Is your sugar vegetarian? [General]

2009 Jun 12
Hi folks,

Now you may be wondering why sugar wouldn't be considered vegetarian (particularly if you are not vegetarian yourself). But, in fact, the sugar refining process, in addition to blasting, centrifuging and chemically treating sugar to make it "pure", also involves passing the syrup through beef bone char (activated charcoal made from beef bones), to remove the color left by "dissolved impurities.” (source: Chesapeake Baby Journal www.bayjournal.com)

Surprised? I know I sure was. And my initial reaction was "Ewwww!". I'm not vegetarian but I am Hindu, and I am careful to avoid anything that contains beef products (this used to be way tougher years ago, when beef fat was used in almost all commercial cookies. Now, happily, vegetable fat is used instead, allowing me to indulge with a clear conscience).

Upon learning about this beef bone char business, I felt quite queasy thinking of all the beefy particles I had unknowingly come in contact with over all these years. Should I give up sugar? I wondered. I looked longingly at a piece of baklava on my counter - no more sugar! Could I survive?

I did a bit more digging and I discovered, to my deep relief, that not all white sugar is processed this way. Some vegetarian websites list which companies use the beef bone, and which don't. I visited the website of Redpath sugar (the kind I am currently using) and found that, phewf, no beef bone! They use cloth filters. Yay!

So if you are vegetarian, or Hindu, or just plain grossed out by the idea of your sugar being filtered this way, do some research and find out which ones use cloth filters.

Alternately, you can get your sweetness from honey, or that delightful stuff called jaggery! Jaggery is the Hindi name for crystallized pure sugar cane juice. It is minimally processed - it's boiled in big iron pots, poured into molds to solidify and - poof! - yummy jaggery to crunch off.

For more of my thoughts on the sugar "refining" process and the joys of jaggery, check out my blog post on the subject. carlingavefoodie.blogspot.com/


2009 Jun 12
Try maple sugar--albeit expensive--but really good).. I understand this year we have had the best run for maple sap since before the ice storm. Enjoy while we can! Honey is also awesome, and so far available locally. (check out bees if you want to worry). Sucanat is another option. I haven't checked about the beef aspect for the hindu consideration but it is dehydrated cane juice, ground and dried. It is the only "sugar" I use--still has all the minerals--coarse and strong tasting but delicious. You might also consider barley malt, brown rice syrup and agave syrup. I use all the above {occasionally}, but have only nutritional considerations. Jaggery sounds similiar to sucanat.

2009 Jun 13
I pretty much use honey instead of sugar. Was doing it mostly anyway, but then a few years ago we made new friends and several members of their family are hypoglycemic, so we went to pretty much 100% honey for everything because our friends have really bad reactions to sugar.

2009 Jun 13
Strictly speaking, as far as I know sugar is still considered *vegetarian* since you are not actually consuming meat - it is not, however, considered *vegan* because it uses animal products in its processing.

In the same vein, some red wines are filtered using animal blood. There is no way to tell from looking at the bottle if it is or not, you have to do some resarch on a specific vinyards to be sure. Also, lots of cheeses contain rennet, which is also an animal product.

2009 Jun 15
Wow, the stuff you learn and can think about - cool topic. I'll have to do more research into this.

2009 Jun 15
According to the site International Vegetarian Union ( www.ivu.org ) not all sugar is processed with bone char, although the 2 or 3 largest North American producers do use bone char. If you can find refined beet sugar, it is not refined (according to the article) using bone char, and you can certainly use a Turbinado, or Demerera sugar as these are not processed using bone char either. To be clear about the 'bone char', they are in effect using activated carbon filtration (just like your Brita filter) to filter the colour out of the sugar syrop. It just happens that some producers of the carbon filtration materials use 'charred beef bones' as it apparently makes for carbon with very large surface area, and is um, really cheap to come by. Does Brita say where their activated carbon comes from?

2009 Jun 16
As I understood, organic cane sugar is also an excellent vegan option. PC makes a great one in a carton. I buy heaps when it`s on sale - real ice cream requires real sugar! Mmm.

2009 Jun 18
Sucanat sounds great, W.C! I love jaggery and want to use it in place of sugar in coffee and baked goods, but I don't know where to find it ground up. Sucanat sounds like just what I am looking for.

Sweet Tooth, is the PC organic sugar filtered, centrifuged, etc? Just being organic doesn't necessarily mean it is pure cane sugar like jaggery.

Ooh, I didn't know that red wines were filtered using animal blood...not that I am much of a wine drinker anyway, but I'll try and find out which ones do, before buying them. Plus this will give me some criteria for picking wines..right now I just pick the bottle with the prettiest label...

2009 Jun 23
I have been told (but have not checked it out myself) that the PC organic sugar is a refined product.

2009 Jun 23
Hmm, I'd be really interested in knowing for sure. The PC site says it is refined, but doesn't define how it is refined.