If you've been keeping up with all the talk about artificial sweeteners lately, you may have thought of switching to sugar... after all it's natural!
You may even be one of those Mäni's customers who - noticing our occasional use of organic evaporated cane juice - commented, saying ..."it's still sugar." "Sugar is sugar!"
Have you ever really thought about the process of refining sugar? Most people think it's just about making the sugar whiter by some probably simple process.
Well, get ready to catch your jaw as it drops. There's more than you think to the process of sugar refining. So, before you save money and go back to "natural", better read on...
With a quick Google search you'll find plenty of explanations of the process of refining sugar. Most are long and use terms that aren't easily understood... and are just ever so slightly boring!
One site just listed the steps of the process for us. Still, not everyone will feel enlightened after reading.(Be sure to scroll to 2nd page.): 10 steps to refined sugar!
Questions? How anything that goes through such a process can still be "natural" is a miracle.
By the way, in step 6, they weren't specific about using animal bone ash to filter out that unwanted color.
Don't worry! Though the sugar liquid passes through the bone ash, none of it gets into the sugar mix! But hey, if you're a vegetarian, you might consider using a form of sugar that hasn't gone through all this "improvement".
Maybe all things "natural" aren't necessarily equal!
We'll be talking more about sweeteners, artificial and natural. If you're interested in learning more about sugar, you may want to check out this blog site from time to time. SugarShockBlog
If you were surprised by any of this information, stick around, together we're going to take a good look at sweeteners.
Please add your comments, pro or con, or any questions you have. We'll do our best to include any information you want in future posts.
We're always looking for new product ideas, usually to create an alternatively sweetened product. Within the last couple of weeks we've introduced fresh fruit tarts. Sweetened with our famous fruit juice reduction. Come by and try it!
Posted by: Larry | August 25, 2005 at 02:20 PM
Thank you so much for the scoop on refined sugar. More importantly, thanks for creating tasty morsels using fruit concentrates and so forth! (Any new items baking in the oven that are gluten free?)
Posted by: Grump07 | August 22, 2005 at 02:13 PM