In article >, "Bob Terwilliger" > wrote:
>Cindy wrote:
>
>> I don't use much white sugar. Usually saccharin in coffee and brown sugar
>> most everywhere else.
>
>I always used to think that brown sugar had not been processed as much as
>white sugar, so it was somehow more healthy or "natural." In fact, the
>opposite is true: Brown sugar is made by starting out with refined white
>sugar and processing it *more*: Specifically, brown sugar is made by adding
>molasses to white sugar.

I always thought they did it that way to have more control over the
quality of the retail product -- and that may well be the main reason.

However, on reading your comment, it has just occurred to me that
another reason may have to do with food hygiene regulations. Most
sugar mills (at least here in Oz) do not operate with "food quality"
equipment whereas the refineries do. So raw sugar really had to be
reprocessed to some degree before it could be sold to the public.

I'm not sure if this is still the case, as I know of at least one mill
that manufactures a retail product these days (and that in spite of
the increasing paranoia of the food regulations here) but I don't know
how much they had to upgrade their old gear to allow that to happen.
[In fact, thinking more about this, I'm nearly sure you can now buy a
product labelled "raw sugar" in the major supermarkets, which suggests
retail-quality production lines may be becoming more common.]

Back in primary school days we kids of mill staff spent a lot of time
wandering around in the mill (imagine doing that now with WPH&S and
all and helping ourselves to a slurp or two of liquor [juice from
the evaporators prior to crystallisation] from a sampling tap, as well
as grabbing handfulls of raw sugar from the endless chain of elevator
buckets that took the raw sugar up to the bagging machine hopper from
where it had been dropped under the fugals after centrifuging. The
warm freshly made raw sugar was delicious and had a great aroma! :-)

Also, back in those days it was legal for the mills to sell some sugar
each year to the farmers who supplied cane to the mill -- may have
been restricted to one bag (160 lb) per farm or per farm family. The
mill I knew made a special batch once a year for this purpose. It was
"washed" a little more than usual in the fugals to remove more of the
residual molasses and was referred to as "mill white" sugar. Not
Persil white, but a lot paler than the normal raw sugar!

>Nowadays I just use whatever seems to best give me the taste I'm after.

Very shrewd of you. ;-)

Cheers, Phred.

--
LID