My initial guess was that refined sugar has to be the same no matter its provenance, but now I wonder if cane sugar has a different ratio of sucrose/glucose/fructose than beet sugar. Is there any reason why packages of refined sugar advertise 100% cane sugar?
Sugar – The difference between beet sugar and cane sugar
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Pure glucose is significantly thicker than a sugar syrup you would make on your own. It's even thicker than honey. At the previous restaurant I was at, we would use glucose in some limited applications when making certain kinds of caramel sauces (sorry, I didn't steal any recipes before I left), as (if I recall correctly) it has a higher tolerance for heat, and provides sweetness without caramelizing at the same temperatures as table sugar.
Sugar, as in common table sugar from sugar cane, is sucrose, which is a chemically weak linked combination of glucose and fructose. Your stomach acids will split sucrose very fast. So the difference in using natural cane sugar and factory split glucose may only be a matter of minutes once you eat the stuff
Same goes for almost all the sugars other than the "artificial sweeteners" which are generally not sugars at all, they just taste very sweet
Some artificial sweeteners are very natural in the general scheme of things when compared to processed sugar etc.
Nearly everything that comes in a packet with a barcode is not "natural". White table sugar is not natural. Buy some sugar cane stem, and crush and boil it, then you can see the difference
I would rather use the white table sugar though, as it is more likely to be clean and tested as being non-contaminated
Sugar Substitutes
There is a great list of sugar substitutes including artificial sweeteners on Wikipedia. Many of which would be better for you if sugar levels was of a concern in your diet (it is for some people). Many are useless in baking
The list of "artificial sweeteners" is thus:
- Acesulfame Potassium (Celanese, Nutrinova, Sunett)
- Advantame
- Alitame
- Aspartame (Equal, Neotame, NutraSweet)
- Aspartame-Acesulfame Salt (Twinsweet)
- Dulcin
- Glucin
- Neohesperidin Dihydrochalcone
- P-4000
- Saccharin (Sweet'N Low)
- Sodium Cyclamate
- Sucralose (Splenda)
And the sugar alcohol's, which are also a form of "artificial sweeteners"
- Erythritol
- Glycerol
- Hydrogenated starch hydrolysates (HSH) (long sub list)
- Isomalt
- Lactitol
- Maltitol
- Mannitol
- Sorbitol
- Xylitol
Nice info-graphic from Washington Post
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Best Answer
White beet sugar and white cane sugar are virtually identical in composition, but there may be very small differences (~0.05%) which some cooks find affects caramelization. Reportedly, cane sugar will caramelize better than beet sugar in many cases.
The bigger difference is when you look at brown sugars. In beet sugar, molasses is added after refining to make the brown sugar, as the molasses that comes from beet sugar is not fit for human consumption. Cane sugar is simply a less-refined product where the molasses has been left in the product. So when baking with beet brown sugar, often the molasses hasn't fully penetrated the sugar granules and "rubs off".