Can You Use Cane Sugar Instead of Regular Sugar?

To identify and understand the differences between cane sugar and regular sugar, you first need to understand what sugar actually is.

Sugar is a sweetening agent used in various food preparations to give an added taste. There are multiple varieties types of sugar – most noteworthy being granulated sugar, used in your daily diet.

There are two main types – natural sugar in fruits and vegetables, and added sugar. The sugar that you add to sweeten your meal or beverage is usually granulated sugar, and this is sucrose which is processed from sugarcane or sugar beets.

Processed sugar is also added in various packaged products like biscuits and breakfast cereals. Sugar is full of empty carbohydrates that could lead to dangerous health conditions. The final product that comes to your hands has been processed so much that it is impossible to investigate if it is from sugarcane or the sugar beets.

Other than sucrose, other forms of sugar include fructose, galactose, glucose, lactose, maltose, and xylose. These different sugars have different origins like fruits, honey, milk, barley, plants, or wood and straw.

What is Cane Sugar?

The key points about cane sugar include;

• Juice extracted from sugarcane is purified of its dirt and germs by filtering it through an evaporation process. The resulting liquid is boiled at a high temperature so that it forms crystalised rock formations. This is unrefined and pure cane sugar.
• Organic cane sugar is manufactured when the sugarcane juice collected is grown organically, i.e. no harmful pesticides are used.
• The colour of cane sugar is light brown. It still retains the natural molasses that dye the sugar a golden colour. Unrefined cane sugar contains almost 8-14% of molasses.

What is White Sugar?

White sugar can be made from sugarcane as well as sugar beets. White sugar is also known as refined sugar.

• Cane sugar produced from the sugarcane juice is further processed to create white sugar.
• There are many ways to make white sugar. According to Beauty Without Cruelty, in India, the sulphation process or the carbonation process is used to manufacture white sugar.
• No matter if the sugar comes from sugarcane or sugar beets, ultimately, refined sugar is called so because of the use of artificial chemicals to bring out the final product.
• The intense powdery residue on white sugar depends on the amount of bleaching agent used in processing.

Nutritional Value of Sugar

While comparing cane sugar and white sugar, it is quite easy to derive that the latter is a highly processed product.

Since cane sugar is only processed once to obtain the sugar particles, it contains most of the inherent potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium, and iron.

According to the Canadian Sugar Institute, a teaspoon of sugar provides 16 calories. Unless it is naturally occurring in fruits and vegetables, sugar on its own does not add much to nutrition.

How to Include Cane Sugar in Regular Diet?

Ultimately sugar is sugar, whether its organic cane sugar or refined white sugar. According to Harvard Health, most added sugars are composed of sucrose, fructose, or glucose. It doesn’t matter if one type of sugar taken over the other.

However, looking at the process it takes to manufacture sugar, it is preferable to use cane sugar in your diet in place or regular sugar as cane sugar has had the least processing.