas (GHG) emissions related to making sugar from beet.  So let’s examine that in more detail.  In 2008 British Sugar, which is the UK’s sole sugar beet producer, became the first sugar industry in the world to have its carbon footprint certified.  In partnership with the Carbon Trust it was independently benchmarked using the BSI’s PAS 2050 standard. They calculated that 1kg sugar produces 0.5kg of CO₂ equivalent (CO₂eq).  Almost half, 48.7%, is produced on the farm and includes the use of fertilizers, water, diesel etc;  27.4%, comes from the factory; while distribution, 8.8%, packaging, 7.9%, and transportation of raw materials, 7.2%, account for the rest. That does sound like quite a lot.  For every bag of sugar you buy you are also purchasing half a bag of GHGs.  However we need to put that in context.

The Carbon Trust estimates that the UK has a carbon footprint of 650 million tonnes of greenhouse gas. This means each person in the UK has an estimated footprint of about 11 tonnes a year.  According to a report by WWF and the Food Climate Research Network (FCRN), food is responsible for 30% of the UK’s total carbon footprint, or 217 million tonnes.  But where does sugar beet stand in that reckoning?  Well compared with other foods it seems it may not be too bad. 1Kg homegrown potatoes produces about 0.5Kg CO₂eq, very similar to sugar beet.  That ratio turns out to be more or less true for most other native fruits and vegetables.  And when you look at some of the big GHG producers it is downright green.

A single cheeseburger produces about 5.18Kg CO₂eq (Source)
A litre of milk produces 1.97Kg CO₂eq (Source)
1Kg sheep meat produces 16.8Kg CO₂eq (Source)
1 Kg tomatoes grown under glass produce 9Kg CO₂eq (Source)

Furthermore the sugar industry has done more than most in recent years to improve its performance.  The industry’s own Sustainability Report, sponsored jointly by British Sugar and the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) makes a number of exceptional claims:

-          Yields per acre have risen by 60% in the past 30 years

-          Energy consumption per tonne is down by 25% since 1990

-          Since 1982 pesticide application has been cut by 60%, phosphates by 70% and nitrogen by 40%

-          Waste to landfill reduced by 50% since 2003

-          They also produce a range of byproducts from animal feed to electricity

All of these serve to reduce the carbon footprint, and nationally the industry is targeting a further reduction of 10% by 2020.  So overall it seems that sugar beet is no worse than other food products, but perhaps sugar cane provides a much greener alternative.  We need to do a comparison.

Sugar Cane

Fortunately Tate & Lyle, the UK’s biggest cane sugar producer, followed British Sugar’s lead and had its carbon footprint measured by the Carbon Trust in 2009, so it is possible to compare like for like.  And the result is…Tate & Lyle’s cane sugar has a carbon footprint of 380g CO₂eq per 1Kg sugar, only 76% of the GHG emissions from beet sugar.

This provides an interesting reminder that food-miles alone are not a sufficient measure of sustainability when making purchasing decisions.  The carbon cost of sea transportation for sugar and sugar products forms a relatively small part of the overall footprint and therefore does not outweigh the lower cost of production on the plantation.

Unfortunately that’s not the end of the argument.  Sugar cane is grown in over 100 countries with wide differences in technology, education and geography and these greatly affect the environmental impact.  Also GHG emissions are not the only concern.

Among the most advanced sugar cane industries in the world is Australia’s.  There, researches from the University of Queensland led by Marguerite Renouf and Malcolm Wegener have carried out a whole Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of sugar cane production in Australia and compared it with sugar beet in the UK and Corn Syrup from USA. 

They found wide variations even within Queensland.  However looking at the state average their overall conclusion was favourable to sugar cane when considering solely the carbon footprints of these three crops.  On the other hand, when the wider environmental picture was assessed the findings were less favourable. To quote the report “Cane sugar is shown to have distinct advantages in relation to energy input, greenhouse gas emissions, and land utilization, but does not rate as well in relation to other impacts assessed (eutrophication and water use)". 

They are not kidding.  Another WWF report from 2004 entitled Sugar and The Environment, claimed that sugar may be responsible for more biodiversity loss than any other crop, due to its destruction of habitat to make way for plantations, its intensive use of water for irrigation, its heavy use of agricultural chemicals, and the polluted wastewater that is routinely discharged in the sugar production process. 

The list of natural environments cited by the report, which have been severely damaged by sugar production, reads like a list of the world’s most beautiful, important and sensitive natural habitats. 

The Great Barrier Reef, off the coast of Queensland, “suffers from large quantities of effluents, pesticides and sediment from sugar farms, and the reef itself is threatened by the clearing of land, which has destroyed the wetlands that are an integral part of the reef’s ecology.” 

The Everglades in Florida are, “seriously compromised after decades of sugar cane farming. Tens of thousands of acres of the Everglades have been converted from teeming sub-tropical forest to lifeless marshland due to excessive fertilizer run-off and drainage for irrigation.”

In Pakistan’s Indus Delta, a globally significant mangrove system,  “Of the 260,000 hectares of mangrove forest recorded in 1997, only an estimated 65 percent remains and is dominated by just one salt-tolerant species.” While the indigenous “Blind River Dolphin (Platanista minor), found throughout the Indus and its tributaries100 years ago, now exists in six totally isolated sub-populations.”

Soil depletion, salination and land clearance for planting cane continue to take their toll in Brazil, Papua New Guinea, Cuba, South Africa, Puerto Rico and many other places. 

Of course, just like beet producers, the cane industry, is also doing its best to become more efficient and more environmentally responsible.  The industry body Bonsucro describes itself as “A global multi-stakeholder non-profit initiative dedicated to reducing the environmental and social impacts of sugar cane production. It aims to achieve this with a Standard that measures these impacts accurately, and with the development of a system to certify that sustainable practices are being adhered to.”

The WWF report itself provides a long list of proposed improvements to land management practices, which can provide economic benefits for farmers and mill owners while addressing environmental degradation.  These include better use of water, more responsible use of additives and exploitation of by products. It seems there is a lot that can be done to make sugar much, much greener.

More than 145 million tonnes of sugar is produced per year in about 120 countries and annual consumption is expanding each year by about two million tonnes. But interestingly it is not the consumer’s sweet tooth that is driving the market so much as his car.  The high energy content in both sugar cane and beet make them natural crops for the burgeoning biofuels industry.  For instance Brazil today has over 12million cars and trucks that run on neat ethanol produced from cane sugar, and by Brazilian law gasoline must now be mixed with 25% ethanol.  In certain US states also gasoline is mandated to be blended with 10% ethanol.  Unlike fossil fuels, biofuels are renewable, politically secure and offer a lower level of GHG emissions.  Although they do occupy huge areas of agricultural land, and contribute both directly and indirectly to deforestation or the use of other virgin land such as Brasil's cerado.

Interestingly, a report on the Bonsucro site by Dr. Peter Rein, Professor Emeritus of Louisiana State University, claims that, “pressure for sustainable production [of cane sugar] has come largely from the importers of ethanol from sugarcane. This has focused attention on sustainable production in the sugar industry in general.”  Specifically he mentions the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive RED as a driver of improved standards.

In other words it is the biofuels sector which is forcing sugar producers to clean up their acts not sugar retailers or consumers.  That is all well and good but maybe next week we will consider how to feed 9 billion people, when so much of the earth’s productive land is given over to producing biofuels.

All of which seems a very long way away from Geraldene Holt and her carrot cake.  So to answer my original point from all that time ago, go ahead and use your ‘lovely, natural muscovado sugar’.  It’s not a healthy option, but I bet it will taste delicious. The 10oz you put in the cake will save 36g of CO₂eq compared with beet sugar, and in the big picture it won’t matter a fig.  What is more important is the 5Kg of Co2eq generated by driving an average (1800cc) petrol car for 25Km to the supermarket and back.  So perhaps the best thing is to put the sugar in your car after all.

Beet or Cane?

One of the questions I set myself to answer when I started my sugar odyssey was is there really any difference between sugar made from cane, and sugar made from beet.  Frankly I had never considered this question before. To be honest I regarded sugar very much as a commodity and bought it entirely on price, although I did know that in Britain the market is pretty much a duopoly between Tate & Lyle which produces only cane sugar, and British Sugar which exclusively processes domestically grown sugar beet.   These two brands take over 90% of the UK market.

Sugar beet plants

Looking around the world.

Beet sugar has a hugely dominant market position in much of Europe, including France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria all of which have internationally renowned reputations for patisserie or other confectionary products.

In the USA the market has changed in recent decades.  Sugar cane has gone from a dominant market position to hold only about 40% to 45% of the market while sugar beet has 55% to 60%.  American Sugar Refining of Yonkers NY is the biggest cane producer with brands that include Domino, California & Hawaii (C&H), Florida Crystals and Redpath.  Crystal Sugar based in Minnesota is the largest beet producer.

In Canada Lantic produces about 10% of the country’s sugar from sugar beet in Alberta, but overall the market is 90% cane sugar divided between Redpath and Lantic.

Australia is a big cane sugar producer and exporter.  The CSR brand has approximately 60% market share in Oz and 80% in New Zealand.

Elsewhere it seems that countries are more or less divided by climate.  Sugar cane cannot survive in temperate zones and beet does not do well in hot climates.  Yet globally sugar beet has 30% to 35% market share.

Claims

However, a quick trawl of the web casts up a litany of accusations aimed at beet sugar and clearly in some people’s minds sugar cane is real sugar, and sugar made from beet is some sort of synthetic imposter.

Claims include:

·         Beet sugar doesn’t set jams. “That’s why people in Europe or North America need to use pectin.”

·         Beet sugar cannot be used in fine baking.  One contributor claimed to have “done several recipes both ways and the beet are tough and mealy”.

·         Martha Stewart, allegedly tested cane vs. beet sugar in various trials and “didn't notice a discernable difference except in fine baking, especially cakes.”

·         Several people claim that beet sugar smells.  One describes the smell as “like old tobacco smoke”.

·         Beet sugar doesn’t caramelise like cane sugar, while cane sugar turns golden-brown under a blow torch, beet sugar almost immediately turns black.

Now one difference I am aware of is in brown sugar. Brown sugar made from cane is partially refined to leave a greater or lesser amount of molasses in the sugar.  Molasses derived from sugar beet is not considered palatable to humans so brown sugars made from beet sugar are normally refined white sugar that has been ‘painted’ with molasses from sugar cane. The painting process coats the granules but does not necessarily penetrate them, and supposedly it can be rubbed off in certain situations as the grains grind against each other.

When it comes to refined white sugar however, this is almost entirely pure sucrose whatever the source.  EU regulations specify that it be 99.7% pure which means any variation in taste or behaviour would have to be caused by something in the remaining 0.3%.  I am bound to say I was skeptical, but let’s consider the claims one by one.

Well the first one I know is false.  I have used both beet and cane sugar to make preserves with equal results.  Recipes usually stipulate added pectin (or more often pectin rich fruits such as lemons or apples) to be added whenever the main fruit is lacking in pectin, such as strawberries, apricots or cherries.

Berlin's Cafe Opera

Does beet sugar produce tough and mealy cakes?  Again I have used beet sugar for years, as did my mother, and never had any complaints.  Anyone who has ever drooled over the cakes in a German kaffeekonditorei, or eaten a delicious Sacher Tort in Vienna will know this to be false.  Those countries use almost exclusively beet sugar.

I couldn’t find the Martha Stewart experiments so will have to defer judgement on that one.

I have spent several minutes with my nose stuck inside various bags of sugar and I can’t tell any difference at all in the smell.  All of them are pretty much odour free.  Neither can I discern any difference by a simple taste test.  I also employed some younger noses than mine, and they were similarly unable to detect any difference.  However it seems this claim may have a foundation in reality.

Harold McGee, the great food writer, says claims about smell “may be an undeserved legacy of the early 20th century, when refining techniques weren't as effective". He attributes the smell to poor storage during which bacteria and mold can grow on the beets and contribute off-flavors”.  Sugar cane by contrast doesn’t keep and so it is always processed immediately after cutting.  Whatever the cause this problem seems now to have been solved.

The last claim about caramelisation intrigued me, so the only thing to do was to conduct my own experiment.  I made Crème Brûlée  and set them in individual ramekins to allow me to vary the sugar topping.  On one I used a measured quantity of Tate & Lyle Granulated sugar (pure cane) and on the next one I used an identical quantity of British Sugar’s Silver Spoon Granulated sugar (pure beet).  On a third batch I used Silver Spoon Caster sugar just because I had it available.  I normally use a blow torch to caramelise crème brulee, but on this occasion I decided the grill would allow me to get a consistent duration and heat and avoid any unconscious manipulation by me.  The results were as follows.

Crème Brûlée , L to R Caster / Beet / Cane

The Silver Spoon Granulated took longer to caramelize and there was a small amount of unmelted sugar even though this ramekin was in the centre of the grill.  The other two caramelized completely and both had patches of black and gold, but the Tate & Lyle retained a glossy sheen while the caster sugar took on a kind of egg-shell finish.  They all tasted delicious although there was a clear order of preference amongst my panel with the cane sugar coming top and the caster sugar coming third.  The caster sugar gave a finer crust but this was felt to lack bite.

So in conclusion, I could discern no real difference between cane and beet with the possible exception of the crème brulee test.  On that evidence I probably would chose cane sugar in future when making caramel but I certainly would not be deterred if I could only buy beet sugar.

Recipe

I have been criticised for not including more recipes in this blog, so my recipe for crème brulee is included below.  Crème Brûlée uses 5 egg yolks and so obviously I had 5 egg whites left over, as well as a lot of sugar!  So I made a Pavlova too, and took the opportunity to enjoy a few more of this year’s marvelous summer fruits.  That recipe is included as well.

Crème Brûlée

450ml / 16fl oz double cream
50ml / 2fl oz milk
A few drops of vanilla extract
5 large eggs
75g / 2½ oz caster sugar, plus more for topping

Method

1.       Heat the oven to 150C/300F/Gas Mark 2

2.       Put the cream, milk and vanilla in a heavy saucepan and bring to a simmer

3.       Separate the eggs and blend the yolks only with the sugar to form a paste

4.       Just before the cream boils, take it off the heat and pour it quickly into the egg mixture stirring briskly to prevent it from cooking.

5.       When all the sugar is dissolved ladle the mixture into ramekins or if you prefer, one large oven proof dish.

6.       Place the Crème Brûlée  dishes in a deep baking tray and fill the tray with hot water until it comes half way up the outside of the dishes.  Then place in the centre of the oven.

7.       Cook until the Crème Brûlée  is set but still wobbles when shaken. In my oven this takes about 45 minutes.

8.       Allow the Crème Brûlée  to cool.  (In fact you can refrigerate them at this point and serve them later)

9.       Just before serving, sprinkle sugar moderately over the surface, about half a teaspoon to each ramekin. Then caramelize the sugar to form a thick crunchy topping.  British cookers come with an overhead grill. If you use this set the grill as high as it will go, they only take a minute or so.  Elsewhere you will need to invest in a blowtorch, available in good cookery shops.

Crema Catalana dish

The best dishes to use are wide, shallow, teracotta dishes from Spain traditionally used for the Catalan version of this dish.  They look attractive and give a large surface area so you get lots of delicious caramel in each serving.

Pavlova

4 egg whites
225g / 8 oz caster sugar (make the Pavlova bigger or smaller by using more or fewer eggs. Just use 2oz sugar for each egg you use!)
1 tsp cornflour
1 tsp white wine vinegar
284ml / 10fl oz double cream
450g / 1lb fresh fruit (strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, etc.)
Icing sugar for dusting

Method

1.       Heat the oven to 160c /325F / Gas mark 4

2.       Line a baking sheet with parchment and oil it lightly

3.       Whisk the egg whites until they form shiny peaks.

4.       Add the sugar a little at a time until it’s all incorporated and then continue whisking until the meringue is stiff and glossy.

5.       Add the cornflour and vinegar

6.       Spoon the mixture onto the parchment and spread with a knife to make a circle about 20cm/8inches wide.

7.       Put in the centre of the oven and immediately lower the temperature to 110c / 225F / Gas mark ½ and cook for 1½ hours.  At the end of the cooking time turn the oven off and leave the meringue in the oven to cool.

8.       When completely cold remove the parchment and place on a serving plate (don’t worry of it cracks). Spread the whipped cream over the meringue then simply bundle the fruit over the top. Finally dust with a little icing sugar.



Strawberry and Raspberry Pavlova

The meringue should be crisp on top and soft and light on the inside.  This dessert was created in the 1920s in honour of the famous Russian ballerina, Anna Pavlova, during one of her tours down-under.  However the exact provenance is hotly contested by both Australia and New Zealand.

Sugared Words

Sugars occur naturally throughout the plant kingdom and beyond.  Honey, corn syrup, maple syrup are only a few of the popular sugars we enjoy that do not come from sugar cane or sugar beet.  I may get around to looking at them one day but for now this is a list of terms used in the traditional sugar trade, meaning sucrose.

Chemically the word sugar describes any of a wide range of carbohydrates also known as saccharides. While several sugars are used commercially in food manufacturing, including glucose, fructose, lactose, dextrose etc. in domestic terms sugar normally refers to sucrose produced from either sugar cane or sugar beet.

Granulated Sugar – also known as Table Sugar is the most common form of sugar.  It’s an odourless, white refined crystalline product sieved and graded for an average grain size of 0.5mm.  Chemically it is over 99% pure sucrose.

Selectively sieving granulated sugar gives other products with varying crystal sizes for different household applications.

Pearl Sugar, also known as Sanding Sugar, Decorating Sugar or Sugar Nibs are coarse grained sugars designed for decorating cakes, cookies etc.  The large crystals, 1mm across or more,  reflect light and add what is known professionally as ‘sparkle’. 

Preserving Sugar is granulated sugar with a larger than average grain size, around 0.7mm.  This alters the behaviour of the sugar when used for jam or jelly making.  The larger crystals dissolve more slowly and do not lie on the bottom of the pan or cause the preserve to froth.  This avoids the risk of burning, reduces the amount of stirring needed and makes it easier to skim impurities off the surface.

Gelling Sugar, also known as Jam Sugar or Jelly Sugar is different from preserving sugar because it contains added pectin to help jams set.  It sometimes also contains citric acid as a preservative.

Caster Sugar, known in America as Superfine Sugar, has a crystal size of 0.35mm.  Originally designed to fit through the holes of a sugar caster or sprinkler, it is now more usually used for baking, the smaller crystal size means that it dissolves more quickly.

Icing Sugar, also known as Powdered Sugar or Confectioners’ Sugar, is a milled to a fine powder and used principally for icing cakes or making sugar based decorations.  It normally includes small quantities (1% - 3%) of starch from corn or wheat, or tri-calcium phosphate to prevent caking and help it flow.

Various manufacturers add different ingredients to powdered sugars to give them special properties.  For example in the UK, British Sugar produces Fondant Icing Sugar containing dried glucose syrup which is supposed to give “a smooth, glossy, soft iced finish”, and also Royal Icing Sugar containing dried egg white, which produces a harder icing capable of holding its shape in piped or moulded decorations.

Sugar Loaf

A Sugar Loaf is a normally conical mass of crystalline sugar weighing anything from 3 or 4 lbs up to 30lbs.  The shape derived from the moulds used in the final stage of refining. Liquid sugar was poured in to the wide end of the mould and impurities were allowed to escape through a hole in the pointed end.  The resulting loaves were then exported.  This was the normal form of sugar retailed in Europe until the early 20^th century when granulated and cubed sugar became available.  Traditionally, lumps of sugar are broken off using specially designed Sugar Snips.

Cubed Sugar was first produced by the German sugar company JJ Langen & Son at their plant in Cologne in 1875.  Henry Tate, founder of Henry Tate & Sons, bought a licence that same year and started production at his Liverpool refinery.  Sugar Cubes are made by compressing granulated sugar, and offer the benefit of easy handling and a standardised quantity, especially for addition to tea or coffee.

Rock Sugar, also known as Rock Candy or Candied Sugar is a form of confectionary produced by letting a super-saturated solution of sugar crystalise on a suitable surface, traditionally a stick or string.  The resulting large crystals are sometimes coloured with food colouring and scented.  This type of confectionary is very old, at least 1,000 years, and originates in India and Persia.  Rock sugar is sometimes added to tea or coffee.

Low Calorie Sugar, also known as Half Spoon Sugar or Light Sugar is white granulated sugar with added artificial sweeteners aspartame, acesulfame-k etc.  The sweeteners make the sugar sweeter than normal so you can use less, (half a spoon!), although the resulting loss of volume can be a problem in baking so some low cal sugars add maltodextrin, a flavourless and easily digested food starch, to add bulk.

Grades of sugar

Brown Sugar refers to any number of refined sucrose products which contain a residue of molasses.  Molasses are present in raw sugar juice and sugar refining is all about separating the sugar from the molasses through successive steps of boiling and filtering in order to produce pure White Sugar.  However molasses contain all of the mineral nutrients in sugar and also provide colour and flavour, so that brown sugar products, produced by ending the refining process prematurely, have always been popular for cooking and addition to coffee; the darker the sugar the higher the proportion of molasses. Molasses produced by sugar beet are normally considered unpalatable to humans so that sugar produced from beet is normally refined to white sugar and then coated by artificially adding cane molasses back in to the refined product.  Brown sugar produced from cane is therefore sometimes described as Natural Brown Sugar.

Light Brown Sugar typically contains around 3.5% molasses and comes under a variety of names.

The adjective Golden applied either to granulated sugar or caster sugar is a comparatively recent piece of marketing.  Sometimes described as ‘unrefined’ it is of course partially refined to the same general level as other light brown sugars and contains small quantities of molasses.

In the UK natural light brown sugar is often referred to as Demerera Sugar after the Demerera colony in present day Guyana, which was formerly the main source.

In the USA it is often referred to as Turbinado Sugar after the centrifuges or turbines used to refine it.

Darker sugars contain a higher proportion of molasses up to about 7%.  They are often called Soft Brown Sugar since the increased moisture levels make them denser than most sugars and cause the crystals to stick together instead of flowing. This kind of sugar has a pronounced flavour of molasses and for that reason and the increased moisture level it should not be substituted for any other sugar unless the recipe calls for it.

Muscovado Sugar, also known as Barbados Sugar, is a particularly rich, dark brown sugar popular in the UK where it is used in baking.  The name is derived from the Portuguese word mascavado meaning separated and refers to the refining process.

Molasses is the residue produced when the juice of the sugar cane or beet is refined and the sugar removed.  Just as sugars are available with varying levels of molasses still included, molasses is produced with differing levels of sugar left in, which obviously affects its sweetness.  It is normally sold as a dark brown or black viscous liquid with a rich but bitter taste.  It is used in baking, for example in gingerbreads, parkins or Christmas pudding.  It is also used as the base for dark rum and dark beers including stouts and porters.

Technically Treacle is any uncrystallised syrup produced during sugar refining which would include molasses.  In fact Harold McGee says in his great work, On Food & Cooking, that molasses is called treacle in the UK.  Molasses comes from the late Latin word mellaceus meaning ‘like honey’.  Treacle comes via the French triacle from Latin theriaca, which means a ‘antidotes against poison’ and refers to the medieval practice of using sugar and syrup as medicine.  Once again commercially available treacles are sold in different grades from light amber coloured treacles to thick black viscous treacles.

Golden Syrup

Golden Syrup is a product traditionally made by British sugar refiners, Tate & Lyle, although now owned by American Sugar Refining Inc.  It was invented by Scottish sugar refiner Abram Lyle in 1883 as a byproduct of sugar refining.  A light, golden coloured treacle it is exceptionally sweet owing to a high proportion, 35%, of inverted sugar.  Inverted sugar is produced by splitting the disaccharide sucrose into its constituent monosaccharides, glucose and fructose.  Inverted sugar tastes sweeter, is moister and is less prone to crystalisation than sucrose.  Golden Syrup is popular in baking, especially syrup sponge and treacle tarts and is also used like honey on bread or toast.

Black Treacle is a form of dark molasses popular in the UK.

Sugar Rush

I was casually listening to the radio the other day.  Geraldene Holt, an internationally famous food writer and author of the unambiguously titled “Cakes” was making a carrot cake.  An ambitious idea for the radio you may think.  Anyway I had only a passing interest as she and the presenter discussed whether the inclusion of carrots made this a healthy option.  (The answer, in case you needed to be told, is no!)  But then, as she ticked off the ingredients one by one, she said something which did cause me to stop and pay more attention.  ““Lovely natural Muscovado Sugar,” she purred, “now this is healthy of course.”  The presenter clearly shared my skepticism about this claim and, barely managing to control her splutters of incredulity, she challenged the writer on it, causing Geraldene to change her assessment, “Well, I think it’s healthier for the environment; it’s not sugar beet.”  That is of course an altogether different point, but it got me thinking, and I quickly realized how little I really knew about this everyday product which is eaten by almost everybody.  Where does sugar really come from?  Is there a difference between beet sugar and cane sugar?  What are the social and environmental impacts of growing and producing sugar?  Since then I have been on something of a journey of discovery which is going to provide the theme for the blog over the next few days.

History

Sugar Cane

Sugar Cane (Saccharum) seems to have originated somewhere in the islands of what is now Indonesia and New Guinea.  For possibly thousands of years the cane was grown and chewed raw to unlock the sweetness before anyone thought of processing the plant to extract crystalline sugar.  The first written mention of sugar, is in the 1^st century AD in Rome where it is described as a medicine for the stomach, bladder and kidneys  produced from ‘reeds’ in India, obviously sugar cane.  Its production is first documented in India during the Gupta Empire around 350 AD.  The very name sugar is derived from a Sanskrit word sharkara meaning sand or gravel, which reminds us that the refining process was less efficient in those days.

From India it travelled to China around 630 AD when the Tang dynasty emperor T'ai-Tsung sent special envoys to the Gupta court to learn the art of sugar making.  Shortly afterwards it spread to the Arab world and was carried west by the Muslim expansion of the seventh and eight centuries under the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates, reaching the whole of North Africa and Moorish Iberia.  It was a very popular trade item because, in a world where goods were transported by camel caravan, sugar’s price relative to weight or volume was extremely high.

For over 1,000 years the cost ensured that sugar remained a luxury item, a ‘fine spice’ available only to the super rich. Mainly this was because of the labour intensive nature of cultivating and processing sugar cane and that is also why sugar production has always been inextricably tied up with slavery. The Venetians began growing sugar cane in Cyprus in the 10^th century, using slave labour imported from the Black Sea region, but output remained low until around 1450 when the Catholic kingdoms of Portugal and Castile began production using African slaves, particularly in the island territories of Madeira and the Canaries. By 1490 Madeira had become the largest producer in the western world.

Workers on a sugar cane plantation in Louisiana

Sugar then was well placed to make the next hop across the Atlantic to Spain and Portugal’s new territories in the Caribbean and Brazil.  Some accounts say sugar cane plants were even carried by Christopher Columbus on the Santa Maria.

The Spanish began growing sugar as early as 1501 in Hispaniola and shortly thereafter in Jamaica and Cuba.  Over the next hundred years sugar plantations were established from Brazil to Florida and almost every island of the Caribbean.  In addition to the Spanish and Portuguese territories, Dutch, French and English colonies were established to produce and process sugar cane.  The native peoples of the Americas however succumbed readily to European diseases such as small pox and influenza, leading once again to labour shortages.  Sugar producers turned at first to indentured workers from Europe, but they proved equally susceptible to tropical diseases such as malaria and yellow fever.  The solution was to import slaves from Africa, resistant to both old world and tropical diseases, and so the infamous triangular trade was established.

This increase in output finally brought sugar within reach of the ordinary citizenry and they loved it. It must have brought about something of a revolution in European cookery.   By the end of the eighteenth century sugar accounted for 20% of all European imports.  In money terms from 1750 until 1820 sugar remained Britain’s biggest single import.  The average per capita consumption in Britain in 1800 was 20lbs per annum.  The historian Niall Ferguson says “The rise of the British Empire…had less to do with the Protestant work ethic…than with the British sweet tooth.”  The British Empire, he claims, was launched on a “sugar rush”.

Sugar beet

Unlike the maritime powers of Western Europe, Prussia didn’t have an overseas empire.  Instead they had Franz Karl Achard.  Achard studied physics and chemistry in Berlin and went on to become a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and a favourite of King Frederick II, who took a keen interest in his research.  Having carried out ground breaking work on the acclimatisation of tobacco to the German climate, in 1789 Achard turned his attention to producing sugar from beets which could be cultivated in a European climate.   Silesian White Beets (Beta vulgaris) used for cattle feed, had been known for some time to contain sucrose, but Achard developed a commercial process to refine and extract it.

Sugar Beet

Sugar beet received a huge fillip due to various embargoes, blockades and other interruptions to the Atlantic trade resulting from the Napoleonic wars, in Germany and also in France.

Today 30% to 35% of all sugar is made from Sugar Beet and beets are grown in Europe, Canada, USA, Russia and the Ukraine.

Meanwhile cane sugar is grown throughout the world in tropical and sub-tropical regions.  The biggest producers are Brazil, India, China, Thailand, Pakistan and Mexico, but sugar is important locally to the economies of many other countries from the Caribbean to the Philippines.

Sugar is now one of the most basic foodstuffs in the world.  It is a key ingredient in baking, brewing, soft drinks and almost every other processed food from ketchup to breakfast cereals to ice cream.  Increasingly it is fermented to produce ethanol for biofuel and is even used in a wide range of industries from leather tanning, inks and dyes, textiles, pharmaceuticals and precast concrete.

It's been an extraordinary march towards world domination for this humble condiment.