How does a cane of sugar become white crystals?
They take sugar cane and they put it through a juicer. That juice is this deep brown juice that they boil, much like maple syrup is boiled down. You reduce this syrup or juice from sugar cane and it’s a brown, crystallized liquid. What we’re familiar with goes through probably five or six more processing steps. Dark impurities are spun out. Do you know what those dark impurities are? They actually sell that—it’s molasses. The rest of the crystals –which are actually still brown– (are) put through a number of processing steps to the point where we get our really white crystallized sugar. What makes brown sugar brown? Brown sugar is not much healthier than white sugar because it is white sugar with molasses mixed back into it. That being said, molasses does have a little bit more flavor and molasses is actually very high in iron. Because it’s impure, it actually has quite a few more nutritional benefits than white sugar. “Sweet Saturday,” at Garfield Park Conservatory from 11 a.m. to 4
