White gold

Sugar, not jewellery. Most of the sugar beet grown in the UK can be seen in the fields of East Anglia. Harvested in the late autumn, great lorry loads trundle to Bury St. Edmunds where they are processed in the steam-belching plant next to the A14. It’s a process that uses vast quantities of water, not least because the great, gnarly tubers are so dirty. After washing they are chopped, cooked, mashed and then the liquid evaporated off to give us the grains we expect. My cupboard has various versions – granulated, caster, icing,soft brown, demerara, muscovado…not to mention the golden gran and the cubes. As a child it seemed everyone needed sugar in their tea. No longer rationed it was considered a staple and was sprinkled on cornflakes and even strawberries – in fact we had a special “sugar caster” to enhance the experience ! Then a chap called John Yudkin exploded the myth by writing “Pure, white and deadly” (1972) in which he explained how unnecessary and harmful sugar really was. It caused uproar and was denounced by the industry and government. Yet it’s been reprinted twice and is now considered wisdom well ahead of its’ time. Nobody needs sugar – it’s found in all fruits, many vegetables (think sweetcorn) and even in milk. Yet without it our cakes won’t rise as the chemistry involved in baking is finely tuned. Reducing the amount of sugar in a cake will result in failure and you won’t eat the whole cake anyway ! White gold refers to the slave trade when sugar cane was exported all over the globe. My father’s earliest memory was of walking by a ship moored at Ipswich docks and being thrown a piece of sugar cane to chew on. Thank goodness that at least humble mangelwurzel was modified to create the sugar beet we now know.