The first sugar cane people began to cultivate more than three millennia BC. Today it is difficult to imagine a modern man without a table of sweets and sugar. White Death or the sweet life - everyone decides for himself this important question of a balanced diet. At the same time sugar cane is rich in ancient history, vast geography and diversity of species.

Honey without bees

Cane sugar is a complex compound - disaccharide, which in turn consists of α-glucose and β-fructose. Get it from sugar cane, while another contains sucrose and beet, in the juices of certain plants and fruits - birch, maple, carrot, melon.

To cultivate sugar cane plantations, perennial herbaceous plant Saccharum, to produce sugar, begun in India, three thousand years before our era. The soldiers of Alexander the Great came to India, were shocked many wonders of the East, the biggest excitement caused raw sugar. The Greek historian Onesicritus will record for posterity: "In India, cane gives honey without bees." Ancient Indians called sweet crystals derived from cane juice, the word "Saqqara", which means "pebbles, sand."

Sugar cane began to cultivate in the III century BC in the Middle East, due to the fact that the Arabs brought it from India. In China, sugar called stone honey, and in Egypt - Indian salt. Persians got the first refined sugar, experimenting with numerous raw digestion. In Europe, sugar was much later and was very expensive: for a long time he was considered a luxury and medicine. In the XV century sugar cane made a trip to the New World, thanks to Columbus.

In Russia, it has long been the king's sugar delicacy inaccessible general population. Then came the Sugar Loaf, sugar-candy. Since the XVII century, along with other "colonial" goods, increased demand for tea, coffee and sugar, so he began to buy in large quantities. Demand and consumption grew, the price fell. Today, the world consumption of sugar cane in the hundreds of millions of tons.

Types of sugar cane

Plain white sugar, which contemporaries because of irrepressible consumption began to be called white death, only one kind of sugar cane. Its direct "competitor" - beet sugar produced from sugar beet, although both products are identical: In this and in another after purification is at least 99, 9% sucrose.

On the shelves of health food stores Healthy eating   and major supermarkets appeared brown cane sugar (Brown sugar), which contains eighty to ninety percent of sucrose and a number of mineral impurities. This sugar was minimal industrial processing and is rich in useful trace elements such as potassium, phosphorus, calcium, iron, magnesium, wherein the caloric content exceeds normal white refined sugar cane. For useful and valuable substances to be paid, so the price of brown sugar several times higher than white.

There are also these types of high-end sugar as demerara (Demerara sugar), the sugar is golden-brown, sort of brown sugar. This form may be either natural unrefined and refined white, which is mixed with molasses, treacle, sugar cane production waste. The name Demerara received from the river in Guyana, where he initially started to produce.

Turbinado (Turbinado sugar) - a natural raw cane sugar, which is obtained by minimal processing and purification of cane molasses with water and steam. It is a large dry crystals of golden-brown color. Muskovado (Muscovado sugar) - cane sugar to caramel Caramel: sweet treat , Produced in a mixture with molasses, the larger the molasses, the darker. Black Barbadian sugar cane (Black Barbados sugar) contains a lot of molasses, wet, soft sugar with a strong smell of molasses, the bulk of which is produced in Mauritius.

It is interesting

New in stores - ecologically pure cane sugar (organic sugar): the manufacturer guarantees that the raw material for the production of this sugar is not exposed to herbicides, pesticides and other chemical fertilizers. All kinds of such sugar are marked icon certificate Soil Association (Soil Association), and meet the standards of Europe and the United Kingdom in the production of pure sugar.

Sugar-free hard to imagine his life, however, an excess can cause serious health damage. Doctors recommend eating all foods in moderation, while sugar has a positive impact on the overall condition of the body when a balanced diet.

Jeanne Pyatirikova