Natural brown sugar, raw sugar or whole cane sugar is a brown sugar produced from the first crystallization of the sugar cane. Based upon weight, unrefined brown cane sugar, when fully refined, yields about 70% white sugar. There is more molasses in natural brown sugar, giving it a higher mineral content. Some natural brown sugars have particular names and characteristics, and are sold as turbinado, muscovado, or demerara sugar. Although brown sugar has been touted as having health benefits ranging from soothing menstrual cramps to serving as an anti-aging skin treatment, there is no nutritional basis to support brown sugar as a healthier alternative to refined sugars despite the negligible amounts of minerals in brown sugar not found in white sugar.
Turbinado and demerara sugars are made by crystallizing raw sugar cane juice, then spinning it in a centrifuge to remove water and some impurities. Demerara sugar has less molasses than light brown sugar.
Muscovado (also moscovado), an unrefined, dark brown sugar, is produced without centrifuging and has much smaller crystals than turbinado sugar. The sugar cane extract is heated to thicken it and then pan-evaporated in the sun and pounded to yield an unprocessed, damp sugar that retains all of the natural minerals.
Read more about Natural Brown Sugar: Culinary Considerations, Nutritional Value, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words natural, brown and/or sugar:
“Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I had rather munch a crust of brown bread and an onion in a corner, without any more ado or ceremony, than feed upon turkey at another man’s table, where one is fain to sit mincing and chewing his meat an hour together, drink little, be always wiping his fingers and his chops, and never dare to cough nor sneeze, though he has never so much a mind to it, nor do a many things which a body may do freely by one’s self.”
—Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616)
“The sugar maple is remarkable for its clean ankle. The groves of these trees looked like vast forest sheds, their branches stopping short at a uniform height, four or five feet from the ground, like eaves, as if they had been trimmed by art, so that you could look under and through the whole grove with its leafy canopy, as under a tent whose curtain is raised.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)