Sweeteners

Sugar

My grandfather was born in a sugar cane plantation village on the Big Island of Hawaii. His family moved away when he was five, but he remembered how the field workers used to cut pieces of cane for the children to suck the sweet juice from. During my own childhood, on the island of Oahu, pale green waves of rustling cane covered the lower slopes of the mountains, and when they burned the fields before harvesting, the rains rinsed black soot into the sea. Later, the runoff from the red-dirt fields looked like blood spilling into the limpid blue waters of the North Shore. The silt, pesticides and fertilizers smothered coral reefs and other aquatic life.

As an industrial monocrop, sugar has caused environmental harm throughout the world's tropics. Recent reports by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) summarize the damage, which includes destruction of primary forest habitat, and erosion and degradation of soils. In the Florida Everglades, which have lost almost 7 feet of topsoil from cane fields, nutrient-rich runoff has led to the invasion of natural sawgrass prairie by cattails. Requiring intensive irrigation, sugar cultivation diverted water from Hawaiian streams through tunnels and ditches, leaving native ecosystems and traditional farms high and dry. And, more than any other crop, sugar has contributed to the growth of the slave trade, as documented by Jason Clay in World Agriculture and the Environment (2004, Island Press, $45).

In order not to support such harmful cultivation—as well as out of consideration for our health—consumers would do well to cut back on sugar, although this is far from an easy prospect, as sugar or other sweeteners are present in nearly all processed foods. Twenty percent of the calories in American diets consist of sugar. Other conventional sweeteners, such as sugar beets or corn syrup, cause similar environmental damage; the FAO's statistics treat sugar from cane or beet as the same. We can, however, choose organic sugar, which is grown without synthetic fertilizers or pesticides and uses methods that conserve the soil. Recently a surge in organic processed foods by Kellogg's, Kraft, General Mills and others has led sugar companies, including Florida Crystals and Domino, to follow suit. Although she's a stalwart critic of all sugary, fatty processed foods, who casts a jaded eye upon the "organic-industrial complex," author and nutrition professor Marion Nestle, Ph.D. still supports organic over conventional because it's better for the environment. Shaking free of a history of indentured labor, fair-trade sugar certified by TransFair USA is sold by Wholesome Sweeteners.

Is it healthier to replace refined, processed sugars and corn syrups with non-industrial maple sugar, honey or raw sugar? Nestle says no. "All sugars are the same." But do less refined sugars, such as turbinado or demerera, contain more nutrients as claimed? "Yes, but it's so minor it doesn't make any difference nutritionally. People are not limited in those minerals," Nestle says. She also admits, however, to having a sweet tooth herself, and prefers the taste of raw sugar. As a nutritionist, she gives her blessing to embellishing plain yogurt with the sweetener of your choice, rather than buying ready-sweetened yogurts, which she detests for bearing added calories under the guise of health food.

Explore different unrefined sugars, such as turbinado, demerara, dark muscovado and brown Mauritian, at www.chefshop.com .