30 THE (CUBA REVIEW 
Sugar 
The History of a Modern Food 
An interesting chronology of the growth of sugar, published recently by Lamborn & Company, 
is here reprinted for the benefit of our readers. 
In early Colonial days, sugar was a costly luxury enjoyed only by the wealthy, and 
used in medicine as a drug. It sold in the loaf for something like 75c. a pound, and granu- 
lated sugar was unknown. 
With the increasing use of tea and coffee, sugar came into the list of principal food 
staples. In the last hundred years the advance in the science of refining has been such 
that sugar has become a commonplace food essential, and, until the recent war shortage 
and restriction, sugar had been so plentiful and cheap that it was used lavishly and with- 
out special thought as to its value and place in our existence. 
Sugar cane has been grown since very early times. The art of boiling sugar was 
known in India before the seventh century, and in Egypt probably sometime before this. 
When sugar was introduced in medieval times by travelers from the East, it was as a rare 
and valuable delicacy known as “Indian Salt,” the word “sugar” being of modern origin. 
Portuguese and Spanish explorers of the fifteenth century carried the cultivation 
of cane to the new world, and early in the sixteenth century it had spread over large 
portions of the West Indies and South America. During the next two centuries great 
wealth was derived from its cultivation, manufacture and export, especially in Brazil 
and Haiti. 
A sugar refinery was built on Manhattan Island shortly after the arrival of the 
Dutch, and that there was some sale of sugar in the early part of the eighteenth century 
is clear from an advertisement which appeared in the New York Gazette of 1730. 
“Public Notice is hereby given that Nicholas Bayard of the City of New 
York has erected a Refining House for Refining all sorts of Sugar and Sugar 
Candy, and has procured from Europe an experienced artist in that Mystery.” 
In 1747 the existence of sugar was discovered in beet and other fleshy roots which 
grow in temperate regions, but little practical use was made of this knowledge until the 
Napoleonic Wars cut off the supply of sugar from the West Indies. Then production 
of beet sugar was undertaken and flourished under the personal encouragement of 
Napoleon, but it was not, however, until after 1830 that it was established on a firm 
footing. From then on the industry has advanced until now about one-half of the world’s 
sugar supply is derived from beets. 
Sugar cane requires at least a twelve months’ growing season, and an absence of 
frost in the ground. The sugar beet can be matured in half that time, and as it is raised 
from seed each year, the frost does not affect it. The cultivation of cane is therefore 
confined to tropical or semi-tropical localities, while beets can be grown in the temperate 
zone. 
Both can be produced in this country, the former largely in Louisiana, Texas and 
Southern California, while the latter is grown in California, Colorado, Utah and some 
of the Middle Western states. 
In the manufacture of sugar the juice is extracted from the cane, usually by crush- 
ing, and is then clarified by the addition of lime, boiled in vacuum pans which keep the 
boiling point low, and crystallized in centrifugal machines. This raw sugar is a light 
brown color and is shipped in bags to the refineries, where the sugar is washed and much 
the same process repeated, it being, in addition, filtered through animal charcoal, known 
as bone-black, to take out any coloring matter. 
The refinery, with all its elaborate machinery, is necessary for the production of the 
white refined sugar that is so universally used, but all this is done to remove only about 
3% of impurities, as the raw sugar is about 96% pure when it goes into the refinery. 
Sugar is produced from beets by much the same process. 
