Sugar is one of the principal carbohydrates. No other food is more universally used, both by young and old. Not only is it a food pleasing to the taste, but it is one of the best heat givers.

Common Sugars-Cane, maple, beetroot sugar, honey.

Products of Cane Sugar-Granulated sugar, cut loaf sugar, brown sugar, powdered or confectioners' sugar, molasses.

Sugar extracted from milk is called lactose. It is very expensive, and is used mostly in the preparation of infant foods.

Honey is the purest natural form of sugar. The quality of the honey depends much on the flowers the bees feed upon. The finest quality of honey comes from Italy and Switzerland.

The Manufacturing Of Sugars

Cane Sugar-The juice is first extracted from the cane by crushing the stalk between a series of heavy rollers. Then it is clarified and boiled down to the required density in copper pans. As the syrup granulates it is removed from the fire. After cooling the fluid part is drained away from the crystals. These crystals are called raw sugar and are sent in this form to the refineries.

In the refineries of the United States, raw sugar is mixed with hot water and treated with lime to neutralize any acid present, then filtered through flannel and afterwards through a bed of charcoal.

The syrup is then boiled in vacuum pans. These are covered vessels from which part of the air is exhausted.

Under the reduced air pressure the sugar solution can be evaporated to a thick syrup without danger of burning.

Granulated sugar is obtained from this syrup by putting it into machines with rapidly revolving cylinders which throw out the uncrystalizable part of the syrup and leave a mass of white crystals.

The purest kind of sugar is made by running the syrup into molds, where it is allowed to harden. After it has hardened it is cut into cubes and sold as block sugar.

Powdered sugar is made by grinding the fragments broken off in the cutting of block sugar.

Brown sugars are the less refined grades.

Molasses is the liquid that will not crystalize in the manufacturing of sugar.

Beet sugar, which is extracted from the crude root of the beet, is a much more complicated process than the extraction of the juices from the sugar cane, owing to the fact that the beet juices abound in impurities, acids, minerals and gummy matter.

The juice is extracted by pressure, filtered through both lime and charcoal.

The refining is the same as the refining of cane sugar.

The maple sugar industry is almost exclusively confined to Canada and the United States.

In early spring the maple trees are bored or tapped, and the sap collected. The sap needs no purification. It is simply boiled and reduced to a thick, golden syrup, known as maple syrup. It is also boiled to a sugar which is solidified into cakes and sold as maple sugar. It is a difficult matter to obtain pure maple sugar, most of it being adulterated with inferior grades of brown sugar.

Sorghum is a sweet extracted from the stem of corn. The process of extracting the juices is similar to that used for extracting the juices of the cane sugar. Generally the whole product is converted into a thick molasses.

Glucose is a sugar syrup obtained by the conversion of starch into sugar. In Europe the potato starch is used. In America both corn and barley are converted into glucose.

Starch yields about 50 per cent of its bulk in refined sugar.

Sugar plants yield about 14 per cent in refined sugar.