Post by account_disabled on Feb 22, 2024 19:30:06 GMT 14
This blog we have recommended several vegetarian recipes. In some of them, like the chocolate sorbet, sugar had to be used. And this product is very present in our lives. So much so, that in Spain we can consume on average about 28 kg per person per year. But do we know where all this sugar comes from? We tell you some secrets about sugar and its origin, which will make you look at it (and taste it) in a different way. There are many types of sugar : cane, beet, whole, refined, brown, white, blond, panela, mascobado... Each one with an origin, properties and characteristics. It is difficult to find your way among so many names. For example, what would you say is the sugar produced in Europe ? And the one that is consumed the most? In both cases the answer is beet whose production, by the way, is highly polluting and is subsidized by the European Union. However, worldwide, cane sugar is the most produced. And countries like Paraguay are making a difference by betting on large-scale production of organic sugar. © iStock It is everywhere: the sugar we consume and that we do not see Much of the sugar we consume is invisible .
With the fad for light, we have reduced the amount of sugar we buy directly by half. We no longer buy as much table sugar, the little packet of sugar that was always present at home. However, we have actually increased our consumption because more than 75% of the sugar we eat is found in processed foods. Before, people cooked more at home and bought less ready-made things. Other products in which sugar is present are some agrofuels . Although it is very fashionable in Albania Mobile Number List recent years, due to environmental criteria and to reduce dependence on oil, producing them also has its disadvantages, as we will see below. The true price of sugar The production and trade of sugar with the rules with which the international market plays today has a high cost , especially for small producers. This is the true price of sugar, which has serious repercussions on the lives of producers and the environment. For example, with the rise of agrofuels, increasingly larger sugarcane harvests are necessary, which encourages large companies to buy large areas of land to export sugarcane for this purpose. Lands that were previously destined for crops that fed the local population, such as corn or beans, which can no longer access them.
This is what is known as land grabbing . In addition, sugar experiences sharp rises and falls in price due to financial speculation carried out by a few large businessmen. These businessmen determine with their investments the purchase prices that farmers receive for their production. What they do is act in very short periods of time and buy and sell future sugar crops on the stock market as if it were just another asset. For a farmer who has to take into account the natural time it takes for a crop to develop, these oscillations plunge him into uncertainty. How to know the price at which he will sell his harvest? How to ensure the future of the plantation? But for a businessman accustomed to selling future sugar crops as another asset, these concerns or the quality of life of the producers neither affect nor worry him in the least. On the other hand, we might think that if the price of sugar rises it is a good thing for the producer, but everything is relative. To begin with, their entire life has a strong risk of falling due to the instability that characterizes them. And furthermore, the highest percentage of profit when there are price increases remains in the hands of the large transnational companies that market the product. The risks fall on the producers who are in charge of its cultivation and processing, not on the intermediary companies that sell sugar as they could sell any other product.