Healthy Matter Raw Materials epsd (week 10)
Honey
Honey
is a sweet product made from flower nectar, combined with an enzyme secreted by
honey bees, then concentrated by reducing moisture in the honeycomb cells.
Honey is as old as history is itself. One of the
earliest evidence of honey harvesting is on a rock painting dating
back 8000 years, this one found in Valencia, Spain shows a honey seeker robbing
a wild bee colony. The bees were subdued with smoke and the tree or rocks
opened resulting in destruction of the colony.
It is difficult to appreciate in today's world of
convenience, high tech wizardry, junk food and sugar substitutes, the value of
honey. Humans have eaten it, bathed in it, fixed their wounds with it and
traded with it since history was recorded. Archaeologists discovered honey comb
in Egypt that had been buried with the pharaohs in their tombs, the honey was
preserved and was still eatable.
In the old testament, the land of Israel was often
referred to as the "land flowing of milk and honey". God nourished
Jacob with honey from the rock, and gave Israel fine flour, olive oil and
honey. John the Baptist ate locusts and wild honey. Honey is mention in the
scrolls of the Orient, the Talmud and Koran.
The Romans used honey to heal their wounds after
battles. Hannibal, a great warrior gave his army honey and vinegar as they
crossed the alps on elephants to battle Rome. During the 10 century, the Kings
and Queens of England had fermented honey wine (Mead), the Edmeades family
produced some of these.
Nutrition Facts of Honey
Calories
Each
tablespoon of raw honey contains 64 calories and is fat-free, cholesterol-free
and sodium-free. The average composition of raw honey is approximately 80
percent carbohydrates, 18 percent water and 2 percent vitamins, minerals and
amino acids.
Carbohydrates
Packed with natural sugar -- primarily fructose and glucose --
raw honey is high in carbohydrates. Each tablespoon contains 17 grams of
carbohydrates, 16 of which are sugars. A 2001 University of Memphis study
reports raw honey is an effective carbohydrate for boosting endurance during
exercise.
Vitamins and Minerals
Raw honey is rich in vitamins and minerals. Vitamin B6,
thiamine, niacin, riboflavin and pantothenic acid are common vitamins found in
raw honey, although amounts vary depending on the floral source of the honey.
Calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, sodium and zinc
are abundant minerals in raw honey.
Antioxidants
Raw honey also contains antioxidants, present in the form of
polyphenols, which help fight off free radicals that contribute to many serious
diseases.
Maple Syrup
Maple syrup is a syrup usually made from the xylem sap of sugar
maple, red maple, or black maple trees, although
it can also be made from other maple species. In cold
climates, these trees store starch in their trunks and roots
before the winter; the starch is then converted to sugar that rises in the sap
in late winter and early spring. Maple trees are tapped by drilling holes into their
trunks and collecting the exuded sap, which is processed by heating to
evaporate much of the water, leaving the concentrated syrup.
For
some 300 years, however, sugaring stuck close by that rural idyll. Early
settlers in the U.S. Northeast and Canada learned about sugar maples from
Native Americans. Various legends exist to explain the initial discovery. One
is that the chief of a tribe threw a tomahawk at a tree, sap ran out and his
wife boiled venison in the liquid. Another version holds that Native Americans
stumbled on sap running from a broken maple branch.
From
the 17th century onward, dairy farmers who wanted to supplement their income
from milk — or who just needed a source of sweetener that was better and
cheaper than sugar or molasses — drilled small holes in the trees during the
brief weather window between winter and spring. (Sap typically runs out of
maple trees on days when the temperature is around 40 degrees following a night
when the mercury dropped below freezing.) The farmers called the maple tree
stands "sugar bushes" and hung buckets under the drilled holes. Every
day or two — depending on how fast the sap was running out of the trees — the
farmers would empty out the buckets into larger containers or tanks and haul
the watery substance to a "sugar house" usually built in the woods. Here's
where the magic happened.
It
takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup because sap is
about 98% water. Sugar makers boiled off most of the water over a wood fire —
what they were left with was brown sweet syrup. Some sugar makers heated the
sap further, turning it into crystallized sugar. Over time, the industry
evolved enough that companies from Quebec to Vermont produced ready-made
"evaporators," essentially giant frying pans with fire boxes built
underneath.
As
quaint as this image is and as marketable — check out the old-timey drawings on
the sides of plastic maple syrup jugs — this is not the face of modern maple
syrup making.
These
days, most serious sugar makers have foregone labor-intensive buckets, in favor
of tubing systems. The holes bored in sugar maples in early spring are usually
made with a cordless drill. Sugar makers insert small plastic spouts into the
holes and connect the spouts to huge webs of plastic tubing that route the
precious sap into large tanks. Many of these sugar bushes even have vacuum
systems that suck the sap out of the trees to increase yield, along with
oil-fueled furnaces and reverse osmosis filters that remove some water prior to
boiling. The technology has changed dramatically, but in essence the process is
virtually the same. Collect sap, reduce over heat.
As
the natural foods movement has picked up steam in recent years, maple syrup has
become, along with honey, an increasingly attractive alternative to processed
cane sugar. If you're wondering where Aunt Jemima or Log Cabin syrup fit into
this picture — these common table products are not real maple syrup. The
tagline for Log Cabin, which is made with sugar, is "Authentic Maple
Tasting Syrup for over 120 years." This careful wording is intentional and
crafted to avoid false advertising claims. (Most brands of maple-flavored
pancake toppings are made with corn syrup.)
The
actual maple syrup industry has grown some 10% in each of the past four years —
and no, maple syrup it not just for flapjacks. These days, some maple syrup
devotees use the liquid sweetener as a substitute for sugar in everything from
cakes to stir fry. And let's not forget the Master Cleanse diet —
more accurately a fast — in which people eat nothing for days on end,
subsisting only on a drink made of water, lemon juice, cayenne pepper and maple
syrup.
Thanks
to increasing demand and poor sugaring weather in some regions over the past
several years, retail prices have spiked to as much as $80 per gallon in some
places. In the current sagging economy, that definitely counts as a sweet spot.
Nutrition Facts of
Maple Syrup
- Maple syrup is an excellent source of manganese, which plays an important role in energy production and antioxidant defenses, and is necessary for normal brain and nerve function. A portion of ¼ cup of maple syrup contains 100% of the Daily Value of manganese.
- The sweetener provides 37% of the Daily Value of riboflavin, which aids in the metabolic process.
- Pure Canadian maple syrup also contains 18% of the recommended Daily Value of zinc, which is essential for a healthy immune system.
- Other minerals found in maple syrup are magnesium, calcium and potassium, decreasing the risk of hypertension or stroke.
Brown Sugar
Brown sugar is used very similarly to granulated white sugar
but it provides a touch of extra flavor. Common uses for brown sugar include
sweetening baked goods, beverages, sauces, and marinades. Some varieties of
natural brown sugar are also used to make alcoholic beverages like rum. The granules and slightly acidic pH, brown sugar has also
become a popular ingredient in body scrubs.
The story of brown sugar begins,
unsurprisingly, with the story of sugar. Sugars are natural ingredients found
in most plants but what we have come to known as sugar is often extracted from
sugarcane and sugar beets. Sugar cane, from the genus Saccharum, was originally
cultivated in tropical climates in South and Southeast Asia.1 Neither should it be a surprise that the road
from brown sugar to white sugar looks very much like the roads taken to get to
white bread, white flour, and white cotton. All have similar histories where
the unnatural but white version is preferred or is seen as a higher quality
than the browner, natural varieties.
Three hundred years after being introduced to Europeans
by Christopher Columbus in 1492,3 by the 19th
Century, sugar was considered a necessity.4 This
evolution of taste and demand for sugar had major economic and social
implications for the entire world. As a result of this demand, tropical islands
were colonized and sugarcane plantations began ‘cropping up’ in record numbers.
Consequently, the demand for cheap labor to assist in the labor-intensive
cultivation and processing of sugarcane contributed greatly to the
transatlantic slave trade, which displaced many African peoples.
As I turned down the heat
on the molasses to allow it simmer, I carefully added ground ginger. Watching
the ginger disappear into the creamy brown concoction, I thought back to my
ancestors. It wouldn’t surprise me if at some point in history one of them had
made the same treat for her master’s children while her own children toiled in
the hot sun picking cotton or harvesting sugarcane.
At the heart of the American sugar industry was the
Domino Sugar Company. Founded during the height of the Industrial Revolution,
in 1807, the company was created by William and Frederick Hevemeyer in the city
of New York. The company led industry efforts to gain control of brown sugar
production and to restrict price competition in the sugar industry. One of the
primary tools used was to mount a smear campaign to denigrate brown sugar,
whose refining it did not completely control. By blowing up photographs (taken
through microscopes) of grotesque but harmless microbes found in brown sugar,
reproducing and then distributing them with warning of the supposed dangers of
eating brown sugar, the company convinced the American public that brown sugar
was of an inferior quality than white refined sugar.
The success of this campaign and the widespread adoption
of white over brown sugar was evidenced in the widely accepted cook book of
1897, Mrs. Lincoln’s Boston Cook
Book: What To Do And What Not To Do In Cooking,
originally published in 1884. An early home economist, Mary Johnson Bailey
Lincoln was an influential Boston cooking teacher and cookbook author. She was
among the first to address the scientific and nutritional aspects of food. At
that time, her book was the authority on cooking. In it, she gives detailed
descriptions of everything from understanding cooking terms to distinguishing
between different cakes based on butter content. In her section about sugar,
she makes a clear distinction between brown sugar and white sugar: “All brown
sugar and moist sugars are inferior in quality: they contain water and mineral
matter, and are sometimes infested by a minute insect. Loaf sugar is the
purest.”7 Domino had done its job. Its executives had
effectively tarnished the reputation of brown sugar.
Nutrition Facts of Brown Sugar
A single tablespoon of natural brown
sugar yields just 11 calories. For every 100 grams of natural brown sugar
contains 100 mg potassium; 85 mg calcium; 23 mg magnesium; 3.9 mg phosphorus;
and 1.3 mg iron. The total mineral salt present in natural brown sugar is a
maximum of 740 mg. In 220 grams of natural brown sugar, there are 216 gm of
carbohydrate and just 0.3 mg of protein.
One cup of natural brown sugar will
yield: 0.2 mg niacin; 0.1 mg vitamin B6; 2.2 mg folate; 0.3 mg pantothenic
acid; 5.1 mg choline; 0.2 mg betaine. 183 mg calcium; 1.6 mg iron; 19.8 mg
magnesium; 8.8 mg phosphorus; 293 mg potassium; 61.6 mg sodium; 0.1 mg zinc;
0.1 mg copper; 0.1 mg manganese; and 2.6 mcg of the antioxidant selenium. These
vitamins, minerals and trace elements are found in the sugar cane at the time
of harvest and are retained during the processing of natural brown sugar.
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