Sugar is the second carbohydrate after starch that provides energy with food. Despite the fact that carbohydrates are slightly inferior in caloric content to fats and proteins, their energy component in food consumed per day is about 55%. The main value of sugar lies in its quick and easy assimilation by the human body. There are several types of sugar, but which one has the greatest sweetness?
Types of sugar
The most famous and popular types are beet, cane, palm, malt, sorghum and maple sugar. Cane sugar is extracted from sugar cane by squeezing a very sweet juice from its stems. This type of product is considered the most delicious in the world.
The sugar extracted from beets is called beet sugar and has a taste that is almost identical to that of cane sugar. The palm variety is the congealed juice of a sugar palm. It has a delicate taste and a bright smell, as well as a dull gold color.
Today, palm sugar can be purchased in soft or hard form, but it is still considered a very exotic product for the people of Russia.
Malt sugar is made from malt, which is a fermentation product of sprouted, dried and milled cereals and is significantly inferior in sweetness to cane and beet sugar. The sorghum variety is obtained from the stalks of sugar sorghum. It is popular mainly in the East, since in other countries its production was recognized as economically ineffective. Maple sugar is produced in the same way as when processing sugar cane. On an industrial scale, it is produced exclusively in America.
Which sugar is sweeter and how to check it
Oddly enough, the degree of sweetness of sugar is determined not so much by its taste as by its color. So, the lighter the sugar, the more sucrose it contains - the most highly refined type of sugar contains 99.75% of this substance. From this we can conclude that the sweetest is the snow-white refined sugar - crumbly or in cubes.
Less sweet are beige, yellowish and brownish shades of sugar, which contain molasses, vitamins, minerals and organic acids. These substances, contained in darkish types of sugar, reduce its calorie content, but significantly deprive sucrose of the sweetness desired by consumers.
When buying sugar, pay attention to its shade, which should not be gray - this indicates the presence of moisture in the product.
Scientists also argue that solutions of cane and beet sugar, which have the same concentration, cannot differ in the degree of sweetness. This is due to the fact that their identical chemical compound has certain physicochemical properties that do not depend on the origin of sugar. In other words, the sweetness of sugar is determined not by the type of raw material, but by the amount of the product added to the tea.
