Sugar

Question 1

Sugar

Answer 1

Associated with desserts/drinks, holidays, baking goods

A person avg 25-35kg of sugar per year

Associated with love, comfort food for some people

Comes from sugar beets, sugar cane, maples, palm, corn

Used t be more expensive than gold

Fruits also have very high glucose, fructose, and sucrose

Natural sugar in plants and fruits are better than the table sugar

But too much sugar is not good for diabetic people (in any form)

Question 2

Sugar Uses

Answer 2

Sweet additive
Enhances texture, color, appearance

Perservative => inhibits micro-organism growth

Question 3

Non-food uses

Answer 3

Fermentation -> alcohol products, wine

• Ingredient in printers’ inks
• Pharmaceuticals
• Bioplastics

Question 4

Sugar plants and sweets from stems and roots:

Answer 4

• Sugar: commodity
• Kitchen – daily sweetener: crystallized, syrup is different from honey
• People take sugar for granted, never wonder where it comes from
• Masking medicinal and food tastes
• Average consumption per capita: 25 -30 – 35 kg/yr. => cause osteoporosis, kidnney and heart diseases, dental caries, obesity, type 2 diabetes
• Eating sugar is addictive because brain secreate dopamine

Question 5

Where does sugar come from?

Answer 5

From plants (C3 and C4) 
- Photosynthesis: H2O + CO2 => C6H12O6 + O2

Question 6

Table Sugar

Sugar Plants

Answer 6

Sucrose: disaccharide (glucose + fructose)

Water soluble, fermentable

Question 7

Cellulose

Starchy Plants

Answer 7

Starch: Polysaccharide: Water soluble

Question 8

Sugar has any link with:

Answer 8

social, technical, political, cultural, and economic aspects

Question 9

History of Sugar

Answer 9

Sugar cane is a main source of sugar, have been linked with trading with royalty rich people

• Produced in small quantities
• Luxury products
• 16th century: 0.5 kg = 1/3 ounce of. Gold (=600USD)

1tsp = 25-30$ USD

• Current cost => 3$/kg

Question 10

First sugar mills

Answer 10

Sugar making: 1st record in India- about 3000 BC

• A crown made of sugar cane – described in a scared book of the Hindus (the Atarvaveda) – approximate 800 BC
• Ancient Greeks: “Saccharum in panibus” = loaves
• Alexander the Great ca. 370 BC, introduced SC to the Mediterranean from India – honey without the aid of bees
• Ancient sugar mills in Cyprus and India

Question 11

Arab development in sugar Cane Production after A.D. 700

Answer 11

Sugar expand its colony when Alexander travels around, brought from India to the Europe contries

Question 12

Arabs:

Answer 12

Art of extracting sugar from cane => crystallized loaves

• Spread sugar cane in the Mediterranean to Eastern Africa, Spain, and Canary Islands.
• Crusaders -> Ca. 1100 -1300 Europe and England novelty
• C,Colmbus 2nd trip (1493) to new world (santo dgo.)?

Question 13

What are sugar plants?

Answer 13

Store large amount of fructose and glucose => sucrose
Glucose is not converted to starch

Sugar is collected form the vegetative stages

Question 14

Taxonomic distribution of sugar plants

Answer 14

Poaceae = Sacchrum officinarum - Sugarcane

Chenopodiaceae - Beta vulgaris - Sugar beet (cousin of amaranth pseudocereal)

Aceraceae - Acer saccharum -Sugar maple

Collect the sap from the trunk of the plants

Question 15

Sugar Cane

Answer 15

Saccharum L.

Poaceae - Southeastern Asia / New Guinea, ca 10,000 years ago

Cultivated species:
S. officinarum, S. edulis, S. sinese

High polyploids n=60-194

Perennial harvested annual

Rhizomatous

Seedless => Asexual propagated - each node and internodes have the small axiliary buds that can grow into plants

Leaves serraste margin leaves

Stalk content: sugar: 14-25%, fibers 16%, water 67-58% and other 3%

Question 16

Sugar cane propagation

Answer 16

Nodes and adventitious roots

Water demanding

Not environmentally friendly

Requires high herbicide pesticide and fertilizer

Asexual propagation, axillary buds at each nodes and adventitious roots

Monoculture, semi-perennial (9-20 months => ratoon crops)

Plants not allowed to bloom -> burn the crop to kill the stalks and leaves and remove excess water in the stem -> increase sugar content, harvest & transport to the mill right away.Leaves and Bagasse of the sugar cane after extracting sugar can be for diesel or feeding animals/life stock

manual harvest

burning process, kill the fuana in crop, pollute air of that region

Question 17

The most environmentally friendly crop

Answer 17

co2 absorption: 1 ha ~ 60 tons of CO2 per year

BUT input to raise this crop like water, fertilizer, herbicides, and burning process

Leaves / Molasses: Animal feed

Bagasse = Paper / cardboard industry, fuel for mill boiler’s

Mud from cane juice and ashes from boilers -> fertilizers

Australia: greens => burning to generate power

Question 18

From sap to crystialized form:

Answer 18

Extraction, Reduction, and crystallization

Cane collected, washed, shreeded, milling with water to extract juice, remove bagasse, collect juice, juice thru heaters, lime added.

Juice mix is then evaporated to remove water, the vacuum pans, centrifiugal: collect molasses for making rum or white raw sugar

Raw sugar then goes through the process of clarification, bleaching substance to make crystal and pure colour.

Brown sugar has more molasse

Question 19

Sugar in Canada

Answer 19

We buy raw sugar

Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto and Montreal have processing plants that refine raw sugar to the white crystals

Produce 1.2 m tons a year

1 ton of cane produce 90-120 kg raw sugar

Brazil, India, China, Thailand, Mexico

Question 20

Sugar Plants

Answer 20

Sugar cane plantation and human slavery - associated for 400 years

Monument abolition of slavery - 16 millions people were enslaved

Question 21

Sugar and Slave trade

Answer 21

Arab developments in sugar production after A.D. 700 XII and XIII century

Expansion of sugar plantations Mediterranean

Master-slave relationships = human treatment
from domestic servitude to plantation slavery

Sugar cane brought to Southeastern Asia. At first, they use the local labour but not enough, so they brought the prisoners + African slaves to work in the sugar plant.

Question 22

The Slave Trade Triangle

Answer 22

The slave trade triangle = Maafa Holocaust => European navigation (enslave African for 400 years).

Transatlantic trade (1450 – 1800s)

London (1600s), Bristol (1730) centers operation for slave trade

The outward passage, The middle passage, and the return passage

Question 23

1st and 2nd Atlantic systems:

Answer 23

(Spanish, Portuguese, UK)

Question 24

The outward passage:

Answer 24

The African slaves treated as a commodity to trade for goods like cloth, cotton cloths, barrels, pistols, …

Question 25

The middle passage:

Answer 25

Slave started to fight back for their freedom

10 – 15 million carried across; 3-5 million buried in the Atlantic, 9/10 abducted due to the bad conditions on the ships (die or kill themselves)

7 week = 3 months journey

After getting on the land, the slaves were fed. The better shape/ stronger slave, more expensive to sell

The slaves will work in the sugar plantations and mines for 18 hours.

Due to the high skills, the slaves started their own community with houses and chickens… seems like having better life, a bit more independent but still being control by bad guys

Question 26

New World good and the conquistadores: The return passage

Answer 26

The more land people discovered, the more resource, the more people got enslaved.

Question 27

The equation: how much did it cost to produce sugar:

Answer 27

1600s (21 months – 450 pounds of sugar) = the life of two slaves

1750s parity 1-ton sugar = life of 1 slave

End of 18th century: 2 tons = 1 slave’s life

Few slaves = humane treatment

Many slaves = cheap lives, inhumane treatment, fear, …

Question 28

Is human slavery over?

Answer 28

Child slavery, slave work, female slavery, human trafficking