Brown sugar to oust white lump sugar from the world market

Tea or coffee in fancy restaurants is usually served with the brown sugar

White sugar is made of sugar-beet. Brown sugar is made of tropical plants – cane and palm. The sugar obtains its brown color because of the incomplete processing of the product, which leaves molasses in it.

Brown sugar has already become a common product abroad. Women buy it to bake cakes and make desserts. In Russia, however, the new kind of sugar is still considered something strange. Dietitians recommend to replace the white beet sugar with the brown one, because it has less calories in it. Sweet flavor ingredients of healthy food in Europe or the USA are only honey or cane-sugar.

As a matter of fact, the brown sugar has as many calories as the white sugar. Furthermore, the brown sugar is even more nutritious: 100 grams of lump sugar contain 409 kilocalories as opposed to 413 kilocalories in the same amount of the brown sugar. However, the dark sugar is better because the rough processing of the product preserves its microelements: iron, potassium, calcium, chromium and copper.

Unlike the white sugar, the brown sugar does not kill the taste of a beverage, specialists believe. Molasses makes the beverage richer in taste. That is why tea or coffee in fancy restaurants is usually served with the brown sugar. In addition, the brown sugar is very good to be used for bakery products of dark color.

Humans started making cane sugar in ancient India. The word 'sugar' originates from the Sanskrit 'sarkara' which means 'sand' or 'gravel.' The name of the Sahara desert comes from this word too. Seamen spread cane all over the world from India. Portuguese sailors brought it to Caribbean Islands, which are still considered the center of the cane production. Beet sugar does not have such a long history: the first lump sugar factory was built in 1802 in Germany.

Doctor Marina Burtseva believes that the white sugar equals the brown as far as calories are concerned: “If you want to lose weight, it would be better for you not to eat sugar at all, but to replace it with low-cal sweeteners. You should be careful with them, though, for they may produce laxative effect,” said she.