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 The Sugar Beet - The Star of
Jodi's Birthday Party
Copyright 2008. All rights reserved worldwide.
Jodi stared at the queer shape of her birthday present.
Wrapped in pretty blue paper covered with little pictures of birthday cakes, it
was very wide at the top and very skinny at the bottom. Carefully she tore off
the messy pieces of scotch tape.
Ker-plunk! A big root fell out on the floor at Jodi’s
feet. If you had seen it, you might have thought it was a giant parsnip, or an
extra large carrot that was sick. But it was a sugar beet.
Jodi knew it just had to be from her cousin Joshua whose
dad farmed sugar beets. She grinned as her eyes met his across the room,
ignoring the dumb-founded guests.
“Hey, Jodi, did you know that dirty root has as much sugar
in it as your birthday cake?”
Joshua was right. Most birthday cakes have sugar in them –
Jodi’s did. And you can’t have a birthday party without a birthday cake, can
you? So the sugar beet, the producer of sugar, was the star of Jodi’s birthday
party.
This big tan-colored root did not resemble the tasty ruby
red beets that you eat for dinner. Instead, it was much larger and its pulp was
a silvery white.
You can taste sugar in some plants that you eat. Grapes,
apples, peas, and carrots, even a blade of grass tastes sweet. But the sugar
beet contains so much sugar that man can take it out and refine it into the
sandy white crystals that you put into your canister at home.
Health authorities say that too much sugar in our diet can
cause obesity, tooth decay, and other health problems, like diabetes and heart
disease. But some sugar is necessary because it provides our bodies with energy.
Just as a truck needs diesel oil to run, our bodies need energy to perform. We
need energy, not only to work and play, but even to think.
About one hundred years ago sugar was so expensive that
very few people had even tasted it. The sugar that was produced and sold came
only from sugar cane and this plant only grew in hot countries with a heavy
rainfall. So most countries, including France, had to import it.
In the nineteenth century when France and England were at
war, England’s ships stopped the sugar boats, carrying cane sugar, from reaching
France. The Emperor Napoleon had sugar beets seeded in France. Since beets grow
best in cooler climates, this was a successful venture. When a French chemist
learned how to refine sugar from them, France had its sugar. Other countries in
Europe began to grow sugar beets and make sugar too. Eventually, sugar beets
were also grown in the United States of America and Canada.
But the beet sugar people could not make their sugar as
cheaply as cane sugar, nor did their sugar taste as good. They kept
experimenting. With time, the beets were improved so that they had more sugar in
them and the method of getting the sugar out of beets was improved too.
There is no difference between the nutritional value of
beet and cane sugar. Chemists say that they cannot tell the two sugars apart
after they are refined. They even taste the same. But fortunately, if you happen
to discover that you are allergic to cane sugar, you need not be allergic to
beet sugar. Or, if you discover that you are allergic to beet sugar, you need
not be allergic to cane sugar.
Today, at the modern beet sugar factory, sugar is taken
out of the root and processed into dry sugar crystals, very successfully. Here
the beets are first washed in huge tanks before they go into slicing machines.
The pieces that come out look like shoestring potatoes and are called “cossettes”.
These cossettes enter a series of tanks filled with hot
water. Slowly the sugar soaks into the water. This bittersweet liquid is called
“thin juice”.
The thin juice is transferred into another series of
tanks. Besides sugar materials like lime have also soaked into the juice. Now
milk of lime and carbon-dioxide are added to the syrup, making the unwanted
substances settle to the bottom of the tank. After the juice runs through a
series of filters, it comes out clear and golden.
The juice is further processed in huge tanks, called
evaporators. As some of the water in the juice evaporates, the juice becomes
thicker and sweeter. To thicken it even more, it is boiled. At just the right
moment, powdered sugar is poured into the tank. The crystals start others
forming and soon the juice is full of crystals. This combination is boiled for a
while and then emptied into cages, which spin the sugar out of the syrup. The
sugar crystals, which are now white, are put into a dryer and then into a
cooler. Finally, vibrating shakers separate the small crystals from the large
ones.
After packaging, the sugar is distributed to the markets.
On a shelf, somewhere, it is waiting for you. Waiting to be used in that very
special cake for your birthday party.
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