Abstract
In recent years, more than 110 million tons of commercial sugar products (Satoh) are produced annually in the world, of which cane sugar accounted for 62 .5% and beet sugar 37.5%. Total sugar production in 1990 in Japan is approximately 2.7 million tons, of which beet sugar manufactured in Hokkaido accounted for about 650 thousand tons . The major commercial sugar produced in Japan is refined sugar and beet white sugar . The refined sugar is manufactured from cane raw sugar, although partly from beet raw sugar . Various types of sugar are produced, having different grades, qualities and appearance of products . Sugar products are divided into two classes by manufacturing process, bunmitsu-toh (centrifugal sugar) and ganmitsu-toh (noncentrifugal sugar). The refined sugar, beet sugar and raw sugar come in the former, whereas koku -toh (brown sugar lump) in the latter . The refined sugar products are also classified into two groups, soft sugar and hard sugar. While joh-haku-toh (soft white superior) and san-on-toh (soft yellow) belong to soft sugar, granyu-toh (granulated), joh-zara-toh or shiro-zara-toh(coarse crystal superior) and chu-zara-toh (coarse crystal medium) come in hard sugar . This paper describes the profile of sugar referring to historical topics, manufacturing and characteristics of commercial sugars as well as their production and consumption .