THECUBAREVIEW 29 



lization, having a composition of between 30 and 39 per cent dextrose, 40 to 53 per cent dex- 

 trin, and about 0.5 per cent ash. The others are soUd products varying in percentage of dex- 

 trose up to 95 per cent, with small quantities of dextrin. 



Commercial glucose is often used as a substitute for sugar in sirups, candy mata'ng, pre- 

 serving, etc. Confectioners maintain that certain kinds of candy can not be made of as good 

 consistency with pure cane sugar as with the addition of some glucosa. In such cases it can 

 hardly be considered an adulterant. When it is used as a cheaper substitute for cane sugar, 

 and the goods are sold as cane-sugar products, its use is evidently fraudulent. The present 

 law in the United States requires that sirups, jams, jellies, etc., made with glucose, shall be 

 so labelled. Its nutritive value is practically the same as that of other carbohydrates, and 

 there is no reason to suppose that when properly made it is not wholesome. 



SOURCES OF CANE SUGAR 



Cane sugar, beet sugar, sucrose, or simply "sugar," as it is known to commerce and in 

 the household, exists in solution in many vegetable juices. It is found in the stems and roots 

 of the grasses, especially in the sugar cane, sorghum, and cornstalks; in fleshy roots, as the beet, 

 carrot, turnip, and sweet potato; in the sap of trees, as the date palm and sugar maple; in 

 almost all sweet fruits; and in the nectar of flowers. Only in a few of these, however, is the 

 proportion of cane sugar large enough to make profitable its separation from the other sub- 

 stances which these juices hold in solution. 



In fact, the cane and sugar beet are the only important sources of sugar (sucrose). Of 

 the world's crop of 16,418,500 tons in 1910-11, 8,321,500 tons were made from cane, and 8,- 

 097,000 from the beet. 



Sugar is a staple article of food, just as is bread or meat, but few realize that, unhke 

 bread and meat, it has been a staple food for but a few generations. The art of manufacturing 

 it has been developed very rapidly within the last 125 years. Only, indeed, in the last three- 

 quarters of a century has it been produced in such quantities and at such a price as to bring 

 it into really general use. 



SUGAR FROM THE SUGAR CANE 



^ The sugar cane is a gigantic jointed grass with the botanical name Saccharum ojjiciriarum, 

 native to eastern India and China, numerous varieties of which are now grown in the tropical 

 and subtropical regions of both hemispheres. 



Sugar from the sugar cane was probably known in China 2,000 years before it was used 

 in Europe. When merchants began to trade in the Indies, sugar, like spices, perfumes, and 

 other rare and costly merchandise, was brought to the western countries of Eurpoe, and for a 

 long time it was used exclusively in the preparation of medicines. An old saying to express the 

 lack of something very essential was "Like an apothecary without sugar." Several centuries 

 before the Christian era Greek physicians knew of sugar under the name of "Indian salt." 

 It was also called "honey made from reeds," and was said to be "Uke gum, white and brittle." 

 But not until the Middle Ages did Europeans have any clear idea of its origin. It was con- 

 founded with manna or was thought to exude from the stem of a plant, where it dried into a 

 kind of gum. When in the fourteenth or fifteenth century the sugar cane from India was 

 cultivated in northern Africa, the use of sugar greatly increased, and as its culture was extended 

 to the newly-discovered Canary Islands and later to the West Indies and Brazil, it became a 

 common article of food among the weU-to-do. By many the new food was still regarded 

 with suspicion. It was said to be very heating, to be bad for the lungs, and even to cause 

 appoplexy. Honey was thought to be more wholesome, because more natural than the "pro- 

 ducts of forced invention." The sugar-growing industry in what is now the United States 

 dates from 1751. It has developed into a great enterprise, as has also sugar refining. 



SUGAR FROM THE SUGAR BEET 



The sugar consumed in this and other countries up to 1850 was nearly all derived from 

 the sugar cane, but at the present time one-half of the sugar crop is obtained from the sugar 

 beet. Between 1863 and 1883 Germany, one of the leading beet-sugar producing countries, 

 increased its output 338 per cent. It would once have seemed incredible that the kitchen 



