Sugar and spice and everything nice

Sugar Cubes
Source: www.reasonpad.com

I leave the topic of spices (and herbs) to my colleague, Cheri, who has already written about this fragrant subject for the Sickles blog. I’ll tackle sugar.

Sugar is most definitely nice. In fact, it’s a universally accepted taste and one that we are born craving. But it’s also considered evil, blamed for hyperactivity in children, weight gain, and tooth decay. While we crave it, we also spurn it.

It’s important to remember that sugar is a naturally occurring substance, and most life forms, including life’s most basic--cells--depend on it for healthy biologically functioning. Even stationary plants need sugar: they store it up in their stems, tubers, and seeds as a source of food. Since we humans depend on it, too, we consume these plants for their store of sugar.

Sugarcane
Source: http://www.udcinc.org

There’s really nothing harmful about sugar per se, except, of course, for tooth decay. I am referring to sucrose, or the type of sugar that comes from sugarcane and that we add to our coffee and use for baking. The problem with sugar is that that it’s just empty calories—about four calories per gram.  Over-consumption will result in a surfeit of calories and a deficiency of nutrients. As most nutritionist agree, it’s not any particular type of food (e.g., fat, sugar, other carbohydrates) that leads to weight gain; it’s excess calories that’s to blame. By cutting down on sugar, you can reduce calories and this can help you maintain an ideal weight.

Sugarcane; its products
for sale in Banos, Ecuador
Source: Flickr-Mochileira Delpaso

These days it’s almost impossible to escape sugar’s grip on our food supply, but it was once a rare and incredibly expensive foodstuff, which was treated more as an exotic spice and used sparingly. Only with the increase in production worldwide, which started with Columbus’ bringing a cutting of sugarcane to the Caribbean, did sugar’s prohibitive price drop and become more widely available. A bitter side to sugar must be noted here: the reason that level of production increased so dramatically was due in great part to the exploitation of slaves.

Jars of sugar & chilies
to add to Thai noddles

To remember how special sugar is, I suggest getting reacquainted with its naturalness and resuming its use as a condiment. In Latin America and South America, and Southeast Asia, where sugarcane is grown, the fresh juice, pressed from the cane, is enjoyed on the street, as is chewing directly on the cane for a sweet treat. We may not be able to do this so easily in New Jersey, but try to do so on any trip to those parts of the world. If in Southeast Asia, you can sprinkle sugar, as well as fresh and dried chilies, onto your noodles, prepared at a roadside stand. The granules of sugar don’t dominate the taste of the dish, but adds complexity and balance: the cuisine of Southeast Asia strives for a balance of hot sour, salty and sweet.

Advertisement in Granada
for Nicaragua's favorite rum

Of course in Latin America, one of the most popular ways to consume sugar is rum, which is distilled from sugarcane by-products such as molasses, or, directly from sugarcane juice. Sweet goes with sweet, so try a Cuba Libre or Nica Libre: a cocktail of rum with a Coke, ice cubes, and a slice of lime. When you order a bottle of rum at a bar in Nicaragua, you get a few free Cokes in glass bottles--made with sugar, not high fructose corn syrup--and a bucket of ice. It may sound like much too sweet of a cocktail, but it’s wonderfully refreshing on a hot, sticky day. That said, I would always ask for fresh pineapple juice for my share of the bottle of rum.

Like everything, enjoy sugar—and rum!—in moderation but also think of it as something “nice.”

Diana Pittet, the sweet-loving cheesemonger