Sugar

Like many other culinary products, sugar is closely linked to the Mediterranean and the cultures that have developed there throughout history.
References to the planting of sugar cane go back almost 5,000 years, to New Guinea. It quickly expanded to China and India. It appeared on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean in the 4th century BC, with Alexander the Great’s journeys and conquests in his expansion of Macedonia into Asia.
In the 7th century AD the Muslim world came into contact with sugar when it invaded the regions of the Tigris and Euphrates. After the invasion of Spain in 711, sugar production extended all around the Mediterranean basin: to Sicily, Cyprus, Malta, Spain and a large part of North Africa (above all Morocco).
It was in France in 1705 that an important milestone in the history of this prized sweet substance occurred when the chemist Olivier Serrés discovered that wild beet contained sucrose. A few decades later, the German Margraf managed to extract and solidify the sugar from this plant. The establishment of the first beet sugar factories then began.

Commenter

Data d'actualització: 04/01/2012 - 16:53

Remember this

We seek sugar for sweetness or as a fast energy source. It has calories, and eating more than we burn up can bring health problems. There are sugars in many processed foods.

It is easy to eat quite local sugar: most of the white sugar in our shops is obtained from beet grown in the Mediterranean region.

There is quite a range of Fair Trade cane sugar (tropical), often organically grown.

Information sources

Companies in the sector: Atomer, Azucarera Ebro, Comité Européen des Fabricants de Sucre, Cooperativa Manduvirá, Luz de Vida (Biospirit), Mapryser;

Academic centres and experts: Food Safety and Monitoring Research Centre, Elisabet Sarri (biochemistry), Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Sugar and Beet Studies Institute, Mamen Cuéllar (Institute of Sociology and Countryside Studies at the University of Córdoba), Joan Margarit (dentist);

Administrations: Department of Health of the Government of Catalonia; Spanish Ministry of the Environment and the Rural and Marine Environment; Organic Agriculture Committee of the Madrid regional government;

journals and newspapers: Diagonal, The Ecologist;

Organisations: Association for Research to Improve Sugar Beet Growing, Fairtrade Mark, Space for Fair Trade, Andalusian Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Organisations, Greenpeace, Infoagro, Oxfam, Globalisation Debt Observatory, Slow Food Paraguay, World Fair Trade Association, Consumers’ Solidarity Network.