Evaporated Cane Juice vs. Granulated Sugar

After reading Kashi's apple bake recipe using evaporated cane juice, I was so angry, I had to do about 5 consecutive sun salutations to manage my anger. Evaporated cane juice and plain old sugar are unequivocally the same, α-D-fructofuranosyl β-D-glucopyranoside (aka, sucrose, table sugar). After studying a while, the only difference in the processes used to isolate these substances on an industrial scale is one goes through one processing step more than the other. That's it. Same crop, same molecule. The white granulated sugar requires more energy to produce. So, it should be more expensive, tougher on resources and more expensive to produce. However, it costs less than evaporated cane juice, because people want what sounds "natural", regardless of the truth. Domino wins.

The subtle difference in composition between the two is simply the evaporated cane juice (ECJ) has a teeny bit more vitamin A, C and calcium (in a 100 grams sample). Take a vitamin. Lots cheaper.

In the industry, substances are produced according to specifications. Each batch produced is analyzed to insure compliance with the specifications. Documentation of this analysis comes in the form of a certificate of analysis (CoA). These are available to compliance agencies and geeks who really want to know weird information. I emailed DominoSugar.com today to try to get a typical CoA for granulated white and ECJ (their product name for ECJ is Demerara). They would not give up a CoA, but did give me the full nutritional specifications for each product. See below, and save your money.

Attribute	evaporated cane juice, 100 g	granulated sugar, 100 g
calories, kcal	400	400
total lipid (fat), g	0	0
protein, g	0	0
fiber, g	0	0
calcium, mg	18	1
iron, mg	0.0	0
potassium, g	0	2
sodium, mg	0	0.5
vitamin C, mg	4	0
vitamin A, mg	83	0
thiamine, mg	0	0
riboflavin, mg	0	0.019
niacin, mg	0	0.000
price, 5 lbs., $	8-10	1-3

Some sugar Frankie and I recrystallized from water over a couple weeks.