Air conditioning, watermelon, and WIFI are the three essential elements for many people to cool down in the hot summer. When taking a bite of watermelon, some people may ask, why is watermelon so sweet, but no one chooses to use watermelon to make sugar? ?
In fact, it is not because watermelon is not sweet enough, but because the plant world is too "curly". Plants with sugar content such as watermelon are not ranked at all. Traditional sugar plants like sugar cane are not ranked in the rankings. Our impression should be that sugar is the absolute main force. 103 countries and regions around the world produce sugar, with a total output of about 190 million tons, of which sugar cane sugar accounts for about 80% of the total output. Sugar cane sugar alone cannot satisfy the current industries. With huge consumption, people have gone to great lengths to obtain "sugar". Let's learn more about sugar production together.
Sugar cane sugar production is not the earliest sugar production technology
When it comes to sugar cane, we are all very familiar with it. Extracting sugar from sugar cane juice is relatively simple in our opinion, because the sugar content of sugar cane is as high as 17%-18%, which is basically By squeezing out the sugar cane juice, concentrating it and processing it, you can get a relatively sweet syrup. This primitive method has already appeared in the Western Zhou Dynasty in my country.
Around the Western Zhou Zhou Xuan Wang era, that is, around 800 BC, sugar cane was introduced to the southern region of China. In the pre-Qin era, sugar cane was called "昘". By the Warring States period , sugar cane was already known. Preliminary processing records, Qu Yuan There is a poem that wrote: "The turtles and cannons have some pulp." The pulp here is sugar cane juice.
However, sugar cane is not the earliest sugar refining technology. As early as the Yin and Shang Dynasties , maltose has already appeared, which is the maltose we are familiar with. The so-called maltose is not directly refined malt Malt is used as a saccharifying agent in the production of sugar.
The method of making maltose is relatively primitive. Winter wheat is soaked and then sealed. When the malt grows, it is dried in the sun. Then glutinous rice, japonica rice, wheat flour, millet or corn and other grains are steamed and fermented, and then added Dried malt is fermented and saccharified, and finally the saccharified sugar water is boiled into sugar oil, and then the "sugar pulling" is repeated, and the malt sugar is ready.
The reaction principle of maltose is very simple. It uses the amylase in malt to decompose starch. In the entire malt making process, starch in grain is the main raw material. Maltase (β-amylase and a small amount of α-amylase) in malt Amylase) hydrolyzes starch into , dextrin, , and maltose, and we get the sugar water we want.
The emergence of industrial sugar production
With the introduction and widespread cultivation of sugar cane, the status of maltose began to be slowly replaced by sugar cane sugar. The earliest records of sugar cane sugar production were in India's " Vedas " in 300 BC and China's "Chu Ci", in 647 AD, Emperor Taizong sent people to India to learn how to boil sugar. After that, during the Tang and Song Dynasties, sugarcane sugar production began to enter a prosperous period, and large and small handicraft workshops could produce solid sugar. sugar.
However, because sugar cane grows in tropical and subtropical areas, this also limits the development of the sugar industry in the north. Moreover, sugar cane sugar production has relatively low requirements for sugar making equipment and can be made in ordinary workshops. This has also led to the sugar industry has been At the low end of production levels. It was not until the end of the 18th century that the beet sugar production method was invented, opening the door to industrial sugar production.
Sugar beet is native to the western and southern coasts of Europe. After a long period of artificial cultivation, sugar beet has been widely cultivated in Persia and ancient Arabia, and then began to spread all the way to Russia, China, In Japan, beets were mainly treated as "vegetables" at this time. It was not until 1747 that A. Margraf, president of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Germany, first discovered that beetroots contained sucrose. After selective breeding, beets were obtained specifically for sugar production, and their roots The sugar content of beet is as high as 20%, exceeding that of sugar cane, so beet sugar production just started.
Beets used in sugar production
In 1802, after the world's first beet sugar factory appeared, European countries built factories one after another, and then beet sugar production also ushered in the European capitalist development period. Developed industry and science and technology gave The beet sugar industry has brought great convenience. Many of the current large-scale mechanical sugar equipment and sugar making process requirements also originated from the beet sugar industry at that time. The sugar industry got rid of the continuous workshops, and industrial sugar production began to appear.
Having said so much, why didn’t anyone before discover that beets contain sucrose? In fact, beets are not as sweet as sugar cane. First of all, beets are "vegetables" and are classified as a member of the Chenopodiaceae family. They are close relatives of spinach and Kochia , while sugar cane is a "fruit" and beets can be eaten directly. Sometimes you even have to add sugar, so you can see the difference.
Edible beet
Starch sugar production once again refreshes the understanding of sugar production
It is undeniable that the world's sugar production raw materials mainly come from sugar cane and beet. Sugar cane sugar and beet sugar are very common in our lives. They are also very simple to distinguish. White Granulated sugar is cane sugar, soft white sugar is beet sugar.
However, on the one hand, the global demand for sugar has increased year after year, and the cultivation of sugar beets and sugar cane is very affected by climate. As Brazil , the country that has always been the largest producer of sugar cane sugar, most of the sugar cane has begun to be used to make more profitable products. of ethanol, which is also known as Brazilian ethanol gasoline, how to make up for the remaining gap? At this time it is the turn of starch to make sugar.
In essence, the starch sugar making process is still inseparable from the malt sugar making method invented by our ancestors. The principle is the same, but with the support of industrial sugar making, the output of starch sugar making is very large, and even more The important thing is that most of the raw materials of starch sugar come from corn, its cost is much lower than that of sucrose and beet, and the cost is very stable.
When the price gap between the price of cane sugar or beet sugar and that of starch sugar is too large, production companies will choose to use starch sugar instead in order to control costs. In 2021, my country's starch sugar production scale will reach about 14 million tons, mainly Used in beverage, beer and other industries.
The drinks we drink such as cola use starch sugar. The main reason is because of the low price.
watermelon sugar?
Seeing this, you probably understand why watermelon is not used to make sugar. The sweetness of watermelon is indeed relatively high, but the sugar content of watermelon is 5%-12%, and more than 92% of the whole watermelon. If you want to use watermelon It’s not impossible to make sugar, but the cost is a bit high.
As for eating watermelon, compared with the United States, Japan and South Korea, only the Chinese people have achieved the freedom to eat melons. China consumes 70% of the world's watermelons, and the average person can eat more than 100 kilograms of watermelons a year.
Of course, Japan and South Korea simply cannot afford watermelons. In 2017, a watermelon in Japan was auctioned for 500,000 yen, which is equivalent to about 30,000 yuan. The average price is one or two hundred watermelons. In South Korea, one watermelon is sold at auction. A watermelon sells for 30,000-40,000 won (approximately 170-226 yuan). As for the United States, when it comes to racial discrimination, watermelons are basically eaten if they can.
