Sugar bleached or unbleached

Eat for the health of it.

One of the questions I get a lot is, "What is the difference between bleached sugar and turbinado sugar, unbleached sugar and why is unbleached sugar different shades?"
To answer what bleached is, it is exactly what it says, it is bleached with a bleaching agent similar to chlorine and it whitens it. I had the opertunity to see how the cane was grown and processed when my daughter lived in Hawaii and I went to visit her. We had the opertunity to see the fields of cane burning. After the burning process they hauled the cane stalks to the processing plant where it was washed and cooked into a syrup. After sugar cane is squeezed it is put into barrels and shipped to a processing plant where they dry it and crush it, then somewhere along the line it is washed and dried. Each time the process occurs it will lighten the sugar and at the same time it will be a bit finer then before. You have probably noticed that the turbinado or unbleached sugar is almost brown and is a course grain, then they process (wash) it again and it is a tan color. Then as they wash it again it gets even lighter but it does not get real white unless they actually bleach it. This is the bad part because they are adding a bleaching agent to the sugar, then we eat it. I happen to be allergic to this bleaching agent. I have had numerous skin reactions from it. It is similar to the bleaching agent in flour.

I also went on a bus trip and we stopped at a place where they had a working mill where they actually take the wheat and grind it into a fine powder like substance and then they put it in a container and add the bleaching agent to whiten it. It just so happened that it was at the same time I was having problems with the terrible leaking skin leasions and it was actually a blessing in disguise for me because I thought right away that this bleaching agent could be the sourse of my problems. And it was, I stayed away from anything that had a bleaching agent in it, like city water, white bread, white sugar and I always had to check the label for anything that had these bleached ingredients in it. I figured right away that if the bleach in the sugar and flour was making me itch and break out, then part of the problem could be the city water too. I was always happy that I had taken that trip and was able to figure out what was causing all of my skin problems.

I use unbleachd flour and unbleached sugar all the time and I can't tell the difference except I don't itch. I can tell the difference in the water though, because you can taste the chlorine in the city water. Some people may beg to differ about that but if they have drank that treated water all of their lives, they probably can't tell the difference.

One thing that I did learn right away, is when I made my first pitcher of lemonade, and lemon meringue pie. The unbleached sugar gave the lemonade and the lemon pie a caramel taste to it. To solve the problem there is to use Fructose, (not high fructose corn syrup but just plain fructose). Most stores now carry unbleached sugar and unbleached flour. If they don't, ask them to please get it in for you, or you can buy it at the health food store.

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Laughter is healthy: At the end of the day, at his first day on the job, at a Universal everything store, where they sold everything from nuts to automobiles, the newly hired kid was asked by his boss, "Well kid, how many customers did you have today?" The kid answered, "One." The boss says, "Just one?" Our sales people average at lease 20 to 30 customers a day." "How much was the sale?" The kid answers, $101,237.65." The boss mimics him, "$101,237.65?" What the heck did you sell?" The kid says, "First, I sold him a small fish hook. Then I sold him a medium fish hook. Then I sold him a larger fish hook. Then I sold him a fishing rod. Then I asked him where he was going fishing, and he said the Gulf,so I told him he needed a boat, so we went to the boat department, I sold him a twin engine Chris Craft. Then he said that he didn't think his Honda could pull the boat, so I took him to the automotive department and sold him a 4x4 Expedition."
The boss said " A guy came in here to buy a fish hook and you sold him a boat and a truck?"
The kid said, "No, the guy came in to buy some tampons and for his wife, and I said, "Dude your weekend is shot, you might as well go fishing."