When enjoying sugar, we often forget to ask by what process this magical substance appears in our cakes, in a cup or glass. As a rule, sugar is not associated with cruelty. Unfortunately, since 1812, sugar has been literally mixed with cruelty every day. At first glance, sugar seems to be a purely vegetable product; after all, it comes from a plant. Refined sugar – the kind used in coffee, shortcrust pastry, and cake ingredients – is made from either sugar cane or beets. These two varieties of sugar contain an almost identical set of nutrients, have the same taste. However, their purification processes are different. What does the process of refining sugar look like? To make table sugar from sugar cane, the cane stalks are crushed to separate the juice from the pulp. The juice is processed and heated; crystallization takes place, and then the crystalline mass is filtered and bleached with bone char, as a result of which we get virgin white sugar. Moreover, as a filter, bone charcoal, mainly pelvic bones of calves and cows are used. Beef bones are crushed and incinerated at a temperature of 400 to 500 degrees Celsius. In the production of cane sugar, crushed bone powder is used as a filter, which absorbs coloring impurities and dirt. In every large filter tank used in industrial production, up to seventy thousand feet of bone char can easily be found. This amount of filter material is obtained from the skeletons of approximately 78 cows. Sugar companies purchase large amounts of bone char for several reasons; in the first place, there are gigantic scales in which they operate. Giant commercial filter columns can be 10 to 40 feet tall and 5 to 20 feet wide. Yet each device that can filter 30 gallons of sugar per minute five days a week holds 5 pounds of coal. If one cow is used to produce nine pounds of coal, and approximately 70 pounds are needed to fill a filter column, then a simple math shows that it takes the bones of almost 7800 cows to produce a serving of bone char for just one commercial filter. Many factories use several large filter columns to purify sugar. Pure white sugar is not the only sweetener that is refined as described above. Even brown sugar is run through bone charcoal for the purpose of cleansing. Powdered sugar is a combination of refined sugar and starch. When we consume refined sugar, we do not literally accept animal food, but we pay money to bone charcoal producers. In fact, sugar itself does not contain particles of bone charcoal, but comes into contact with them. It is curious that refined sugar is recognized as a kosher product – precisely for the reason that it does not contain bones. Bone charcoal allows you to purify sugar, but does not become part of it. However, it should be remembered that the sale of slaughter by-products, including bones, blood and other body parts such as tendons (as in gelatin), allows animal slaughterers to make money from their waste and remain profitable.
For the most part, cow bones for sugar refining come from Afghanistan, India, Argentina, Pakistan. Factories process them into bone char and then sell them to the United States and other countries. Many European countries, as well as Australia and New Zealand, have banned the use of bone char to refine sugar. However, when buying products in any of these countries, one cannot be sure that the sugar contained in them was produced locally. Not all sugar obtained from sugar cane is refined with bone charcoal. Reverse osmosis, ion exchange, or synthetic charcoal may well be used instead of bone charcoal. Unfortunately, these methods are still more expensive. Bone charcoal filtration is not used in beet sugar production because this refined sugar does not require as much decolorization as cane sugar. The beetroot juice is extracted using a diffusion apparatus and mixed with additives, which results in crystallization. Vegetarians may conclude that there is a simple solution to the problem – just use beet sugar, but this type of sugar has a different taste than sugar cane sugar, which requires changes in recipes and makes the cooking process more difficult. There are some certified cane sugars that do not use bone char in the manufacturing process, as well as sweeteners that are not derived from cane or refined with bone char. For example: Xylitol (Birch Sugar) Agave Juice Stevia Maple Syrup Coconut Palm Sugar Fruit Juice Concentrates Date Sugar