Refined Sugar

EXPERIMENTS conducted in feeding animals with refined sugar to determine its effect on them have so far not been sufficient or thorough enough to clearly and conclusively establish its worth. One fact has been proven, that animals live longer without. food whatsoever than when fed on refined sugar. The effect of refined sugar on human beings is entirely empirical. It is possible and probable that it does more harm than we know or suspect. Considering the vital importance of the subject, science has done comparatively less research on foodstuffs, and on correcting our depraved and vicious habits in nutrition (and habit is second nature) than in any other field; to discuss this point, however, is much beyond our scope.

We must distinguish between sugar-cane products in general and refined sugars. The juice of the sugar-cane is a valuable and wholesome nutrimental substance. Sugar-cane syrup is an excel-lent sweetener without objectionable qualities. Whoever has eaten Chinese candy will understand the meaning of this statement. The so-called Chinese candy is an ideal product and is used to sweeten coffee, tea and other beverages. It is bright, transparent and of exquisite taste, similar to our rock-candy. The name, candy according to some philologists, is derived from the Latin candida: bright, pure. Refining sugar in loafs was never practiced in the East.

The history of sugar is rather interesting. In spite of the fact that refined sugar was introduced for popular use comparatively late, we find traces of its existence as far back as several centuries B.C. Theophrastus, Pliny, Strabo and Seneca mention sugar and sugar-cane. Theophrastus (320 B.C.) called sugar "honey extracted from reeds" which looked like salt. It was very probably inspissated cane-juice. Aristotle was the first to give a de-tailed description of the substance. Sugar was then a great rarity and used exclusively for medicinal purposes. Many ancient authors referred to sugar as honey. Varro (68 B.C.) thought there were three kinds of honeys, one collected by the bees from flowers, another type formed on the leaves as dew and the third, obtained from the "Indian reed."

Nearchus, Admiral of the fleet of Alexander the Great, re-turning to Greece from the discovery of the Indian Ocean (324 B.C.), brought back with him "sugar-candy" and a marvelous "honey-bearing reed" which was used by the natives of India. Candy making has been practiced in China since remotest antiquity; their confections were exported in large quantities to India, but the source and how they were made was a well-guarded secret for thousands of years. The actual knowledge of the origin of sugar-cane was first revealed in the middle of the thirteenth century by the celebrated traveler, Marco Polo.

The plant was soon taken to Arabia, Nubia, Egypt, Ethiopia, where it was extensively cultivated. Some sugar-cane was found in Sicily, Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus at an early period, possibly brought there from India by the Saracens.

The Spaniards conveyed sugar-cane from the East only in the fifteenth century, and successfully planted it in Madeira and the Canary Islands. From there, in the sixteenth century, it was taken to St. Domingo and to other West Indian islands and to South America. Though it is generally believed that the home of sugar-cane was China, some explorers record having found sugar-cane in Brazil before the Spaniards and Portuguese had a chance to plant it there. Father Hennepin, who was the first European to explore the lower Mississippi regions, reported that he found sugar-cane even there.