Sugar

I just bought a cookbook that has various recipes calling for brown sugar. One recipe wants light brown, another, dark brown. Then, I also need white. I just can't see myself buying three types of sugar. You can make do with two: dark brown and white. Brown sugar is a funny product, and to appreciate the joke you need to know how sugar is made: After sugar cane is crushed, the impurities in the "juice" are filtered, boiled and skimmed off before the clear liquid is crystallized into white sugar.

Those champagne corks heard on the Inner Harbor yesterday may well have been popping at Domino Sugar, where the high prices and corporate welfare are sweeter than anything that gets loaded on the trucks. Congress' veto-proof passage of the 2008 farm bill ensures that Domino's proprietor, the Fanjul family, and fat-cat farmers across the nation will keep wallowing in trade protections that disappeared decades ago for other industries. But while the bill is good for Domino, its 400 Baltimore jobs and a few agri-corporations, it hurts everybody else.

David C. Carter, the president of the United States Beet Sugar Association since 1975 and a founding member of several trade groups, died Thursday at his home in Derwood, Md. He was 61.His wife, Alice, said he died of cancer.Mr. Carter was born in Texas and reared in Gallup, N.M. He graduated from San Jose State University with a degree in journalism and public relations.After serving in the Air Force, he began his career in the sugar industry in the mid-1950s.He became president of the Beet Sugar Association in 1975.

The Domino Sugar plant in South Baltimore that shut down after an explosion and fire last week could restart operations by Friday, a company official said yesterday. Brian O'Malley, president of sales and marketing for Domino Foods Inc.in Iselin, N.J., said work crews are doing an extensive overhaul and cleaning of the nine-story building on Key Highway. "We certainly feel very fortunate that nobody was seriously injured or killed," O'Malley said. "It's too early to tell on the damage estimate, but we're going to be back 100 percent in a very short period of time."

Washington. -- For more than a century, nothing has tasted sweeter to the nation's sugar producers than government protection of their profits.Now, once again, the industry has demonstrated why it is one of the most coddled in the country by carving out a special deal for itself in the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement.How it did so is a case study in political clout.Industry lobbyists and members of Congress from sugar-producing states pressured the administration into squeezing an agreement out of Mexico to prevent a possible flood of Mexican sugar into the United States.

This week's column turns to questions from readers.Q: I suspect that my sugar-sweetened breakfast cereal is the reason I'm yawning at the computer terminal in the morning. Without resorting to caffeine, what can I eat to help me stay alert and concentrate on my job?A: While there's no diet that can counteract the tedium of a repetitive task, what you eat can help determine whether you're awake or ready to fall asleep on the job.We know, for example, that large meals, or those high in sugar or fat, will encourage drowsiness.

PRESIDENT BUSH finally seems to be cracking down on agriculture welfare. Looks bad at first for Big Sugar and the Domino Sugar plant on Baltimore's Inner Harbor, which is owned by Florida's Fanjul family and other cane growers. Sugar states such as Louisiana and Minnesota have gone ballistic on Bush. Foreign rivals are celebrating. It's "very positive news" for sugar growers and other Australian farmers, the Aussie trade minister told broadcasters last week. "They might be getting carried away," counters Norbert J. Michel, an economist at the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington.

Are you sugar shocked? Two more studies published last week joined a growing list proving sugar does not cause hyperactivity in children. In fact, it may have a calming effect.This is good news, because it allows a little breathing space in the way we eat. But just a little. A radio disc jockey summed up the rebound position, saying "I guess that means kids can have all the sugar they want." Wrong. Kids still need to eat mostly high nutrition food.The average American gets about 11 percent of calories from 53 grams of added sugars, based on the Nationwide Food Consumption Survey of the U.S. Dept.

THE WORLD Trade Organization has promised to really, truly help the global poor this time by dismantling the barriers erected by rich countries against developing nations' farm products. But first it has to deal with the likes of Rep. Alcee Hastings, Domino Sugar and the American Sugarbeet Growers Association. Last month, in opposing a measure that would have modestly increased the sanity quotient in U.S. agriculture policy, sugar interests laid it on thicker than a double-stuffed Oreo.

At first, I was delighted at the news that sugar does not make kids bounce off the walls.Here was the New England Journal of Medicine, a publication with something of a reputation for telling us what we should not be eating, now saying that eating sugar was not, repeat not, making our kids wild beasts. It is a rarity these days that a respected publication announces that a food is not responsible for a major American problem. It was a refreshing change.Just to be sure, I checked the details to see if these findings were the kind that get clobbered a few months later by researchers who really know what they are doing.