QUESTIONS YOU NEVER GOT AROUND ASKING

NEW SCIENTIST - What is the difference between brown and white sugar,
and is brown sugar better for you? And why are you supposed to have
white sugar in tea and brown sugar in coffee?

During refining, sugar cane syrup is separated into sucrose and molasses
of varying strengths, called light, medium and dark in some parts of the
world, and golden syrup, treacle and "blackstrap" in other parts. White
sugar is sucrose crystallised to grains about 1 millimetres across.
Brown sugar contains fine sucrose alongside a little molasses - under a
microscope you can see a suspension of white sugar crystals surrounded
by molasses. . . The fact that brown sugar is really 90 per cent white
sugar means that they both have about the same energy content of 17
kilocalories per teaspoon. Certainly there are more minerals such as
iron and calcium in molasses, but you'd need to swallow about a cup of
the stuff to get close to your daily requirement, which would
incidentally contain about 50 per cent of your daily energy needs.

The rationale behind putting brown sugar in coffee probably stems from
the long-standing tradition of adding caramel-like flavors to this
particular drink. However, the reverse is true of tea, where the
molasses in the brown sugar would overwhelm the delicate flavor of the
beverage. Of course, tea is best drunk without any additives whatsoever.
- Deborah Pickett, Mount Waverley, Victoria, Australia

Brown sugar is the whole meal flour of the sugar world, and white sugar
is the refined version. As a rule of thumb, "refined" usually means
"with the good stuff taken out". In Australia, the sugar most people use
at home comes from sugar cane. Cane juice can be found in many Asian
grocery stores and restaurants, and its flavor is fresh and strong. By
removing the sugar from this juice the non-sweet flavors remain. These
flavors can often be overpowering, so it has become popular to extract
just the white sugar and leave behind the dark, non-sugar substances
known generally as molasses.

A small portion of this is sold to humans, but most of it goes to
animals. The human consumers tend to be health-food fanatics and
vegetarians who know that molasses contains vitamins and minerals. A
tablespoon of blackstrap molasses, which is still 70 per cent sugar, has
an iron content which is similar to a steak and it also tastes great on
special high-protein porridges - Jessica Fryer, Vegetarian chef,
Canberra, Australia

http://www.newscientist.com/backpage.ns?id=mg18925352.300