Sugar

a sweet substance contained in the sap of many plants. Common sugar is obtained in commercial quantities from plants known as the sugar-cane, sorghum, hard maple, date palm, and sugar beet. Chemically pure sugar is a solid crystalline, sweet, odorless body easily dissolved in water, but is almost insoluble in pure alcohol. All absolutely pure sugars taste alike. The various sugars are known to the trade as cane sugar, beet sugar, maple sugar, according to the plants from which they are obtained. All commercial sugars are alike in chemical composition. The difference in taste is due to the presence of some ingredient from the plant. The delightful flavor of maple sugar, for instance, is due to the presence of a maple ingredient, a volatile ether that is not sugar. Cane sugar is more soluble than beet sugar, hence it tastes sweeter. All the commercial sugars are known to the chemist as cane sugar or common sugar.

In addition to common sugar, chemists and manufacturers of sirups reckon with a sugar that remains more naturally in a liquid state. It is called grape sugar from its occurence in grapes and other fruits. Chemically, a molecule of cane sugar and a molecule of water are equivalent to two molecules of grape sugar, or glucose as it is called. That is, the addition of a volume of water to C12H22O11, or common sugar, gives two volumes of C6H12O6, or glucose, which, of course, is half as sweet as common sugar. Honey is grape sugar. All sugar must be converted into grape sugar before digestion. The chemical elements of sugars are simply carbon and water.

The uses of sugar in baking, cooking, preserving, sweetening beverages and fresh fruit, and in the preparation of confectionery are too well known to require description. The ancients had no sugar save honey. A large part of the world is not familiar with sugar, but its use is increasing rapidly. The annual consumption of sugar has risen in England to ninety pounds per person. Prior to the Civil War Americans consumed about 300,000 tons of sugar a year. In 1908-9, according to the reports of the department of agriculture, the world produced 7,342,854 tons of cane sugar and 6,889,218 tons of beet sugar, or 14,232,072 tons of both. A ton of sugar, unless otherwise stated, is a long ton of 2,240 pounds.

U. S. SUGAR CROP, 1900.

By 1908 the production of American cane sugar had decreased slightly to 768,320,000 pounds, and that of beet sugar had risen to 985,600,000 pounds, or 1,753,920,000 pounds of both. In that year we consumed 7,089,667,975 pounds of sugar. We produced twenty-one per cent of this amount at home, brought in nineteen per cent from Porto Rico and Hawaii, and the remaining sixty per cent was produced in Cuba and other outside countries. Our national sugar bill has grown to $1,000,000 a day. The average American consumes half his own weight of sugar yearly.

The test for sugar is simple. A ray of polarized light is turned to the right in passing though a solution of cane sugar, and is turned to the left in passing through glucose or grape sugar. For this reason the chemist calls the one sugar dextrose or right-handed, and the other levulose or left handed. The test is made with a piece of apparatus called a polariscope. The government expert desiring to test a shipment of sugar entered at a custom house takes a fair sample of the sugar. He dissolves a given weight of the sugar in a given weight of water and examines the solution with his polariscope. The direction taken by the refracted ray and the degree of divergence,--the size of the angle--enable him to determine the kind and the strength of the sugar offered. It is easy, then, to compute the amount of duty to be paid. Pure food experts apply the same test to determine whether preserves and other articles offered for sale are put up in sugar or in glucose. Sirups are tested in a similar manner. Grape sugar or glucose is considered an adulterant. Its sale as sugar is a fraud.

See Sugar-Cane; Maple; Beet; Glucose; Carbon; Food; Starch