OBJECTS OF INTEREST The page has been arranged for the purpose of informing and clarifying the questions frequently asked by public, concerned about regarding the sugar production. Please let us have your questions on similar matters.
- Is there any additive in granulated sugar and cube sugar?
Neither cube sugar nor white crystal sugar include any additives. It shouldn’t be forgotten that sugar is one of the purest food products since it has a purity of 99,9 %.
- How much kilogram of beet is required to obtain 1 kilogram of granulated sugar?
Depending on sugar existence within the beet, which is used for producing sugar, 1 kg of white crystal sugar is obtained from approximately 7-8 kgs of beet.
- How long is the shelf life of crystal sugar?
White Crystal sugar is bagged by full automatic machines without human touch in our Konya and Çumra Şeker Fabrikaları and their openings are fastened. The polypropylene bags used arrive within carton packages and first opened during the filling. In other words, sugar is produced and packaged under highly hygienic conditions. Since the shelf life of a food product depends directly on its sanitation as well as its physical and chemical structure, it can remain for a very long time without decaying provided that it is stored in a cool and dry place before or during use. As the moisture in the structure of sugar is very low, sugar, whose packaging has been opened, is moistened after a while through taking the moisture around into its body if it remains uncovered, as a consequence, it can petrify. In order to protect sugar from external effects, it is best if it is kept in a closed package during use.
- How is the cube sugar produced?
Cube sugar is made of crystal sugar we know, namely the granulated sugar in colloquial speech. In the production of cube sugar, sugar which don’t have too big crystals are preferred. Producers of cube sugar supply the crystal sugar from sugar plants because of the market conditions. The production of cube sugar, in summary, is the process during which crystal sugar is pressed into the moulds with certain shapes in cube sugar machines and dried following it. Any additional substance is not introduced at the production stage. Cube sugar doesn’t disperse since the vapour is used during the process.
- Why did cube sugar use to leave oil on the tea in the past?
During the production cube sugar, auxiliary products were used to be utilized in the past for the purpose of easing the removal of sugar cubes from the mould. Although these products were not harmful to the health, they can have remained on the surface of sugar, even in slight amounts, and leaded to different undesired appearances when sugar mixed with water (for example in tea) during the use. However, these cases are not confronted as these kinds of matters are not used in cube sugars produced by new methods today.
- What is a brown sugar?
Brown sugar is the one obtained via the combining of white crystal sugar with some molasses of sugar cane, which has been pretreated and attained the food purity. Since its colour is dark, it is called as “brown sugar” or “bastards”.
- Why is limestone used in sugar production? Which purpose does it serve for?
Limestone is one of the auxiliary raw materials in sugar production process and used in a state of lime milk in the refinement process of raw juice at sugar production. Lime milk is prepared by hydrating of calcium oxide (CaO) obtained from limestone and raw juice is refined (purified) via this lime milk [Ca(OH)2] at production station. However, at the filtration stage following the production, all of lime residues involved in the system together with the other solid matters except sugar coming from beet is completely removed from juice and refinedproduction juice is obtained. This juice is subjected to further processing and the white crystal sugar we know is produced and there are no lime residues in the structure of sugar.
- Is sugar used by diabetics made of beet?
The word sugar is sometimes used as the general name of flavours in colloquial speech. But, in general, when sugar is called, the substance with the structure of sweet white crystal, whose chemical name is “saccharose” meant. Sugar obtained from sugar beet and sugar cane is “saccharose”. Saccharose transforms into glucose and fructose, which are some kind of sugar, decomposing within the body, used by body as the energy source.
Since the rough description of the diabetes is that the glucose amount in the blood is over the normal values, the diabetics can’t use saccharose or the sugars of this kind. They use chemical sweeteners whose structures are not sugar or sugar derivatives instead of it. Therefore, since these chemical sweeteners are not included in the category of sugars, they are not produced from beet or sugar cane. However, the use of these substances should completely be per medical advice.
- Is there a difference between cane sugar and beet sugar?
The structures of both the sugars obtained from sugar cane and sugar beet are “saccharose”. There is not a difference roughly. However, there can be small differences in the crystal structures of cane sugar and beet sugar for the reason that the effects of the trace amounts of organic and inorganic matters coming from the structures of both plants on crystallization can be different.
- Is coal dust (activated charcoal) used in sugar production?
In the first years of sugar technology, coal dust was being used in refinery because of its bleaching characteristics. However, there is no need to use such kinds of bleaching substances in today’s modern sugar production technology and these systems used in the past have been abandoned.
- Are the tastes of the sugars produced by various plants different?
Since all of the plants making production in our country now use the sugar beet as main raw material, there is no difference between the sugars they produce in terms of taste amount. However, sometimes there can be fallacies in use of cube sugar. Because different companies may use different moulds for cube sugar and therefore the cube sugars they produce may have different sizes and weights. This difference will affect the flavoring rate of sugar. But, the sugar at the same weight (for example 1 kg.) always tastes same in all cases no matter which company produces it. Although the taste amounts of sugars are same, there can be small quality differences between the sugars produced by plants except the taste. The most apparent ones of these differences are whiteness and the bigness/smallness of crystals. These criterions may sometimes be characteristic in consumer preferences.
