Sugar
As we believe in sustainable production and authentic food, we only use sugar made from locally grown sugar beet.
Most plants have saccharose in them. But only two have it as much to yield economically significant amounts of sugar: sugar cane and sugar beet.
Sugar cane is native to India. It only grows in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world, and therefore not in Turkey. Cane sugar accounts for three fourths of the global sugar production. Sugar beet, on the other hand, is cultivated in the temperate zone which includes Turkey. In harvest time, that is, in autumn and early winter, the beets are uprooted. Because not all the juice can be collected during processing, a by product called melasse which is mostly used as cattle feed is obtained by further processing. Depending on the beetroot's saccharose content, about 7-8 kilograms of sugarbeet is required for each kilogram of table sugar.
Our body turns saccharose into its compounds glycose and fructose and burn them as energy sources. Diabetics can not use this class of sugars as they have high blood sugar levels.
Sugar cubes are just the same crystallized sugar slightly moistened and pressed into shape. No additives go inside sugar cubes. Brown sugar is obtained by the mixing of crystal sugar with sugar cane melasses which is pre-processed to be fit for human consumption. The product is is called brown or dark sugar after its color.
Brasil, India, European Union, China and USA are the largest sugar producers of the world, accouning for % 60 of the global total. These five countries had a % 50 share of the consumption in the same period. With 32.5 million tonnes Brasil is the world leader of the cane sugar producing countries. Next come India with 30.7 million tonnes and China with 11.7 million tonnes. Among countries producing beet sugar, EU leads with 17.1 million tonnes and USA follows with 7.7 million tonnes. Turkey takes the third place in beet sugar production after the EU countries France and Germany.
In Turkey there are 7 sugar producing companies, one of which is a public enterprise; and 33 sugar processing factories work with varying capacities. Apart from saccharose based beet sugar, starch based sugar is also produced in some quantity in Turkey. Among these are the glycose syrup, isoglycose, high fructose corn syrup and crystal fructose.
There are allegations to the effect that corn based fructose used increasingly by processed food manufacturers of all kinds is a major threat to human health. Many reasons account for the fact that these producers prefer fructose: it is cheap, it blends well with many different food products, it has a stronger sweetening effect, and foods and beverages sweetened with fructose tend to be consumed in larger quantities because they delay satiety reflex. The USA is the world leader of corn based fructose production.
