Dyed cane sugar. Myths about brown sugar. Part 1. We've been fooled twice

Reality: this is wrong!

Cane sugar, or brown sugar as it is often called, is sugar made from sugar cane. In the production of cane sugar, sugar cane is subject to minimal industrial processing, as a result of which cane sugar retains sugarcane molasses and, accordingly, a number of valuable microelements such as calcium, iron, phosphorus, etc. The darker the sugar, the higher the concentration of molasses in it.

However, you should know that white cane sugar is also available on the market! It will not retain the sugarcane molasses, but has a mild flavor and a delicate tropical aroma.

Myth: In order to determine the authenticity of cane sugar, you need to dissolve it in water.

It is believed that fake sugar can be detected by dissolving it in warm water. If the liquid turns the color of sugar, then most likely this is a useless fake.

Reality: it's a lie!

All cane sugar tends to color water. The molasses, which envelops the sugar crystals, dissolves first, coloring the water. This is due to the peculiarities of cane sugar production!

Cane sugar is produced by crystallizing molasses obtained from sugar cane juice. To start the growth of crystals, small slices of sucrose are added to the molasses. A sucrose crystal begins to form around these particles. Since sucrose has a dense crystalline structure, most of the cane molasses cannot be fixed inside the crystal, but only in its microcracks.

Since the outer part of the crystals has more microcracks, the overwhelming amount of cane molasses is fixed there. And, accordingly, when dissolved, unrefined cane sugar crystals, first of all, lose molasses and become discolored, and the solution becomes colored.

Myth: real cane sugar should “prove itself” when in contact with iodine.

There is an opinion that there is one effective way to figure out counterfeit sugar. You need to take iodine and drop it into sugar syrup. If the sugar has acquired a bluish tint, then this is natural cane sugar; otherwise, it is fake.

Reality: it is a myth!

This myth appeared due to the fact that saccharides (in particular, starch/bread) interact with iodine, turning bluish (previously, the presence of bread in cutlets was determined by dripping iodine onto their cracks). However, this only applies to polysaccharides such as starch (the main constituent of bread).

Cane sugar is predominantly a monosaccharide, which by its nature does not behave this way when in contact with iodine. Therefore, this method of checking the authenticity of sugar is not effective! Sugar will not turn blue - and it shouldn’t!

Myth: Real cane sugar can be distinguished by taste and smell.

Reality: This is true!

White sugar has only one taste and practically no smell, but cane sugar has a lot of nuances of taste and aroma. You can distinguish a genuine product by its characteristic taste and smell. Add a few pieces of cane sugar to a cup of tea or coffee, stir it and taste the drink - real cane sugar will highlight the taste of the drink without distorting it, adding an exquisite piquant note to a cup of tea or coffee.

Myth: To determine the real sugar, you need to carefully study the product packaging.

Reality: This is true!

In the store, before purchasing cane sugar, carefully study the information on the packaging. Pay special attention to the country of origin of cane sugar. Respectable sugar comes from Mauritius, Cuba, Brazil, USA, Costa Rica or Guatemala.

In addition, give preference to trusted sugar producers, for example, TM Sladov cane sugar.

Cane sugar TM “Sladov” is produced on the island of Mauritius, and has successfully passed all tests for authenticity and safety. The quality of this sugar is confirmed by the presence of quality certificates, hygienic conclusions, as well as the results of studies on the presence of useful substances such as phosphorus, iron, magnesium, calcium, potassium in unrefined cane sugar TM “Sladov”!

The right decisions in choosing quality products!

Brown unrefined sugar is becoming an increasingly popular product among consumers every day. It is famous for its advantages and beneficial properties, but, unfortunately, unscrupulous manufacturers often take advantage of it. Brown sugar: how to distinguish a fake and choose a truly high-quality product? Many buyers ask this question. After all, prices on the Internet and in regular stores for this product vary greatly.

Why? What's the catch?

When purchasing cane sugar, remember that brown is its natural color. It gets its color from cane molasses. If you put a spoonful of sugar in water and it turns red Brown color, - It's a fake copy. Not real cane sugar is made very simply: regular refined sugar is mixed with molasses, and it takes on the appearance of cane sugar, but naturally has no beneficial properties. In this case, manufacturers do not bear any responsibility, since such “production” is not prohibited by law. Yes, and you can distinguish a fake only after purchase. Who will give you the opportunity to add sugar to water in the store?

Then how else can you distinguish brown sugar from a fake?

1. When purchasing, pay attention to the labels on the packaging. If it says that sugar is produced in South America, USA, Costa Rica, Brazil or Cuba, then it is likely that you are holding a truly genuine and healthy sugar. Also, the packaging must indicate that this is “unrefined brown sugar”; there should be no other notes.

Unfortunately, the country of origin is not a complete guarantee of the authenticity of the product. You can 100% distinguish counterfeit brown sugar only after purchasing it.

2. A glass of warm water and regular iodine will help with this. Dissolve sugar in water and add a couple of drops of iodine. If the water has acquired a blue tint, then this is genuine cane sugar. Brown sugar can also be distinguished by its specific taste.

3. The real one has a vanilla-caramel taste and smell.

4. Don’t forget that cane sugar will always cost much more than white sugar. Therefore, if you see cheap brown sugar in the store, it is better to immediately refuse it.

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True gourmets highly value brown sugar for its original taste that it adds to dishes and drinks. But in order to choose a truly genuine product, it is important to know a few simple rules. Knowing how to choose the right brown sugar and how to distinguish a fake, you will be satisfied with your purchase and fully enjoy all the benefits of such sugar over regular white refined sugar.

How to learn to distinguish real cane sugar from fake? It's very simple - you just need to know a few key points. Which ones? FeelGood will tell you!

Test it directly in a drink

It seems to many that sugar in any form has absolutely the same taste qualities. In fact, one of the main differences between cane sugar and beet sugar is that it manifests itself completely differently in drinks and dishes. That is why real cane sugar can be distinguished by taste and smell. White beet sugar has virtually no odor and only one taste. As for brown - cane - sugar, it has a lot of nuances, including a characteristic taste and aroma.

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Add a little cane sugar to a cup of coffee or tea, stir it and taste the drink - real cane sugar will highlight the taste of the drink without distorting it, and will add an exquisite piquant note to tea or coffee.

Carefully read the description on the packaging

Still main source information for a buyer who does not have a laboratory nearby for analysis is, first of all, packaging. Carefully study all notes and inscriptions on the label. A very important factor is the country of origin of cane sugar. Authentic and, more importantly, high-quality cane sugar comes to us mainly from the islands of Mauritius, Argentina, Colombia, Malawi, Brazil, Paraguay, and South Africa.

Also pay attention to the calorie content of the product - cane sugar is more dietary than regular sugar (about 375 kcal per 100 g).

We advise you to give preference to trusted sugar producers, such as TM “Sladov” unrefined cane sugar.

The products of TM “Sladov” are noticeably different from their average market analogues. Firstly, this is, of course, a wide range of goods, which cannot but please. Secondly, only selected varieties of sugar beets and sugar cane are used for TM “Sladov” sugar, and the design of the product pleases with ergonomic packaging.

Moreover, it was at the sugar production of TM “Sladov” that the Safety Management System was developed, implemented and certified food products according to the Food Safety System Certification 22000 (FSSC 22000) scheme. This is an audit and certification scheme for food safety management systems in the food supply chain, based on ISO standards and recognized internationally.

An effective food safety management system, which operates at the sugar production of TM “Sladov”, guarantees the quality and safety of the food products produced.

TM "Sladov" takes care of your health, offering only high-quality products that have all supporting documents.

Myths about how to recognize real sugar

There are two most common myths about how to test the authenticity of cane sugar: using iodine and using warm water.

According to the first belief, you need to drop iodine into sugar syrup, and if the sugar acquires a bluish tint, then it means it is real. Accordingly, if there is no reaction, this is a fake.

This myth arose due to the fact that saccharides (in particular, starch/bread) interact with iodine, turning bluish (and previously, using a similar experiment, the presence of bread in cutlets was determined). However, this only applies to polysaccharides like starch (the main component of bread).

Cane sugar is predominantly a monosaccharide, which by its nature does not behave this way when in contact with iodine. Simply put, sugar - real or not - will not turn blue in any case.

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The second myth, which involves the use of warm water, is due to the fact that sometimes beet sugar is simply colored with caramel, passing it off as cane sugar. Caramel in water tends to wash off and turn the liquid brown. At first glance, everything seems simple: if the water changes color, then the sugar is not real.

However, in fact, cane sugar can also color water. The fact is that it is produced by crystallizing molasses obtained from sugar cane juice. To start the growth of crystals, small slices of sucrose are added to the molasses. They have a dense crystalline structure, and therefore most of the cane molasses cannot be fixed inside the crystal, but only in its microcracks, the vast majority of which are on the outer part of the crystal. When dissolved in warm water, unrefined cane sugar crystals lose their molasses and become discolored, and the solution, accordingly, becomes colored. From which we summarize that it is simply impossible to verify the authenticity of sugar using warm water.

FeelGood wishes you to always be vigilant and consume only the highest quality products!

When buying food, each of us may encounter low-quality goods. Due to the manufacturer’s negligence and violation of technological standards, such a product is considered defective and should be disposed of. But as often happens, the manufacturer does not want to lose money, and such a product ends up on store shelves. And if unscrupulous businessmen are engaged in the production of any food product, then there is no need to talk about the quality of the product. GlavRecipe.Ru will help you distinguish high-quality sugar from counterfeit sugar.

One of the most common food products, sugar, may also be of poor quality. Surely each of us has noticed at least once that when sugar is added to tea, white foam appears on the surface of the liquid. We will try to figure out why this happens.

Sugar is obtained from sugar cane or sugar beets. Moreover, cane sugar is the most ancient product. Humanity has been extracting sugar from cane for 24 centuries. Sugar from beets began to be produced relatively recently, under Peter I. During the entire existence of sugar production, production technologies have not changed significantly.

Beets that arrive at sugar factories are washed and filled with lime solution. This is done in order to disinfect beaten, cracked, rotten beets. A solution of lime or lime “milk” destroys germs and bacteria. If the manufacturer does not follow the technology, lime residues end up in the finished product. And when such sugar is added to tea, white foam appears on the surface of the liquid.

The next step in sugar production is grinding the beets, obtaining so-called shavings, from which sugar is extracted when water is added. Sugar is extracted from beets using special chemical compounds. They are called surfactants (surfactants). Essentially, it is a cleaning product. It turns out that surfactants are found in soap and washing powders. It was noticed that if surfactants similar to the surfactants of washing powder are added to a mixture of grated beets and water, the sugar yield at the end of the process increases. Why is this happening? Roughly speaking, the beetroot shavings were washed off. Surfactants glue all the dirt in the sugar syrup and turn it into sediment. After this, the surfactants are filtered out. If this is done in violation of technology, surfactants end up in the finished product. And this is definitely a marriage.

The surfactants themselves are harmless in small doses. They pose a danger to environment. Getting into wastewater, and then they accumulate in reservoirs. This slows down the growth of microflora.

How to distinguish high-quality sugar from counterfeit? On the packaging in mandatory The manufacturer, date of manufacture or packaging, as well as the batch number must be indicated. Even if you purchased a low-quality product, according to these details you are required to replace the product.

Sometimes in stores you can find sugar labeled “sweet.” Know. This is not natural sugar. And it is named sweet because it is sugar to which sweeteners have been added to triple the sweetness of sugar.

Sugar quickly absorbs moisture. To make sure that the sugar is not damp, you need to twirl the package in your hands. If it flows easily, it is dry. If the grains of sand stick to each other, the sugar was stored in a damp room. This is usually done by sellers who sell sugar by weight to give it weight.

Sugar absorbs odors perfectly. Therefore, it must be stored separately from other products. To identify sugar that has been saturated with foreign odors, you should hold a pinch of sugar in your hand and hold it for a couple of minutes. After this, you need to smell the sugar. An unpleasant smell is a sign that the sugar has had time to smell.

To ensure the quality of sugar, it must be dissolved in hot water. If it becomes cloudy and smells bad, there are impurities in the sugar.

Many nutritionists advise limiting sugar consumption and replacing it with natural honey and natural fruits. Only in this case will your body receive the necessary minerals and trace elements.

Cane sugar- a sweet crystalline product obtained from the juice of a sun- and heat-loving plant called sugar cane, which is similar in appearance to bamboo and known to mankind since ancient times. In fact, the production of cane sugar is much older than that of beet sugar. India is considered its homeland, from where it was gradually introduced and cultivated in other countries of the Middle East and Mediterranean with the help of travelers and merchants, who always delighted the inhabitants with overseas delicacies. And subsequently, thanks to the Spanish and Portuguese conquerors, it spread to the New World, the Caribbean Islands, Madeira and Cape Verde. Until now, cane sugar has an extraordinary distribution throughout the globe.

Nowadays, you can find this wonderful product in almost every supermarket or grocery store. Photos of cane sugar very often decorate various articles and publications on the topic. healthy nutrition, and the popularity of this sweetener is gaining more and more momentum, urging fans of a healthy lifestyle to carefully monitor the products they consume and get rid of harmful and useless ingredients in their own diet.

Beneficial features

The beneficial properties of cane sugar, or rather, their a large number of and explains the popularity that this type of product has acquired in our time. And indeed, if we compare the beet sugar we are used to with cane sugar, then the results of laboratory research, as a rule, give the palm to our overseas counterpart. Let's look at the benefits of cane sugar:

Which cane sugar is best?

In order to decide for yourself which cane sugar is better, you must first understand the process of making this product, as well as how different types of cane sweets differ from each other.

The main two types that are found on store shelves are:

  • Refined cane white sugar - this product goes through all stages of refining: from conversion into syrup followed by filtration to evaporation and drying of the resulting white mass.
  • Unrefined brown cane sugar - this one has a different intensity of brown hue and undergoes very little purification.

It is the latter, called “raw cane sugar,” that is becoming increasingly popular. There are several varieties of unrefined sweetener:

Cane sugar gur

It is a bit misleading to say that gur is natural cane sugar. This product came to us from India along with the growing popularity of Ayurvedic lifestyle trends and is a condensed natural juice squeezed very slowly (over about 3 hours) from the trunks of sugarcane.

The consistency and color of this sweetness resemble soft sherbet, which, however, does not exclude the presence of a small amount of sugar crystals in the product.

The production of gur, popular mainly in India, involves carefully pressing the raw materials, cleaning and thickening by cooking. This method allows you to preserve the maximum amount of useful substances in the consumed product.

How to distinguish a fake?

Every consumer needs to learn how to distinguish counterfeit cane sugar from a natural product. Counterfeiters very often nowadays try to disguise ordinary refined white sugar with caramel, giving it a brown tint. This is done for the sake of profit, because cane sugar is an order of magnitude more expensive than its refined beet brother. Let's consider several possibilities for checking cane sugar for originality:

Use in cooking

The use of cane sugar in cooking has many diverse traditions associated with the cultural and culinary characteristics of each country. In addition, the diversity of this product does not make it possible to combine all varieties in one row, because each is so unique (including compatibility with various products) that it can be considered a separate type of additive:

The benefits of cane sugar and treatment

Many people, thinking about healthy way life, wonder about the benefits and harms of cane sugar, and make sure that cane sugar has only positive reviews. That is why the question of whether to buy cane sugar is, as a rule, not worth it for them. And rightly so, because it is not only a delicious delicacy. Proper regular use of this product can help in the prevention and treatment of many diseases.

If you simply replace any sweetener with cane sugar in your diet, the risk of complications such as:

  • cough;
  • sore throat;
  • pulmonary infections.

This sweet product also improves blood circulation and strengthens the immune system.

This, however, is not at all surprising! The very history of this product indicates its medicinal nature. For a long time Cane sugar was available for purchase only in pharmacies as a drug, not a culinary product.

Harm of cane sugar and contraindications

The harm of cane sugar and contraindications to its use are the subject of research by many modern scientists and nutritionists.

In fact, there are no contraindications for this wonderful product. Restrictions on the consumption of cane sugar can only be associated with its excess amount in the daily diet, which leads not only to the appearance of excess fat in the human body, but also to additional stress on the pancreas, as well as to a supersaturation of the blood with glucose. And this, in turn, can lead to various other diseases. In addition, the unregulated consumption of cane sugar by people suffering from diabetes mellitus, can cause an exacerbation of this disease and a deterioration in a person’s general well-being.

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