Went to my mother’s for Thanksgiving. My brother-in-law was there also. At his insistance my mother bought ra sugar for him to use. It looked like brown sugar to me at twice the cost. Please, someone tell me what is the difference between plain brown sugar and raw sugar.
Ahh, you mean un-refined sugar. I think we call it Demerara in the British Isles. I guess you could call it bio-sugar as it hasn’t been treated in any way to produce the more normal ‘white sugar’
The jucies are pressed out and crystallised with no additional colours/flavourings added. Personally I find it tastier (esp when baking).
Most sites I found mentioned that it’s much healthier than refined sugars and retains all the vitamins from the plant.
Cite please!
I recomment anyone interrested in food to read Harold McGee’s eminent book On Food and Cooking. He has a chapter on sugar, and describes how it’s made. White sugar is made from cane juice (or sometimes from sugar beets) which is separated, distilled and chrystalized. Brown sugar is made by taking this white sugar and mixing with molasses, which is some of the fluids extracted earlier during the process.
To claim that it contains ‘all the vitamins from the plant’ is a bit missleading. First of all the raw material is rather low in vitamins, and most of them are destroyed during the process. (On the other hand, I do find it tastier than white sugar, but I don’t kid myself into believing that it is any ‘purer’ - on the contrary!)
That said, I don’t know anything about ‘raw sugar’, but I presume that it’s fairly similar to brown sugar, but maybe with more molasses mixed in?
I didn’t give a site as I found 100+ sites that stated that Raw sugar was ‘better’ for you and none claming that white sugar was ‘better’.
While white and brown sugar are produced in the way you stated, raw sugar isn’t as such. Just get a sugar cane, crush the juice out of it. Chrystalise and there you go. It’s clear that what ever minerals and vitamins that were in the sugar are still there, even if, as you say, there wasn’t a lot in the first place 
http://www.sugarweb.co.uk/sugar/unrefined/
http://www.rwood.com/Questions/Natural_Sugar.htm
And the point that you made…
http://www.wholefoods.com/recipes/cookbook/glossary.html
[quote]
Most sugars contain little more than calories, but many alternative unrefined sugars contain trace elements, minerals, and vitamins. There is no way to claim which sugar is best for you, because most nutritionists will say that regardless of whether it contains minerals or vitamins, during digestion all sugars break down into simple glucose, the basic body fuel, essential to the function of all cells. Most of the nutritionists feel the amount of trace minerals, vitamins, and elements contained in unrefined sugars are too small to benefit from nutritionally. Unrefined sweeteners are typically more expensive than white sugar, because of the growth and processing considerations.
[quote]
Based on this:
“Conventionally grown sugar cane involves herbicide, insecticide, pesticide and fungicide use, as well as crop burning and other detrimental agricultural practices that harm soil, air, water, and the health of farm workers.”
it’s clear that organic raw sugar also contains extracts of weeds, insects, and various molds and fungi. Chacun a son gout.
“Most of the nutritionists feel the amount of trace minerals, vitamins, and elements contained in unrefined sugars are too small to benefit from nutritionally.”
Translation: you will die in diabetic coma long before you get any benefit from consuming unrefined sugar.
Ponster cites:
http://www.sugarweb.co.uk/sugar/unrefined/
quote:
Unrefined molasses sugar is the richest in minerals and vitamins ( iron, calcium, potassium and the B group vitamins)
If this is true, and one really wanted to go for those minerals and vitamins, however small, why not just use molasses instead of sugar-mixed-with-molasses?
Because it tastes like shit.
Molasses is a waste product in the sugar manufacturing and it has to be mixed with quite a lot of sugar to be palatable. Although it’s higher in minerals and vitamins than refined sugar, it’s still fairly low compared to most other food. (At least in the amounts it would normally be eaten.)
I believe that McGee (in the book cited above, which I don’t have with me at the moment) claims that to get the recommended daily intake of vitamin B you have to eat >100g of blackstrap molasses. Which considering the taste is quite a lot.
Hardly surprising, sugar is best used as a sweetener, and some people (myself included) prefer it with a hint of molasses in it. However, if you have a diet so deficient that you need extra vitamins and minerals, there are much better ways of obtaining them than gorging on sugar or molasses: Eat some fruit!
From the Epicurious Dictionary:
The part that’s confusing to me is “the residue left after sugarcane has been processed to remove the molasses and refine the sugar crystals,” because I thought that raw sugar was simply sugar that has gone through less processing than white sugar. In any case, though, it appears that raw sugar is sugar with molasses remnants, and brown sugar is white sugar with molasses added.
As to the nutritional claims, at least one resource says that Turbinado sugar is no healthier than white sugar.
Disclaimer: I am not a food scientist, nutritionist, doctor, or dietician. This is just what I pulled from the web.
A bit of clumsy writing on the part of the Epicurious editors.
White sugar is completely refined sugar. Raw sugar is partially refined sugar. The waste product from refining sugar is molasses (well, molasses isn’t a total waste, Popup’s opinion notwithstanding 
). Brown sugar is white sugar with molasses added back in.
Molasses has quite a high mineral value. It gets this from the machines used to process it, ie it gets it’s iron from the iron rollers.
Thus, “brown” sugar has more of the iron & copper from the processing machinery than white- which has almost none ( it is pretty well close to pure sucrose). “Raw” “Turbinada” or Demara sugar has less minerals that brown, but more than white. Still it has very little. Note that none of these have ANY significant amounts of “natural” vitamins or minerals. However, if you prefer the taste- go for it. Just don’t think it is any healthier for you.
I think the Master has spoken on this in one of his columns?
The main (monopoly?) sugar producer in Canada, Rogers, uses beets.
It seemed a bit odd to me to add molasses to beet sugar, although I suppose it would be indistinguishable.
But I’ve just confirmed on their website, that their refined sugar is beet sugar, but their brown products are from cane sugar.
I feel relieved, but I’m not sure why.