How is refined sugar made white

You wouldn't be able to tell the difference by looking at the sugar or by tasting it, and loose sugar packets and packaged foods with non-descriptive ingredients can make it impossible for a person to distinguish sugar refined with bone-char from its counterpart.

Animal-lovers may assume the solution is as simple as using beet sugar instead of cane, but the two perform differently in the kitchen , making recipe adaptations and substitutions a hassle. Plus, it's not easy to decide which kind of sugar goes into your food when you're not making it yourself. There are some certified cane sugars that do not use bone char in their processing check out this list from Peta and this list from The Vegetarian Resource Group.

Be sure to check labels remember: beet sugar will never contain bone char and contact manufacturers with any questions.

Want to read more from HuffPost Taste? Follow us on Twitter , Facebook , Pinterest and Tumblr. News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism. Special Projects Highline. HuffPost Personal Video Horoscopes. Follow Us. Our liver metabolizes fructose, but it can be overloaded if large quantities are ingested source. Problems arose with the age of industrialization and modern refinement processes. Before the 18th century, sugar was considered a luxury.

Only well-to-do folks could afford it because sucrose was difficult to extract from sugar cane and mass produce. With the development of steam and mechanical engineering during the Industrial Revolution, we were able to more effectively extract the sucrose from its natural sources and create a solid form.

Conventional sugar is made from the sugar cane or sugar beet plant. These plants have a high concentration of sucrose, which we can extract and refine into table sugar.

Refined sugar can be divided into several categories, but the main three are:. Almost all of our refined sugar comes from sugar cane; the rest is extracted from sugar beets source, Sugar is made using a two-step process of milling and refining. Milling is simply a means of cleaning and extracting the liquid juice from the sugar cane plant.

The plants are crushed through a series of rollers that squeeze out the sugar cane juice. This juice is collected, boiled to kill off any dirt and bacteria, and sent to the refinery source. The first stage of refinement is known as affination.

During this step, the sugar cane juice is melted into a more concentrated, higher purity version of itself boiled down to thicken. The mixture is then spun in a high-powered centrifuge think clothes dryer to separate the juice into two parts: crystals and surrounding liquid. After this surrounding liquid has been boiled down, it is sold to consumers as grade A molasses. The sugar crystals are given a second spin in the centrifuge, dissolved in water, and filtered to remove any remaining impurities.

Once these crystals harden, they are sold as raw cane sugar source. Raw cane sugar is darker in colour and has a slightly higher moisture content than table sugar.

Carbonatation also removes more of the impurities and some colour. The next step is decolourization where the sugar crystals are washed of their natural colour. This is done by filtering the sugar through bone char, activated carbon, or ion-exchange resin.

Finally, this liquid is boiled, washed with water, and spun again several times to create the granulated sugar crystals we know as table sugar. As you can probably tell from the recipes on this blog, I choose to avoid refined white sugar as often as possible.

Calcium hydroxide, the substance used in the carbonatation process, is also used as a constituent of mortars, plasters, and cement as well as the manufacture of kraft paper process and as a flocculant in sewage treatment source.

There are a few companies that now use ion-exchange resins polymer microbeads that trap and release ions to purify the sugar syrup to bleach their sugar, but many brands still use bone char.

The sugar syrup is then filtered several times through cisterns full of bone char to decolour it source, Aside from the dubious and unnecessary use of bone char and calcium hydroxide, excess consumption of refined sugar also causes innumerable health problems, including weight gain, heart disease, acne, diabetes, and possibly cancer source.

Yes, they are all sugars but one has more nutrional value. Michigan State University Extension breaks it down. Regular white sugar is made from sugar cane or sugar beets. Evaporated cane juice is also made from sugar cane. The difference between white sugar made from sugar cane and evaporated cane juice has to do with the different ways they are processed.

Evaporated cane juice is a more nutritious sweetener than white sugar because it is not as highly processed and retains more of the nutrients found in sugar cane. White sugar is sucrose made from the sugar cane. Cane juice is extracted by crushing the canes to release the juice which is filtered with slaked lime to remove dirt and debris from the harvesting process.

Next, it is thickened into syrup by boiling. To produce granulated sugar, the cane syrup is boiled until crystals form. The mixture of crystals and syrup is spun in a centrifuge to separate the two.

Then the crystals of raw sugar are dried with hot air. Raw sugar is shipped to the country where it will be used and is further refined into white sugar there.