CHAPTER VIII 

 FOOD SUBSTITUTES AND ADULTERANTS 



A substitute for sugar. The first sweetening used by man 

 was honey, the sweet sirupy liquid made by bees. Later the 

 sweet juice of the sugar cane became known, and replaced honey 

 for most household purposes. To obtain cane sugar the stalk 

 of the cane plant is stripped of leaves and crushed between 

 heavy rollers, and the liquid which oozes from the crushed stalk 

 is boiled into sirups and sugar. At present much sweetening 

 material is obtained from the roots of beets. A delicious sugar 

 is also obtained from the sap of the rock maple tree, but it is not 

 abundant and is expensive. The sweetening obtained from 

 sugar cane, sugar beet, and maple tree is known as sucrose and 

 supplies the genuine sugar used in commerce and housekeeping, 

 A different kind of sugar called grape sugar or glucose is found 

 in ripe fruits, and small granules of it are seen on the outside of 

 dried fruits such as raisins. Glucose is only two fifths as sweet 

 as sucrose, and larger quantities of it must be used in order to 

 obtain the same sweetening effect. There is very little of it in 

 fruits and no attempt has been made to extract it for commer- 

 cial purposes. 



The quantity of sugar needed for cooking and for confections 

 is enormous and because of the high prices of natural sugars, 

 cheaper and more abundant substitutes are used. It is no 

 exaggeration to say that most of the filling used in candies and 

 icings is not natural sucrose but a sugar artificially manu- 

 factured from starch and acids. This artificial sugar is made 

 by heating starch in dilute hydrochloric acid. The starch 



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