Is sugar vegan?

Many vegan recipes call for evaporated cane juice instead of sugar. This is not just a question of health, a matter of replacing sugar, a highly processed food, with a more natural substitute.

Although sugar itself is a plant product (the crystallized and filtered juice from the sugarcane plant), the process used to filter sugar (to remove more of the molasses and other impurities and to make the resulting product whiter) uses animal by-products. Sugar is filtered through charcoal, which, in most cases, comes from charred animal bones, a by-product of the meat industry.

Just replacing white sugar with brown is no guarantee that your sugar hasn't been manufactured using animal by-products. Most industrial brown sugar is essentially white sugar with molasses sprayed on.

Many of the sugar brands sold as "raw sugar" or "demerara sugar" are not filtered in this way, but since they're not necessarily marketed to vegans, you can't tell much about how they're produced by reading the product label. You'll actually need to contact the manufacturer directly or check their web site to find out more details about how their sugar is made.

Fortunately, brands like Florida Crystals, which are increasingly available in healthfood stores, have started mentioning their processing (or lack of processing) on their labels so that vegans can make an informed choice about which sweetener to choose.

Some vegans replace white table sugar with unbleached cane sugar or dehydrated and granulated cane juice, both of which are available in natural food stores. Most of these products can replace white sugar measure for measure for general use (such as on cereal or in beverages) and in recipes. These products are typically darker in color than white table sugar, ranging from light amber to rich brown, due to their naturally higher molasses content. This can sometimes alter the flavor of recipes and may also affect the color of the finished product.

Unbleached cane sugar is considered by some to be more healthful than white table sugar. Although it may contain minimal trace nutrients, one would have to eat massive quantities of this sugar in order to obtain any reasonable nutrititive value. And, of course, there are numerous drawbacks associated with the overconsumption of sugar including tooth decay and obesity.

Nutritionally speaking, sugar is sugar is sugar, whether it is white table sugar, maple sugar, or a natural alternative. A 1948 federal law requires all products sold as sugar in the United States to be at least 96 percent pure sucrose, so even "raw" sugar (sometimes called "turbinado sugar") is by law compositionally close to white table sugar, about 96 to 98 percent sucrose.

There are many reasons why vegans avoid white table sugar, why some purchase only organically-grown unbleached sugar, and why still others eschew sugar products altogether. A prudent approach may be to reduce our use of all types of sugar, including sugary processed foods, and to train our taste buds to more fully appreciate the natural sweetness of fresh and dried fruits, grain sweeteners, and other whole foods. Still another option is to purchase granulated natural sweeteners such as maple sugar, granular fruit sweetener, and date sugar, or to use natural liquid sweeteners such as pure maple syrup, malt syrup, brown rice syrup, and mixed fruit juice concentrates. These products are available in natural food stores and many supermarkets.