White sugar, also called table sugar, granulated sugar, or regular sugar, is a commonly used type of sugar, made either of beet sugarorcane sugar, which has undergone a refining process. It is nearly pure sucrose.
The refining process completely removes the molasses from cane juice or beet juice to give the disaccharide white sugar, sucrose. It has a purity higher than 99.7%.[1] Its molecular formula is C
12H
22O
11.[2] White sugars produced from sugar cane and sugar beet are chemically indistinguishable: it is possible, however, to identify its origin through a carbon-13 analysis.[1]
White sugar (and some brown sugar) produced from sugar cane may be refined using bone char by a few sugar cane refiners.[3] Beet sugar has never been processed with bone char and is vegan.[4]
From a chemical and nutritional point of view, white sugar does not contain—in comparison to brown sugar—some minerals (such as calcium, potassium, iron and magnesium) present in small quantities in molasses.[5][6][7] The only detectable differences are, therefore, the white color and the less intense flavor.[7]
