Facts about Sugar
Glucose is produced by plants during photosynthesis and can be stored as sucrose in sugar cane and beets.
Napoleon, cut off from Caribbean imports by a British blockade and at any rate not wanting to fund British merchants, banned sugar imports in 1813.
Understandably, the Sanskrit word for "sugar" (sharkara), also means "gravel."
Sugarcane quickly exhausts the soil, and growers pressed larger islands with fresher soil into production in the nineteenth century.
Britain and the Caribbean islands have cuisines where sugar usage has become particularly prominent.
In 2005/2006, 147.7 million tons of sugar was estimated to be produced worldwide.
During the eighteenth century, sugar became enormously popular and went through a series of booms.
The largest sugar producer in the world, by 1750, was the French colony known as Saint-Domingue, today the independent country of Haiti.
Only after the Crusades, whose soldiers returned with what they perceived to be "sweet salt," did sugar begin to rival honey as the sweetener in Europe.
The European Union, the United States, and Japan all maintain elevated price-floors for sugar through subsidizing domestic production and imposing high tariffs on imports.
The resultant sugar is then either sold as is for use or processed further to produce lighter grades.
Originally a luxury, sugar eventually became sufficiently cheap and common to influence standard cuisine.
Similarly, the Chinese use the term "gravel sugar" (Traditional Chinese: ??) for table sugar.
The production of sugar in Barbados and the British Leewards accounted for 93 percent and 97 percent respectively of each island’s exports.
Beet sugar refineries produce refined white sugar directly without an intermediate raw stage.
Sugar production also increased in the American colonies, Cuba, and Brazil.
Raw sugars comprise yellow to brown sugars made from clarified cane-juice boiled down to a crystalline solid with minimal chemical processing.
Sugar was commonly sold in solid cones and required a sugar nip, a pliers-like tool, to break off pieces.
The beet-sugar industry that emerged in consequence grew, and today, sugar-beet provides approximately 30 percent of world sugar production.
Millions of slaves crossed the Atlantic Ocean to cultivate and harvest sugar on plantations in Brazil and the Caribbean.
Little perceptible difference exists between sugar produced from beet and that from cane.
Some lesser known methods use the cultivation of plants like wormwood or sagewort, lemon balm, lemon grass, lemon thyme, and the mosquito plant (Pelargonium).
White refined sugar has become the most common form of sugar in North America as well as in Europe.
Beet-sugar producers slice the washed beets, extract the sugar with hot water in a "diffuser," and then use an alkaline solution ("milk of lime" and carbon dioxide) to precipitate impurities.
After the Haitian Revolution established the independent state of Haiti, sugar production in that country declined and Cuba replaced Saint-Domingue as the world's largest producer.
Raw sugars are produced in the processing of sugar beet juice, but only as intermediates en route to white sugar.
Brown sugars also tend to harden if exposed to the atmosphere, although proper handling can reverse this.
Mauritius and Malawi export significant quantities of such specialty sugars.
The 1390s saw the development of a better press, which doubled the juice obtained from sugar cane.
Sugar trade policy has several international and domestic economic effects.
Reacting to this increasing craze, the islands took advantage of the situation and began harvesting sugar in extreme amounts.
Nonetheless, developed world governments have made some attempts to aid less financially sound nations in the sugar trade.
Specialist trades in mold making and iron casting were inevitably created in Europe by the expansion of sugar.
Commercially-produced table sugar comes either from sugarcane (or sugar cane) or from sugar beet, and has tremendous social implications.
Beet sugar comes from regions with cooler climates: northwest and eastern Europe, northern Japan, plus some areas in the United States, including California.
Monosaccharides have the chemical formula C6(H2O)6, with oxygen and hydrogen atoms that differ in position in each sugar molecule.
The article on carbohydrate provides an overview of other types of sugars, oligosaccharides, and polysaccharides.
A large beet-refinery producing around 1,500 tons of sugar per day needs a permanent workforce of about 150 for 24-hour production.
Brown sugars derive from the late stages of sugar refining, when sugar forms fine crystals with significant molasses-content, or by coating white refined sugar with a cane molasses syrup.
Adding sugar to food particularly enhances taste, but has the primary drawback of increasing caloric content, and when consumed in excess, may promote the onset of disease and other health concerns.
Recent studies have not shown a link between the consumption of sugar and hyperactivity levels, even when the researchers focused on children with a presumed "sugar-sensitivity."
When he finally sailed, leaving for the New World, the governor, Beatrice de Bobadilla, gave him cuttings of sugarcane, which became the first to reach the Americas.
White refined sugar is typically sold as granulated sugar, which has been dried to prevent clumping.
Sugar beet (Beta vulgaris) is a plant whose root also contains a high concentration of sucrose and is grown commercially for sugar as well.
Cuba also prospered above other islands because they used better methods when harvesting the sugar crops.
Long established in Brazil, sugar production spread to other parts of South America, as well as to newer European colonies in Africa and in the Pacific.
Sugar without trade agreements is sold freely to various nations, companies, or individual buyers.
Pentoses are sugar molecules composed of five carbon atoms and include ribose, a component of several chemicals such as NADH and ATP that are important to the metabolic process.
Sugarcane, a tropical grass, probably originated in New Guinea.
When economic constraints prevent the removal of more sugar, the manufacturer discards the remaining liquid, now known as molasses.
Monosaccharides, or "simple sugars" are monomers, and include such sugars as fructose, glucose, galactose, and ribose.
Raw sugar is sometimes prepared as loaves rather than as a crystalline powder: in this technique, sugar and molasses are poured together into molds and allowed to dry.
The resulting sugar cakes or loaves are called jaggery or gur in India, pingbian tong in China, and panela, panocha, pile, and piloncillo in various parts of Latin America.
Argument continues as to the value of extrinsic sugar (sugar added to food) compared to that of intrinsic sugar (sugar, seldom sucrose, naturally present in food).
Sugar may be consumed in the producing country, under government regulation and pricing, or distributed abroad under long-term trade agreements.
At first, most sugar in Britain was used in tea, but later candies and chocolates became extremely popular.
Technically, however, the term sugar refers to the simple, water-soluble carbohydrates known as monosaccharides, disaccharides, and trisaccharides.
Cane-sugar producers crush the harvested vegetable material, then collect and filter the juice.
Cuba was a large producer of sugar in the twentieth century until the collapse of the Soviet Union took away their export market and the industry collapsed.
Sieving the resultant white sugar produces different grades for selling.
Sugar beets provide approximately 30 percent of world sugar production.
After filtration, the juice is concentrated into about 70 percent solids by evaporation, and the sugar is extracted by controlled crystallization.
Despite these and other improvements, the prices of sugar reached soaring heights, especially during events such as the revolt against the Dutch and during the Napoleonic wars.
Sugar mill construction is the missing link of the technological skills needed for the Industrial Revolution that is now recognized as having begun in the first part of the 1600s.
Sugar remained in high demand, and the islands' planters took advantage of the situation.
When sugar is consumed, blood glucose levels rise and are mediated by the body's endogenous production of insulin, a hormone that incorporates glucose from the blood into cells.
Types of raw sugar available as a specialty item outside the tropics include demerara, muscovado, and turbinado.
The resultant sensitive balance of supply and demand accounts for the historic trend of constantly fluctuating sugar prices.
The most important two sugar crops are sugarcane and sugar beets, in which sugar can account for between 12 and 20 percent of the plant's dry weight.
The greatest quantity of sugar is produced in Brazil, Europe, India, China, and the United States (in descending order).
After 1625, the Dutch carried sugarcane from South America to the Caribbean islands—from Barbados to the Virgin Islands.
Granulated sugar may also be found in the form of powdered sugar, confectioners' sugar, icing sugar, superfine sugar, and sugar cubes, all which vary in crystal sizes.
Type II diabetes is one of the greatest health concerns in relation to the consumption of sugar, especially sucrose, which is commonly eaten in excess.
The reactive components of sugars are the hydroxyl groups (-OH), and the aldehyde (-CHO) or ketone groups (C=O), which contain carbon-oxygen double bonds.
Carbohydrates are classified according to the number of units of simple sugar they contain.
The heat is then turned off and the liquid crystallizes, usually while being stirred, to produce sugar crystals.
Hexoses (six-carbon sugars) include glucose which is a universal substrate for the production of energy in the form of ATP in the process of glycolysis.