Episode 16 of Season 5 of How It’s Made on the Discovery Channel showed how refined sugar is made.
It’s an incredibly complex process with lots of chemical baths, washing, drying, bleaching. And it iterates a lot. There’s something like 50 distinct steps it goes through in the factory to get to the crystal sugar we buy at the supermarket.
What I found interesting is that what we call “raw” or “natural” sugar – it looks brownish – is simply pulled out of the process around step 48 or 49… somewhere near the very end. It has gone through several bleaching steps already, it just misses the very last one.
Now, to me, “raw” sugar just looks like a marketing scam. It certainly should not cost any more than regular sugar.
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[ Disclaimer: The number “50” above is a representative placeholder value. It was just a ten minute spot on the show… so I don’t know in detail. ]