Bone char: what is it, it's process, why use it?!
Bone char: what is it, it's process, why use it?
I was reading through this particular forum, and I saw that some people don't like to favor white sugar because of bone char. What exactly, or why exactly is bone char used in so many products most people wouldn't know about...I remember the first day I found out about gelatin, and I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn't eat anything gelatin related for a while.
But bone char?
Are there any versions of sugar that are vegan friendly then? How do you sweeten up certain things? : (
Please don't tell me there are some coffees out there that aren't vegetarian/vegan friendly : /
Answers:
Bone char is exactly what it sounds like. Cattle bones are burned in a low oxygen environment to produce a carbon matrix that is used by many industries to remove impurities from their products. The cane sugar industry uses the burnt bone carbon to remove the last traces of molasses from cane sugar so that it becomes white. There *is* a new process to remove all molasses from cane sugar but only 4 small to mid sized cane sugar factories use this process.
Here's where things get really complicated. Sugar can also come from beets instead of cane and many beet sugar factories don't use bone char (but some do). Beet sugar in theory is the same as cane sugar but blind taste tests show that most people prefer cane to beet sugar. For this reason most food manufacturers use bone filtered cane sugar instead of beet sugar. Most brown sugar is made by restoring molasses to the previously filtered sugar so you can't trust those either. Unless you have a specific label on a product saying their sugar was not bone filtered you need to assume it was.
Now the good news! There are a LOT of brands of raw, washed or turbinado sugars that were removed from the production line before the bone filtering! A couple of commonly available examples are "Sucanat" and "Sugar in the Raw". Any of the raw sugars will work just like regular sugar in your recipes.
When you need powdered sugar whirl your raw sugar in a blender for a few minutes and then sift it.
When a recipe calls for confectioners sugar do the same but add 1 teaspoon of cornstarch per cup of raw sugar or the recipe will turn out different.
When you need brown sugar stir a little molasses into your raw sugar until you get the correct darkness of brown sugar.
For vegan needs you can replace honey with Agave Nectar! You can even stick it in a plastic bear so no-one will know it's not honey
Low-no calorie sweetening needs are best handled with Stevia. (hint: Stevia doesn't kill ants
Is that more than enough information about sugar and vegan sweeteners? ;-)
Source(s):
Years of veggie cooking and I spent almost a week last November researching vegan kind sugar!
Aren't you glad you didn't ask about coffee? (sorry, couldn't resist)
sugar in the raw is a brand of sugar that doesn't use bone char...
I read that organic sugar is usually not processed using bone char. not sure how accurate that is, to be honest, though. (and someone correct me if it is not)
Most people in the veg lifestyle like to drink fair trade coffees. We don't like to exploit animals and we don't like to exploit people, either. So it depends on your reasons for the veg diet, and how far into the lifestyle you are as far as all that goes.