Cane sugar
Cane sugar is the product description for household sugar ( sucrose ), which is obtained from sugar cane . The sugar produced in Central Europe , on the other hand, is obtained from sugar beet and is called beet sugar ; chemically there is no difference between pure cane sugar and pure beet sugar. Sucrose is a disaccharide , i.e. a sugar made up of two monosaccharide molecules ( glucose and fructose ). The molecular formula is C 12 H 22 O 11 .
origin
Sugar cane
Sugar cane ( Saccharum officinarum L .; formerly Arundo sacchararia L.), a grass with 4 to 6 cm thick stems from the Poaceae family , contains a sweet juice that is pressed to produce sugar. Growing countries include Brazil , Cuba , Mauritius , USA , South Africa , Australia and the Philippines .
The origin of sugar cane is in Polynesia . It has been used for agriculture in India since the 5th century . The crusaders brought the sugar to Europe. The main hub was Venice . At that time, sugar was considered a luxury item, so that the majority of the population continued to sweeten the food - if at all - with honey or fruit juice boiled down into syrup .
In Sicily and southern Spain , sugar cane was first grown by the Arabs . After the Reconquista , the Spaniards relocated the cultivation to the Canary Islands , from where it came to the Caribbean and thus to Jamaica .
The Portuguese brought the plant to South America and cultivated large areas in Brazil as early as the 16th century. Sugar cultivation in Brazil and the Caribbean ushered in the "sugar cycle" in the history of colonization. For almost 200 years, cultivation, transport and trade to Europe were the economic basis of the colonies and the wealth of the kings in Lisbon and Madrid, until the first gold discoveries in Brazil at the end of the 17th century ushered in a new economic cycle.
The transition to beet sugar
In 1747 the pharmacist Andreas Sigismund Marggraf discovered that beetroot ( Beta vulgaris ssp. Vulgaris , Crassa group) contains almost 2% sugar, which is chemically identical to cane sugar. Around 1786 Franz Karl Achard began to increase the sugar content through breeding - current sugar beet varieties contain 17 to 22% - and to develop processes to isolate the sugar from the beets. This made Prussia independent of the importation of cane sugar from overseas, which was made difficult by Napoleon's continental barrier, and the purchase of sugar became affordable for large parts of the population.
Because of the low wages in the growing countries and the higher yields, cane sugar could be far cheaper than beet sugar again today. On the other hand, there are high tariffs in the EU that make cane sugar more expensive and, on the other hand, subsidies that make domestic beet sugar cheaper. However, the EU sugar market regime expired on September 30, 2017.
processing
Herbal sweets
As long as sugar was a luxury item, pharmacists mixed it with medicinal products and spices ( aniseed , fennel ) and made herbal sweets ( confectiones ). To do this, the sugar was heated so that it caramelized and became viscous. The addition of starch prevented the sugar from crystallizing out when cooling and the candies from becoming cloudy. The mass mixed with the additives was poured onto stone slabs and cut into small pieces.
Sugar production
Sugars
In addition to white refined sugar, there is raw cane sugar and whole cane sugar , which is also known as dried sugar cane juice. Raw cane sugar is partially refined and contains 0.3 to 1% molasses . Whole cane sugar is unrefined and contains all the minerals contained in sugar cane, in particular iron , magnesium , calcium and phosphorus as well as B vitamins . The brown sugar has no significant physiological advantages over white sugar . The occurrence of contaminating foreign matter is discussed critically. Characteristic for this sugar is the intense taste of molasses. A darker version of raw cane sugar with large crystals and approx. 2 to 3% molasses is called Golden Brown or Demerara .
The term "cane sugar" is also often incorrectly used to denote brown sugar, although there is also brown sugar made from beets. However, this is a refined sugar that is made from brown candy syrup, which is why the name "Kandisfarin" is also used. In French , the generic term for any unrefined (brown) sugar is cassonade .
Life cycle assessment
The fact that organic beet sugar is around 37% less harmful to the environment than organic Fairtrade cane sugar from Paraguay is due - in addition to imports from overseas - to various aspects of agricultural cultivation and sugar production. In southern Germany and Switzerland, the field yields in beet cultivation at 58 t / ha are slightly higher than the field yields in sugar cane cultivation in Paraguay with 55.5 t / ha and at the same time the Swiss factories have a lot with 1 t of sugar from 6.6 t of beet higher sugar yield than the sugar factories in Paraguay with 1 t of sugar from 11.4 t of sugar cane. Accordingly, compared to Paraguay, around 45% less cultivated area has to be farmed in order to produce the amount of beet or sugar cane required for 1 t of sugar. Due to the high share of organic sugar in the environmental footprint of cultivation , this has a very strong influence on the results in favor of beet sugar.
literature
- Jeremy M. Berg, John L. Tymoczko, Lubert Stryer : Biochemistry. 6 edition, Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg 2007. ISBN 978-3-8274-1800-5 .
- Donald Voet, Judith G. Voet: Biochemistry. 3rd edition, John Wiley & Sons, New York 2004. ISBN 0-471-19350-X .
- Bruce Alberts , Alexander Johnson, Peter Walter, Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts: Molecular Biology of the Cell , 5th Edition, Taylor & Francis 2007, ISBN 978-0815341062 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sárkarā is the Sanskrit term for semolina, pebbles or sugar. This gave rise to the Greek sákcharon , from which the Latin saccharon was borrowed, from which the technical term sucrose emerged.
- ↑ The Italian zucchero is derived from the Arabic sukkar , from which the German sugar was then borrowed.
- ↑ Scientific names of Beta vulgaris in MMPND.
- ↑ 2018 sugar beet harvest: Small beets - high sugar content? from the Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food
- ↑ The sugar beet - The career of a political tuber . In: NZZ , December 18, 2015.
- ↑ Waldemar Ternes , Alfred Täufel, Lieselotte Tunger, Martin Zobel (eds.): Food Lexicon . 4th, comprehensively revised edition. Behr, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-89947-165-2 .
- ↑ Schweizer Zucker AG : Organic beet sugar is ecologically and socially better. Study 2017. In: rebio.de, accessed on March 30, 2018.