Sugar

Background

Before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, sugarcane (from which sugar is made) was harvested on the shores of the Bay of Bengal; it spread to the surrounding territories of Malaysia, Indonesia, Indochina, and southern China. The Arabic people introduced "sugar" (at that point a sticky paste, semi-crystallized and believed to have medicinal value) to the Western world by bringing both the reed and knowledge for its cultivation to Sicily and then Spain in the eighth and ninth centuries. Later, Venice—importing finished sugar from Alexandria—succeeded in establishing a monopoly over this new spice by the fifteenth century; at that point, it started buying raw sugar, and even sugarcane, and treating it in its own refineries. Venice's monopoly, however, was short-lived. In 1498, Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama returned from India bringing the sweet flavoring to Portugal. Lisbon started to import and refine raw sugar, and, in the sixteenth century, it became the European sugar capital. It was not long before the sweetener was available in France, where its primary function continued to be medicinal, and during the reign of Louis XIV, sugar could be bought by the ounce at the apothecary. By the 1800s, sugar (though still expensive) was widely available to both upper and middle classes.

Raw Materials

Sugar is a broad term applied to a large number of carbohydrates present in many plants and characterized by a more or less sweet taste. The primary sugar, glucose, is a product of photosynthesis and occurs in all green plants. In most plants, the sugars occur as a mixture that cannot readily be separated into the components. In the sap of some plants, the sugar mixtures are condensed into syrup. Juices of sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum) and sugar beet (Beta vulgaris) are rich in pure sucrose, although beet sugar is generally much less sweet than cane sugar. These two sugar crops are the main sources of commercial sucrose.

The sugarcane is a thick, tall, perennial grass that flourishes in tropical or subtropical regions. Sugar synthesized in the leaves is used as a source of energy for growth or is sent to the stalks for storage. It is the sweet sap in the stalks that is the source of sugar as we know it. The reed accumulates sugar to about 15 percent of its weight. Sugarcane yields about 2,600,000 tons of sugar per year.

The sugar beet is a beetroot variety with the highest sugar content, for which it is specifically cultivated. While typically white both inside and out, some beet varieties have black or yellow skins. About 3,700,000 tons of sugar are manufactured from sugar beet.

Other sugar crops include sweet sorghum, sugar maple, honey, and corn sugar. The types of sugar used today are white sugar (fully refined sugar), composed of clear, colorless or crystal fragments; or brown sugar, which is less fully refined and contains a greater amount of treacle residue, from which it obtains its color.

The Manufacturing
Process

Planting and harvesting

• 1 Sugarcane requires an average temperature of 75 degrees Fahrenheit (23.9 degrees Celsius) and uniform rainfall of about 80 inches (203 centimeters) per year. Therefore, it is grown in tropical or subtropical areas.

  Sugarcane takes about seven months to mature in a tropical area and about 12-22 months in a subtropical area. At this time, fields of sugarcane are tested for sucrose, and the most mature fields are harvested first. In Florida, Hawaii, and Texas, standing cane is fired to burn off the dry leaves. In Louisiana, the six- to ten-feet (1.8- to 3-meter) tall cane stalks are cut down and laid on the ground before burning.

• 2 In the United States, harvesting (of both cane and sugar beet) is done primarily by machine, although in some states it is also done by hand. The harvested cane stalks are loaded mechanically into trucks or railroad cars and taken to mills for processing into raw sugar.

Preparation and processing

• 3 After the cane arrives at the mill yards, it is mechanically unloaded, and excessive soil and rocks are removed. The cane is cleaned by flooding the carrier with warm water (in the case of sparse rock and trash clutter) or by spreading the cane on agitating conveyors that pass through strong jets of water and combing drums (to remove larger amounts of rocks, trash, and leaves, etc.). At this point, the cane is clean and ready to be milled.

  When the beets are delivered at the refinery, they are first washed and then cut into strips. Next, they are put into diffusion cells with water at about 175 degrees Fahrenheit (79.4 degrees Celsius) and sprayed with hot water countercurrently to remove the sucrose.

Juice extraction pressing

• 4 Two or three heavily grooved crusher rollers break the cane and extract a large part of the juice, or swing-hammer type shredders (1,200 RPM) shred the cane without extracting the juice. Revolving knives cutting the stalks into chips are supplementary to the crushers. (In most countries, the shredder precedes the crusher.) A combination of two, or even all three, methods may be used. The pressing process involves crushing the stalks between the heavy and grooved metal rollers to separate the fiber (bagasse) from the juice that contains the sugar.
• 5 As the cane is crushed, hot water (or a combination of hot water and recovered impure juice) is sprayed onto the crushed cane countercurrently as it leaves each mill for diluting. The extracted juice, called vesou, contains 95 percent or more of the sucrose present. The mass is then diffused, a process that involves finely cutting or shredding the stalks. Next, the sugar is separated from the cut stalks by dissolving it in hot water or hot juice.

Purification of juice—clarification
and evaporation

• 6 The juice from the mills, a dark green color, is acid and turbid. The clarification (or defecation) process is designed to remove both soluble and insoluble impurities (such as sand, soil, and ground rock) that have not been removed by preliminary screening. The process employs lime and heat as the clarifying agents. Milk of lime (about one pound per ton of cane) neutralizes the natural acidity of the juice, forming insoluble lime salts. Heating the lime juice to boiling coagulates the albumin and some of the fats, waxes, and gums, and the precipitate formed entraps suspended solids as well as the minute particles.

  The sugar beet solution, on the other hand, is purified by precipitating calcium carbonate, calcium sulfite, or both in it repeatedly. Impurities become entangled in the growing crystals of precipitate and are removed by continuous filtration.

• 7 The muds separate from the clear juice through sedimentation. The non-sugar impurities are removed by continuous filtration. The final clarified juice contains about 85 percent water and has the same composition as the raw extracted juice except for the removed impurities.
• 8 To concentrate this clarified juice, about two-thirds of the water is removed through vacuum evaporation. Generally, four vacuum-boiling cells or bodies are arranged in series so that each succeeding body has a higher vacuum (and therefore boils at a lower temperature). The vapors from one body can thus boil the juice in the next one—the steam introduced into the first cell does what is called multiple-effect evaporation. The vapor from the last cell goes to a condenser. The syrup leaves the last body continuously with about 65 percent solids and 35 percent water.

  The sugar beet sucrose solution, at this point, is also nearly colorless, and it likewise undergoes multiple-effect vacuum evaporation. The syrup is seeded, cooled, and put in a centrifuge machine. The finished beet crystals are washed with water and dried.

Crystallization

• 9 Crystallization is the next step in the manufacture of sugar. Crystallization takes place in a single-stage vacuum pan. The syrup is evaporated until saturated with sugar. As soon as the saturation point has been exceeded, small grains of sugar are added to the pan, or "strike." These small grains, called seed, serve as nuclei for the formation of sugar crystals. (Seed grain is formed by adding 56 ounces [1,600 grams] of white sugar into the bowl of a slurry machine and mixing with 3.3 parts of a liquid mixture: 70 percent methylated spirit and 30 percent glycerine. The machine runs at 200 RPM for 15 hours.) Additional syrup is added to the strike and evaporated so that the original crystals that were formed are allowed to grow in size.

  The growth of the crystals continues until the pan is full. When sucrose concentration reaches the desired level, the dense mixture of syrup and sugar crystals, called massecuite, is discharged into large containers known as crystallizers. Crystallization continues in the crystallizers as the massecuite is slowly stirred and cooled.

• 10 Massecuite from the mixers is allowed to flow into centrifugals, where the thick syrup, or molasses, is separated from the raw sugar by centrifugal force.

Centrifugaling

• 11 The high-speed centrifugal action used to separate the massecuite into raw sugar crystals and molasses is done in revolving machines called centrifugals. A centrifugal machine has a cylindrical basket suspended on a spindle, with perforated sides lined with wire cloth, inside which are metal sheets containing 400 to 600 perforations per square inch. The basket revolves at speeds from 1,000 to 1,800 RPM. The raw sugar is retained in the centrifuge basket because the perforated lining retains the sugar crystals. The mother liquor, or molasses, passes through the lining (due to the centrifugal force exerted). The final molasses (blackstrap molasses) containing sucrose, reducing sugars, organic nonsugars, ash, and water, is sent to large storage tanks.

  Once the sugar is centrifuged, it is "cut down" and sent to a granulator for drying. In some countries, sugarcane is processed in small factories without the use of centrifuges, and a dark-brown product (noncentrifugal sugar) is produced. Centrifugal sugar is produced in more than 60 countries while noncentrifugal sugar in about twenty countries.

Drying and packaging

• 12 Damp sugar crystals are dried by being tumbled through heated air in a granulator. The dry sugar crystals are then sorted by size through vibrating screens and placed into storage bins. Sugar is then sent to be packed in the familiar packaging we see in grocery stores, in bulk packaging, or in liquid form for industrial use.

Byproducts

The bagasse produced after extracting the juice from sugar cane is used as fuel to generate steam in factories. Increasingly large amounts of bagasse are being made into paper, insulating board, and hardboard, as well as furfural, a chemical intermediate for the synthesis of furan and tetrahydrofuran.

The beet tops and extracted slices as well the molasses are used as feed for cattle. It has been shown that more feed for cattle and other such animals can be produced per acre-year from beets than from any other crop widely grown in the United States. The beet strips are also treated chemically to facilitate the extraction of commercial pectin.

The end product derived from sugar refining is blackstrap molasses. It is used in cattle feed as well as in the production of industrial alcohol, yeast, organic chemicals, and rum.

Quality Control

Mill sanitation is an important factor in quality control measures. Bacteriologists have shown that a small amount of sour bagasse can infect the whole stream of warm juice flowing over it. Modern mills have self-cleaning troughs with a slope designed in such a way that bagasse does not hold up but flows out with the juice stream. Strict measures are taken for insect and pest controls.

Because cane spoils relatively quickly, great steps have been taken to automate the methods of transportation and get the cane to the mills as quickly as possible. Maintaining the high quality of the end-product means storing brown and yellow refined sugars (which contain two percent to five percent moisture) in a cool and relatively moist atmosphere, so that they continue to retain their moisture and do not become hard.

Most granulated sugars comply with standards established by the National Food Processors Association and the pharmaceutical industry (U.S. Pharmacopeia, National Formulary).

Where To Learn More

Books

Clarke, M. A., ed. Chemistry & Processing of Sugarbeet & Sugarcane. Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc., 1988.

Hugot, E. Handbook of Cane Sugar Engineering. 3rd ed. Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc., 1986.

Lapedes, Daniel, ed. McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of Food, Agriculture and Nutrition. McGraw Hill, 1977.

McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. Collier Books, 1984.

Meade, G. P. Cane Sugar Handbook: A Manual for Cane Sugar Manufacturers and Their Chemists. John Wiley and Sons, 1977.

Pennington, Neil L. and Charles Baker, eds. Sugar: A Users' Guide to Sucrose. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1991.

Rost, Waverly. Food. Simon & Schuster, 1980.

Periodicals

"Sugar: Can We Make It On the Homestead?" Countryside & Small Stock Journal. May-June, 1987, p. 9.

Hayes, Joanne L. "Sugarloaf Lore," Country Living. March, 1989, p. 132.

"Squeezing All the Sweetness Out of Sugarcane—and More," Chemical & Engineering News. May 12, 1986, pp. 38-9.

—Eva Sideman

sug·ar / ˈshoŏgər/ • n. 1. a sweet crystalline substance obtained from various plants, esp. sugar cane and sugar beet, consisting essentially of sucrose, and used as a sweetener in food and drink. ∎  a lump or teaspoonful of this, used to sweeten tea or coffee: I'll have mine black with two sugars. ∎ inf. used as a term of endearment or an affectionate form of address: what's wrong, sugar? ∎  [as interj.] inf. used as a euphemism for “shit.” ∎  inf. a psychoactive drug in the form of white powder, esp. heroin or cocaine. 2. Biochem. any of the class of soluble, crystalline, typically sweet-tasting carbohydrates found in living tissues and exemplified by glucose and sucrose. • v. [tr.] sweeten, sprinkle, or coat with sugar: she absentmindedly sugared her tea | [as adj.] (sugared) sugared almonds. ∎ fig. make more agreeable or palatable: the novel was preachy but sugared heavily with jokes. PHRASES: sugar the pillsee pill¹ .DERIVATIVES: sug·ar·less adj. ORIGIN: Middle English: from Old French sukere, from Italian zucchero, probably via medieval Latin from Arabic sukkar.

sugar
1. Commonly table sugar or sucrose, which is extracted from the sugar beet or sugar cane, concentrated, and refined. Molasses is the residue left after the first stage of crystallization and is bitter and black. The residue from the second stage is treacle, less bitter and viscous than molasses. The first crude crystals are Muscovado or Barbados sugar, brown and sticky. The next stage is light brown, Demerara sugar. Refined white sugar is essentially 100% pure sucrose; technically described as semi‐white, white, and extra‐white (EU definitions). Yields 16 kJ (3.9) kcal/g. Soft sugars are fine‐grained and moister, white or brown (excluding large‐grained Demerara sugar).

2. Chemically a group of compounds of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen (carbohydrates). The simplest sugars are monosaccharides. They may contain three (triose), four (tetrose), five (pentose), six (hexose), or seven (heptose) carbon atoms, with hydrogen and oxygen in the ratio C_nH_2nO_n. The nutritionally important monosaccharides are hexoses: glucose (grape sugar), fructose (fruit sugar), and galactose. Two pentoses are also important: ribose and deoxyribose. See also disaccharides; oligosaccharides.

sugar compound of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen belonging to a class of substances called carbohydrates . Sugars fall into three groups: the monosaccharides, disaccharides, and trisaccharides. The monosaccharides are the simple sugars; they include fructose and glucose . The disaccharides are formed by the union of two monosaccharides with the loss of one molecule of water. Disaccharides include lactose , maltose , and sucrose . Less well known are the trisaccharides; raffinose is a trisaccharide present in cottonseed and in sugar beets. Sugars belong to two families denoted by the letter d - or l - written before the name of a sugar. The families are related to glyceraldehyde CH ₂ OHCHOHCHO, which can exist in two three-dimensional forms that are mirror images of each other. The isomer of glyceraldehyde that rotates plane polarized light clockwise is labeled d -glyceraldehyde; all natural sugars can be derived from this substance and thus belong the the d family. Although l -sugars can be prepared in the laboratory, they cannot be utilized by animals.

Sugar

Sugar, from the Greek word saccharis, is a term with a variety of meanings. To the biochemist, sugar is a broad term covering a large group of related organic compounds , all of which are composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Green plants utilize their chlorophyll to transform solar energy (sunlight) into chemical energy by converting carbon dioxide and water into plant sugars through the process of photosynthesis. Generally, when people speak of sugar, they are referring to sucrose, which is a disaccharide or double sugar composed of equal parts of glucose and fructose. Glucose and fructose are monosaccarides or single sugars, found in fruits and in honey (together with sucrose). There are hundreds of different sugars and these are only a small section of the vast family of carbohydrates, which includes cellulose at one end of the scale and simple alcohols at the other. Starches, also made by plants, are dense complexes of sugar molecules. Starches and sugars make up the group of foodstuffs known as carbohydrates. All carbohydrates are formed originally by photosynthesis.

Sources of Natural Sugar

Sucrose, fructose, dextrose, and glucose are the natural sugars most frequently used. Although many fruit-bearing plants like the date palm and the carob produce sugar as a product of photosynthesis, the world's major supply of sugar is obtained from the cultivated or managed crops of sugarcane, sugar beet, corn, sugar maple, and sweet sorghum. Sugarcane, corn, and sweet sorghum are cultivated grass plants that store sugar in their stalks or seed. Sugar beet is a broadleaf plant that stores sugar in its root. Sugar maple is a hardwood tree with sugar in its sap, and honey is produced by honey bees from the nectar of plant flowers that contains sugars.

Sugar, Calories, and Energy

In addition to its flavor, which was the original reason for its popularity, sugar supplies an important nutritional factor in the form of energy. Sugar contains four calories per gram and one teaspoon of white table sugar (sucrose) weighs about 3.5 grams. The basic calorie requirement for maintaining life (respiration, circulation, muscle tone) varies between 750 and 1,630 per day in a state of complete rest. Intense muscular effort may require upwards of 7,000 calories during the day. Carbohydrates are an essential component of the human diet, and Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) for nutrients in the American diet have been established by the National Academy of Sciences. The RDAs suggest that the average dietary energy intake (in calories) should consist of 10 to 15 percent protein, 35 to 40 percent fat, and 45 to 50 percent carbohydrates. Carbohydrates, therefore, contribute the major part of the available energy in the human diet. In less-developed areas, it is not unusual to find 80 to 90 percent of available energy in the diet coming from carbohydrate sources.

To get the energy needed, humans reverse the process that plants utilize to make sugar. Digestion of sugars (carbohydrates) is accomplished by enzymes beginning in the mouth and continuing in the small intestine. In the cells of the human body, all usable carbohydrates are converted to the same basic fuel, pyruvic acid , which is then burned to release energy, stored as fat for future energy needs or converted to intermediates for growth or maintenance of body tissue. Although proteins and fats can also be used as sources of energy, only sugars can yield pyruvic acid. That is why sugar is the principal and preferred fuel for the body's energy cycle.

Social and Environmental Impact

During its long history, sugar has been the cause and prize of wars, as well as the object of political activity. There are logical reasons for this. Sugar is an attractive commodity and thousands of people throughout the world gain their livelihood from sugar. With a rapidly expanding world population, this is important because sugarcane and sugar beet are, respectively, the most efficient plant fixers of solar energy among tropical and temperate-zone vegetation. Sugarcane is four times as effective as any tropical plant in terms of dry-matter production per unit of land, and sugar beet is twice as productive as any temperate-zone plant. It requires an average of only 0.07 hectare (0.17 acre) to fix solar energy to the equivalent of one million kilocalories of energy in the form of sugar. All other forms of edible energy require more. Beef is at the top end of the scale, needing 7.7 hectares (19 acres)—more than one hundred times as much land as needed for sugar.

Processing and Marketing

Crystallized sugar, which is the basic commodity of the international sugar trade, comes from sugarcane, grown in warm, moist climates, and sugar beet, grown in temperate climates. Juice containing sugar is extracted from the stalks of sugarcane and from the roots of sugar beet. The process of crystallization separates sugar out of a sugar-saturated solution. It begins by the formation of minute crystals that act as nuclei for the growth of larger ones. The size of the crystals is controlled by temperature. The uniform small crystals in table or white sugar are the result of controlled crystallization.

Sugar in the international market is under the review of members of the International Sugar Agreement. About 70 percent of the world's sugar supply is consumed in the areas in which it is grown. Twenty percent is marketed through agreements or some form of preference. The remaining 10 percent is world market or free market, and is sold at a price that has no relationship to the cost of production.

Total caloric sweetener consumption in the United States is about 130 pounds per capita each year. Use of refined sugars (from sugarcane and sugar beet) has declined from 67 percent of total caloric sweeteners (84 pounds) in 1980 to less than 49 percent (63 pounds) in 1999. The principal reason for this decline is the increased per capita consumption of corn sweeteners, especially high fructose corn syrup. The approval of the artificial sweetener aspartame (for example, Nutrasweet) for table and industrial use in 1982 is another reason for this decline.

see also Carbohydrates; Economic Importance of Plants; Grasses.

Garry A. Smith

Bibliography

Clark, Margaret A., and Mary Ann Godshall, eds. Chemistry and Processing of Sugar-beet and Sugarcane. New York: Elsevier, 1988.

Patura, J. M. By-products of the Cane Sugar Industry, 2nd ed. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1982.

Smith, Garry A. "Sugar Myths and Majesties." Sugar Journal 61 (1998), nos. 2, 3, 4.

——. "Sugar Beet." Principles of Cultivar Development, Vol. 2, ed. Walter R. Fehr. New York: Macmillan, 1987.

——. "Sugar Crops." CRC Handbook of Plant Science in Agriculture, Vol. 2, ed. B. R. Christie. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1987.

SUGAR

Sugar is a crystallized material nutritionally important as a source of dietary carbohydrates and it can also be used as a sweetener and a preservative. It is predominately derived from sugarcane and sugar beets. Other sources are sorghum (a tropical grass), maple trees, and palms. Sugarcane was cultivated by South Pacific island natives as early as 6000 b.c.. During ancient times it was also grown in India, where it was noticed around 325 b.c. by Greek soldiers under the command of Alexander the Great (356–323 b.c.). While cultivation and refinement of sugarcane spread from India, it did not reach Europe until a.d. 711, when Moors (North African Muslims) invaded the Iberian Peninsula (present-day Spain and Portugal). In the 1490s Portuguese explorers carried sugarcane with them into the New World and planted it in Brazil. The Spanish colonists planted sugarcane in the Canary Islands at about the same time. Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) took sugarcane cuttings to the island of Santo Domingo (present-day Dominican Republic) in 1493. About twenty years later the first sugar mill in the Western Hemisphere was built there. The Dutch introduced sugarcane cultivation and refining to Barbados. The French introduced it to Martinique; the British introduced it to the West Indies.

The crop became important to colonial economies throughout the Caribbean, where the Europeans used slave labor from Africa to work the fields. Sugar was the principle export of the region during the 1600s, but by the end of the century the economies of many Caribbean islands collapsed. Slaves were sold to growers on the North American mainland, where they were engaged in the production of other crops (such as rice, indigo, and tobacco). The sugarcane plant did not reach the North American mainland until 1751, when Jesuit (Catholic) missionaries brought sugarcane to Louisiana. A sugar mill was built there forty years later.

The cultivation of sugar beets dates back to ancient Babylonia (present-day Iraq), Egypt, and Greece. However, only as late as 1744 it was discovered that sugar beets are a source of the same sugar found in sugarcane. It was fifty years more before a practical method for removing the sugar from the beets was developed. In the early 1800s sugar mills were built across Europe and Russia. Sugar from beets was not introduced in the United States until 1838.

See also: American Plants, Triangular Trade

sugar sweet crystalline substance obtained from fruit juices XIII (suker); (old chem.) compound resembling sugar in form or taste XVII; (mod. chem.) soluble more or less sweet carbohydrate XIX. ME. suker, sucre, sugre, suger (sugar from XVI) — OF. c̣ukre, sukere (mod. sucre) — It. zucchero, prob. — medL. succarum — Arab. sukkar.
So sugar-candy sugar clarified and crystallized. XIV, — OF. sucre candi — Arab. sukkar kandī. sugar-cane XVI, -loaf XV. Hence vb. XV, sugary (-Y1) XVI.

sugar (saccharide) Any of a group of water-soluble carbohydrates of relatively low molecular weight and typically having a sweet taste. The simple sugars are called monosaccharides. More complex sugars comprise between two and ten monosaccharides linked together: disaccharides contain two, trisaccharides three, and so on. The name is often used to refer specifically to sucrose (cane or beet sugar).

sugar Sweet-tasting, soluble, crystalline monosaccharide or disaccharide carbohydrate. The common sugar in food and beverages is sucrose. This is also the main sugar transported in plant tissues. The main sugar transported around the bodies of animals to provide energy is glucose. See also saccharide

sugar (shuug-er) n. any carbohydrate that dissolves in water, is usually crystalline, and has a sweet taste. Sugars are classified chemically as monosaccharides or disaccharides. Table sugar is virtually 100% pure sucrose. See also fructose, glucose, lactose.

sugar A member of a group of water-soluble carbohydrates that have a low molecular weight and are composed of one or more simple compounds (monosaccharides or disaccharides respectively).

sugar A member of a group of water-soluble carbohydrates that have a low molecular weight and are composed of one or more simple compounds (monosaccharides).

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