Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica in the Ming Dynasty said: Shatang, tonifying blood, promoting blood circulation, dredging silt and expelling lochia. It turned out that "brown sugar" was the ladies' favorite at that time, but it was a "scarce thing" when it appeared, and not everyone could afford it. Most of it could only be used as medicine. It is reasonable to say that until modern times, the status of brown sugar should be unshakable, but unfortunately another kind of sugar appeared, which almost replaced brown sugar.
This kind of sugar is "brown sugar". During the Republic of China, the belated modern industry gave birth to many large-scale food factories. To produce foods with various tastes, a large number of "white sugar" without special smell was needed as raw materials, and the purification and production of white sugar would produce a large number of leftovers. These leftovers were very similar to "brown sugar" in shape and red in color, so they were named "brown sugar". The overall state of these leftovers was similar to that of brown sugar.
It's just that this "brown sugar" is still red sugar after all, and it can't have the taste and nutrition of "brown sugar" with a thousand years' history. In modern times, with people's in-depth understanding of brown sugar, orthodox brown sugar has gradually returned to the supremacy of people's hearts. However, there are still many examples of selling red sugar as brown sugar in the market, so how to choose it will be tricky. Today, I will share the method of distinguishing authentic high-quality brown sugar from the "three lines" on the packaging.
GB/T35885 is the national minimum recommended standard for brown sugar, which came into effect in 20 18. If you see this national standard number on the brown sugar package, you can conclude that it is definitely not replaced by brown sugar, because the standard number GB/T35884 for brown sugar came into effect in 20 18, which means that brown sugar can be sold separately but must not be sold as brown sugar.
QB/T456 1 is an industry recommended standard for brown sugar production in light industry. At present, there are also brown sugar on the market that complies with this standard. You can also buy it when you see this string of numbers. At the same time, remember that the light industry standard number of brown sugar is QB/T2343.2.
Some brown sugar complies with the national standard GB 13 104, which is a national mandatory standard, but it contains granulated sugar, rock sugar, brown sugar and so on, and they are not separated, so the products marked with the national standard GB 13 104 are "pure brown sugar" after all.
The national standard GB/T35885 of brown sugar stipulates that the total sugar content of "first-class brown sugar" should reach more than 85%, while the total sugar content of "first-class brown sugar" in GB/T35884 should reach more than 92.5%.
From this, we should be able to see that brown sugar is much sweeter than pure brown sugar, and this is also the case. Boiled brown sugar retains a lot of raw biomass of sugarcane and some impurities, and at the same time, "Maillard reaction" will also consume some sweetness to produce various fragrances, so the sweetness of pure brown sugar is definitely not as high as that of purified "brown sugar".
"Sugar" belongs to carbohydrate, so we can tell whether it is replaced by brown sugar from the "carbohydrate" in the nutrition composition table on the package. I have seen a lot of "first-class" and "second-class" brown sugar in the supermarket, and the carbohydrate is basically above 85%, which is maintained at around 90%. However, some of them are mixed with brown sugar, and the carbohydrate has reached 96 to 99%, which is very suspicious.
The production process of brown sugar is obtained by boiling and concentrating sugarcane juice, while red sugar is the residue of white sugar production.
According to "General Principles of prepackaged foods", the ingredient list of food packaging must clearly indicate the specific name of the true attributes of ingredients, which requires that the attributes can be known by the name, and consumers should not misunderstand or confuse the inherent characteristics of ingredients, and all ingredients should be arranged in descending order according to quality or weight.
It can be simply understood that no matter how fancy your product name is, you must see the real person in the ingredient list, so we must have "sugarcane" or "sugarcane juice" in the authentic brown sugar ingredient list, and some of them are also called brown sugar, but don't choose the ones marked with "brown sugar" in the ingredient list.
So when buying brown sugar, please be sure to look for the word "sugarcane" or "sugarcane juice" in the ingredient list.
We all know that this pure brown sugar is made by directly squeezing and boiling sugar cane, so it is the primary problem for manufacturers to consider raw materials.
Sugarcane belongs to tropical and temperate crops. At present, the main producing areas in China are located in southern areas, such as Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan and other places.
I think the probability of picking brown sugar from these producing areas is higher (definitely not 100%). As for the brown sugar producing areas that you find belong to Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Hebei and other provinces and cities in the north, don't buy them directly, because these places are the main producing areas of sugar beet, and the raw materials are not right for the finished brown sugar, so you can also refer to the origin information when choosing brown sugar.
Although brown sugar is good, you should drink it in moderation. As we said above, the main component of brown sugar or brown sugar is "carbohydrate", that is, "sugar". If you eat too much, you may be associated with obesity, and your mood will be easily agitated. Maybe drinking it during physiological period will not achieve the desired effect. In short, you should not rely too much on the effect of brown sugar, that's all.