Data source History of Sugar
Sugar is an informal term for a class of edible crystalline substances, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose characterized by a sweet flavor. In food, sugar almost exclusively refers to sucrose, which primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet. Other sugars are used in industrial food preparation, but are usually known by more specific names—glucose, fructose or fruit sugar, high fructose corn syrup, etc.
Excessive consumption of sucrose has been associated with increased incidences of type 2 diabetes, obesity and tooth decay.
Sugar consumption varies from country to country; Brazil has the highest per capita production and India has the highest per-country consumption.
History
Sugar was produced in the Indian subcontinent since ancient times. It was not plentiful or cheap in early times—honey was more often used for sweetening in most parts of the world. During his campaign in India, Alexander the Great was surprised to taste the sweetening agent that was different from honey.
Originally, people chewed sugarcane raw to extract its sweetness. Indians discovered how to crystallize sugar during the Gupta dynasty, around 350 AD. Sugarcane was originally from tropical South Asia and Southeast Asia. Different species likely originated in different locations with S. barberi originating in India and S. edule and S. officinarum coming from New Guinea.
However, sugar remained relatively unimportant until the Indians discovered methods of turning sugarcane juice into granulated crystals that were easier to store and to transport. Crystallized sugar was discovered by the time of the Imperial Guptas. Indian sailors, consumers of clarified butter and sugar, carried sugar by various trade routes. Traveling Buddhist monks brought sugar crystalization methods to China. During the reign of Harsha (r. 606–647) in North India, Indian envoys in Tang China taught sugarcane cultivation methods after Emperor Taizong of Tang (r. 626–649) made his interest in sugar known, and China soon established its first sugarcane cultivation in the seventh century. Chinese documents confirm at least two missions to India, initiated in 647 AD, for obtaining technology for sugar-refining. In South Asia, the Middle East and China, sugar became a staple of cooking and desserts.
During the Muslim Agricultural Revolution, Arab entrepreneurs adopted sugar production techniques from India and then refined and transformed them into a large-scale industry. Arabs set up the first sugar mills, refineries, factories and plantations. The Arabs and Berbers spread the cultivation of sugar throughout the Arab Empire and across much of the Old World, including Western Europe after they conquered the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century AD. Ponting traces the spread of the cultivation of sugarcane from its introduction into Mesopotamia, then the Levant and the islands of the eastern Mediterranean, especially Cyprus, by the 10th century. He also notes that it spread along the coast of East Africa to reach Zanzibar.
Crusaders brought sugar home with them to Europe after their campaigns in the Holy Land, where they encountered caravans carrying "sweet salt". Early in the 12th century, Venice acquired some villages near Tyre and set up estates to produce sugar for export to Europe, where it supplemented honey as the only other available sweetener. Crusade chronicler William of Tyre, writing in the late 12th century, described sugar as "very necessary for the use and health of mankind".
In August 1492 Christopher Columbus stopped at La Gomera in the Canary Islands, for wine and water, intending to stay only four days. He became romantically involved with the Governor of the island, es:Beatriz de Bobadilla y Ossorio (article in Spanish), and stayed a month. When he finally sailed she gave him cuttings of sugarcane, which became the first to reach the New World.
More recently it is manufactured in very large quantities in many countries, largely from sugar cane and sugar beet. In processed foods it has increasingly been supplanted by corn syrup.
Terminology
Popular
The term sugar usually refers to sucrose, which is also called "table sugar" or "saccharose." Sucrose is a white crystalline disaccharide. Sucrose is the most popular of the various sugars for flavoring, as well as properties (such as mouthfeel, preservation, and texture) of beverages and food. Manufacturing and preparing food may involve other sugars, such as fructose, generally obtained from corn (maize) or from fruit.
Culinary/nutritional
In culinary terms, the foodstuff known as "sugar" delivers a primary taste sensation of sweetness. Apart from the many forms of sugar and of sugar-containing foodstuffs, alternative non-sugar-based sweeteners exist, and these particularly attract interest from people who have problems with their blood sugar level (such as diabetics) and people who wish to limit their calorie-intake while still enjoying sweet foods. In September 2009, the AHA (American Heart Association) released new limitations on added sugar intake. Their results show that women are to consume no more than 25 grams of added sugar daily and men are restricted to 37 grams. The average American consumes between 3 and 5 pounds of added sugar a week, adding up to 200+ pounds of added sugar a year per person. A 12 ounce can of regular soda alone contains 39 grams of added sugar, far exceeding the recommended limit for adults. Both natural and synthetic substitutes exist with no significant carbohydrate (and thus low-calorie) content: for instance stevia (an herb), and saccharin (produced from naturally occurring but not necessarily naturally edible substances by inducing appropriate chemical reactions).
The World Health Organisation and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations expert report defines free sugars as all monosaccharides and disaccharides added to foods by the manufacturer, cook or consumer, plus sugars naturally present in honey, syrups and fruit juices. This includes all the sugars referred to above. The term distinguishes these forms from all other culinary sugars added in their natural form with no refining at all.
Baking weight/mass volume relationship
Different culinary sugars have different densities due to differences in particle size and inclusion of moisture.
The Domino Sugar Company has established the following volume to weight conversions:
* Brown sugar 1 cup = 48 teaspoons ~ 195 g = 6.88 oz
* Granular sugar 1 cup = 48 teaspoons ~ 200 g = 7.06 oz
* Powdered sugar 1 cup = 48 teaspoons ~ 120 g = 4.23 oz
Bulk Density
* Dextrose Sugar 0.62 g/ml
* Granulated Sugar 0.70 g/ml
* Powdered Sugar 0.56 g/ml
* Beet Sugar 0.80 g/ml
Purity standards
The International Commission for Uniform Methods of Sugar Analysis sets standards for the measurement of the purity of refined sugar, known as ICUMSA numbers; lower numbers indicate a higher level of purity in the refined sugar.
Chemistry
Scientifically, sugar loosely refers to monosaccharide or disaccharides. Monosaccharides are also called "simple sugars," the most important being glucose. Almost all sugars have the formula CnH2nOn (n is between 3 and 7). Glucose has the molecular formula C6H12O6. The names of typical sugars end with "-ose," as in "glucose", "dextrose", and "fructose". Sometimes such words may also refer to any types of carbohydrates soluble in water. The acyclic mono- and disaccharides contain either aldehyde groups or ketone groups. These carbon-oxygen double bonds (C=O) are the reactive centers. All saccharides with more than one ring in their structure result from two or more monosaccharides joined by glycosidic bonds with the resultant loss of a molecule of water (H2O) per bond.
Monosaccharides in a closed-chain form can form glycosidic bonds with other monosaccharides, creating disaccharides (such as sucrose) and polysaccharides (such as starch). Enzymes must hydrolyse or otherwise break these glycosidic bonds before such compounds become metabolised. After digestion and absorption. the principal monosaccharides present in the blood and internal tissues include glucose, fructose, and galactose.Many pentoses and hexoses can form ring structures. In these closed-chain forms, the aldehyde or ketone group remains unfree, so many of the reactions typical of these groups cannot occur. Glucose in solution exists mostly in the ring form at equilibrium, with less than 0.1% of the molecules in the open-chain form.
Natural polymers of sugars
Biopolymers of sugars are common in nature. Through photosynthesis plants produce glucose, which has the formula C6H12O6, and convert it for storage as an energy reserve in the form of other carbohydrates such as starch, or (as in cane and beet) as sucrose (table sugar). Sucrose has the chemical formula C12H22O11. Starch, consisting of two different polymers of glucose, is a readily degradable chemical energy stored by cells, convertable to other types of energy.
Cellulose is a polymer of glucose used by plants as structural component.
DNA and RNA are built up of the sugars ribose and deoxyribose.
Sucrose: a disaccharide of glucose (left) and fructose (right), important molecules in the body.
The sugar in DNA, deoxyribose has the formula C5H10O4.
For a complete information on the topic, please follow the link below...