Ep. 272 From Sunlight to Cotton Candy: The Sweet Science of Sugar

Chris: 00:06

Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with the University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a spooky show for you today. It is our Halloween spectacular. Oh, and so as as you can see, if you are watching this, we are dressed up today. And I I suppose my costume is is self explanatory, but it's time to see what everybody else has showed up in today.

Chris: 00:37

So without further ado, I am also joined by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville. Hey, Ken.

Ken: 00:44

Hello, Chris. I don't know what to say.

Chris: 00:49

I don't... You might need to explain yourself, but

Ken: 00:53

we So

Chris: 00:55

But real quick, before you do, let's get Emily in on this. Also with us today is horticulture educator Emily Swihart in Milan. Hello, Emily.

Emily: 01:08

Hi, guys. You look fabulous. Just no notes. No notes. But I do think maybe we need to explain.

Emily: 01:17

I hope mine's self explanatory.

Chris: 01:21

Maybe maybe not. I I think so. So so for people... If you're listening, I literally have my costume name on my chest. It says chloroplast.

Chris: 01:29

That's what I'm dressed up as. Emily, who are you today?

Emily: 01:34

I am a a fictional character, but I I love and admire the idea of her so much. So I am Rosie the Riveter.

Chris: 01:45

Excellent. And you you have the background and everything to Yes. To, like, bring the whole costume in. So that that is excellent. And now this comes to Ken.

Chris: 01:57

Ken, I mean, people are guessing right now. They're they're like, wonder what he's up to. What what what is he dressed up as? My first guess was bathtub, but, like, you're you're you're in the bubble bath. Tell us.

Emily: 02:10

I I said cloud. I guess I'll just say I said cloud.

Chris: 02:14

Okay.

Ken: 02:14

Mhmm. I can be whatever you need me to be. I'm supposed to be cotton candy. So my wife made a hat for me, but it fell apart. There you go.

Emily: 02:27

That's fabulous.

Ken: 02:28

Lovely. Thanks for talking about sugar.

Chris: 02:32

Yes. Oh, we didn't even talk about... I mentioned the topic for today. It it is the sweet stuff, sugar. So today, we have cotton candy, Rosie the Riveter, and a chloroplast organelle here to chat with you about all of that.

Chris: 02:51

So where do we start when it comes to sugar? Or or should we keep talking about our costumes a little bit? Does anybody have anything else to share about their costumes?

Emily: 03:01

I'll I'll just ask. Do you guys like Halloween? Like, we... You you dress up every year for the podcast, but do you like Halloween? Do you go trick or treating?

Emily: 03:10

What is the appropriate age to stop trick or treating?

Ken: 03:15

I go trick or treating with my kids. I personally don't trick or treat. But, like, dressing up, the podcast is the extent of my dressing up. So Mhmm.

Chris: 03:26

I I love Halloween. It's... Growing up in the country, it was never like a holiday that you celebrated, because nobody ever showed up at my house. And I had to get in the van to go trick or treat, and you got to hit, like, six houses. So so, yeah, I when I moved into town and and, like, saw how how it actually works, yeah, I I love it.

Chris: 03:55

I have a lot of fun with it. How about you, Emily?

Emily: 03:58

I had the exact same experience growing up. It was like get in the van, and we just went to family friends' houses, and they were like twenty minutes apart. And so it was a very kind of just low level of excitement around Halloween. Besides our parade, we had a parade at school, an elementary school. We got to walk down the street.

Emily: 04:19

And I do, I wanna say I wanted to like it. Like, I really admired some of the creativity with people's costumes, and I remember, you know, some of them stand out. Like, my friend was at a picnic table, or a picnic once, and she had this whole, it was elaborate. She spent time on it, similar to what we all did here. And I don't know, that was it.

Emily: 04:43

I didn't really love it. And then I had kids and they got into it. And so now we kind of go around the different neighborhoods and there's different houses you have to hit. One of them has a spooky garage thing set up where the kids get a full can of pop. So they love that.

Emily: 05:00

Yeah, I got way more into it as an adult. I don't dress up for trick or treating. But I also, I asked about the age because my kids are getting the preteen kind of age and they still want to go trick or treating. And I guess personally, I'm here for it. Be a kid as long as you can.

Emily: 05:17

They're gonna go trick or treating with their friends. And as long as they behave, they share their candy with me, and they dress up, they can go.

Ken: 05:25

Yeah. You gotta take the parent tax.

Chris: 05:27

100%. Yes. Oh, in in relation to the parent tax, what do you all take from your kids' candy bags? What's your favorite candy?

Emily: 05:41

Ken, what's yours? You go first.

Ken: 05:44

I usually do Almond Joy because none of them like it. None of them like it, so I don't get any complaining if I take it.

Chris: 05:50

Okay. That's the same as my wife. She loves Almond Joy. Not because there's no complaints, but because no one else eats it and she actually does like it.

Emily: 06:00

That is a good one. We we don't get a lot of Almond Joys. Do you... Is that a common candy?

Ken: 06:06

It's kinda here and there. But I do like it, so I don't... I take it anyway even if they did like it or complain about it probably.

Emily: 06:15

Yeah. No. That's a good one. That's tough to beat. I like the Reese's peanut butter cups, but I will do kind of like almost any of the things that have chocolate.

Emily: 06:22

I'm not a fruit candy kind of person. I'm more of a chocolate. So the Reese's peanut butter cups is kind of my... They've perfected candy in that little cup, but, I'll eat all the chocolates. I have a I have a problematic sweet tooth, to be honest.

Emily: 06:41

Chris, what are you stealing?

Chris: 06:43

I... I'm in the same family as you, Emily, that I love chocolate. I... You know, some of the other that, like, fruit based or that sugar based sort of candy stuff, I don't really like it. My preferred one, especially around Halloween, is Reese's Pieces.

Chris: 07:02

Because I don't... I almost never eat that, particular candy except around Halloween, and I I love it this time of year.

Emily: 07:11

Yeah. You can get it in, like, the... Is that what... No. They don't put that in the, like, tube.

Emily: 07:16

I guess that's Easter is what I associate it with. Never mind. Mhmm. How about candy corn?

Chris: 07:22

Absolutely not. Oh my gosh. Never. Okay. That's alright.

Chris: 07:28

I tell... Yeah.

Emily: 07:31

I need like one, maybe two bags of it. Like from... Bags? I'm gonna share what... To get through...

Emily: 07:39

I told you I had a sweet tooth. But like to get through the months, like, you know, like little bags, like, I'll get one kind of at the beginning of the fall season. And then I get my fix and then I'm done.

Ken: 07:50

Daughter and I need some.

Emily: 07:53

Could do this. What?

Ken: 07:54

We made our own. There's a lot of sugar in there. Sugar, corn syrup.

Emily: 08:02

That's awesome. I didn't even know you could... I mean, it makes sense you could make it, but I never considered it. So did it turn out well?

Ken: 08:10

Tastes like candy corn. I mean, I'll try to remember to take a picture and we can put a picture in of the final product.

Emily: 08:19

I am impressed. I am impressed, Ken. Okay. That was a great question. We learned things about people.

Emily: 08:26

So we all can agree almond Hey, listeners, if anybody wants to. Just kidding. Don't do that. But

Chris: 08:35

No. It's not good for us or our teeth. That's right. Mhmm.

Emily: 08:41

Okay. So we're talking about sugar. Chris, you are our representative chloroplast. Do you mind talking about how we get sugars? We're gonna talk a lot about the natural sugars.

Emily: 08:57

There's artificial sweeteners, artificial sugars. We're talking about natural sugar today and how we're gonna get it from plants as a horticultural podcast. Could you kinda help us, you know, lay the foundation for how we get sugar out of out of plants?

Chris: 09:14

I I would be happy to as the representative chloroplast of this, this triumphant. What are we? This, motley crew here that we are. So sugar, everything runs off of sugar. I I I think we we maybe need to back up a little bit.

Chris: 09:37

You know, we think of sugar, and we're gonna talk about this. You know, Ken, I think, is really gonna dive into that pure granulated white sugar. It is so, fine and delicious. But the world does run off of sugar, and it all starts with photosynthesis. And it...

Chris: 10:00

It's sort of the the the basis of life on this planet. And so I I am dressed up as chloroplast. I I do have a diagram of chloroplast, on on my forehead here. So what... And and chloroplast is kind of this main component of photosynthesis.

Chris: 10:17

The interesting history behind chloroplasts... And so on this diagram, and I'll describe it here for those listening, it's an organelle, so it exists within the plant cell. And and there's also other org... Organelles inside that plant cell, but, chloroplast is a little bit different in that when light from the sun passes from... Through space, the atmosphere, and hits that plant leaf, it's gotta go through that, that cuticle on that leaf.

Chris: 10:50

This is, like, we call it maybe the skin of the leaf, that waxy layer of it. And it's gotta go then through these layers of plant cell walls, these plant cell membranes. And then it goes into the plant cell, and then it goes to the membrane, the outer membrane of the chloroplast. The interesting thing about this, though, is that this is one of the only organelles in the plant cell that has an outer membrane and an inner membrane, which suggests that chloroplasts used to not be part of plants. That probably billions of years ago, when they're all just these little amoebas and microbes and everything's creeping along, chloroplast was out on its own, and it had figured out how to take that light energy and convert it into chemical energy.

Chris: 11:38

And it is a fascinating and a complicated process. I don't think we have time to really get into the entire photosynthesis process today. I'll do my best to hit the high points, though. So in chloroplasts, it has these little stacks of thylakoids. And these thylakoids, they're stacked up.

Chris: 12:02

It's kinda like poker chips stacked on top of each other. It's actually sort of a membrane that's folded on top of each other like that. And these thylakoids inside there, actually on the on the edge are these proteins that when that photon hits that protein, it generates this, kind of excited state of electrons. And as these electrons go from stable to excited and they're all, you know, they're all jittery around, they're they're dancing around, There's there's actually this... It's called resonance rings of chemicals in these thylakoids.

Chris: 12:40

And it resonates, and these electrons, they're excited, and it's kind of that potential energy that then goes into producing, ATP or NADPH. I think I said that right. And it's it's those little energy packets, these chemical molecules that then go into fueling the process that... Where we can take, Rubisco and... Which is gonna be my my dog's next name.

Chris: 13:13

My... If I have a future dog, I'm gonna call it Rubisco. So Rubisco takes that energy packet made in this... It's called the p s two pathway, which is not PlayStation two. It's photosystem two.

Chris: 13:27

Takes that photosystem two, and then there... It goes through photosystem one. Why is it backwards? Because they discovered photosystem one first and named it that way, and then photosystem two was discovered. But, anyway, goes through photosystem two, then photosystem one.

Chris: 13:42

All these excited electrons produce these energy packets, and then it... And that's all depends upon light. We need light for all of that to occur. Then it moves into the carbon cycle. And the carbon cycle is when Rubisco comes in, and they take c o two, and they actually separate c o two apart, and it starts building sort of this basic three carbon molecules.

Chris: 14:09

And with that three carbon molecule, from there, you're off to the races to build whatever type of sugar you want. And so the plant then uses all types of amino acids once you have that three carbon molecule, and it will build glucose. It can build even more, more chains of it and create fructose. So glucose is more of a a kind of a short term energy storage system. Fructose is a bit more long term.

Chris: 14:39

Fructose can then go in to be converted into starches, which can be very long term storage. And then, of course, we have cellulose, which is then... That's part of the sort of the plant structure also. So it... And many other types of sugars out there, can be manufactured here in the plants using these different amino acids.

Chris: 14:59

And so for my costume, you see I have... Let's see. Oh, everything's backwards for me here. I have six c o two molecules, and I got six h two o molecules. It...

Chris: 15:13

That... The plant takes these in, and with sunlight right here, with the... Those photons hitting that chloroplast in those thylakoids inside this organelle, it excites those electrons, which creates that potential energy, which is then stored in this glucose right here. Or if it goes through additional development of... Through those amino acids, it can be all different types of sugars.

Chris: 15:37

But glucose is gonna be the primary one that's produced along with fructose. The other byproduct is oxygen, the stuff that we breathe. So thank you plants, for creating oxygen for us to breathe and also the sugars that we all eat and consume and the thing that... So, essentially, taking the energy from the sun, converting it into chemical energy, and that all translates throughout the entire food web across the planet. And that's why we're alive today, eating food that gives us nourishment, that gives us calories.

Chris: 16:13

So I... Oh, and one of the things, the other types of sugars, there's other types of sugars. So we can combine sugars and we can get disaccharides. So the main one of those is going to be sucrose, which is a fifty fifty combination of glucose and fructose. And that is the primary type of sugar that is moving around in the plant, in that plant sap is sucrose.

Chris: 16:42

Again, that's fifty fifty fructose and glucose. And so I think I wrote a quote here from my my textbook that I was reading about this. They're basically saying that sucrose is argued to be the true sugar substrate for respiration. And respiration, we're not getting into today, but is essentially taking photosynthesis and going backwards and using that energy stored in that glucose molecule for life processes. So did...

Chris: 17:15

Was that clear as mud, the photosynthesis process? Okay. Any questions, class? You'll be tested on this.

Emily: 17:26

You made organic chemistry just sound easy. Mhmm. Well,

Chris: 17:33

the thing... The... Okay. The the really neat part about photosynthesis too is it takes inorganic chemistry. It takes these carbon molecules.

Chris: 17:41

It's just a carbon chain, and it turns it into organic chemistry. It turns them into these carbon rings. It's a fascinating process and one we should defi... Maybe devote a future show to and and find someone who can explain this in a way that's a ease... More easily digestible.

Chris: 18:00

But I I mean, there's an... I have a whole textbook here. Half the book is about photosynthesis. The other half is about respiration. I don't know how to make it more simple, but the most way to break it...

Chris: 18:14

Easiest way to break it down is you are converting light energy into chemical energy. So something that biological processes can access.

Emily: 18:25

That's Yeah.

Chris: 18:26

That's all I got.

Emily: 18:28

And I think personally, that whole thing, we can explain it scientifically, right? You did an excellent job. But it's also, to me, that's magical. Nature is amazing. Magical is the word that I'm applying to it, but it's just like, it is amazing.

Emily: 18:48

It deserves appreciation. And I think that's like, for all of us plant nerds, I think what we see when we look at plants is just this whole life sustaining, you know, like, it's... I don't know. Like, I'm at, honestly, at a loss for words every time I try to be like, but they're amazing. Like, plants are amazing.

Emily: 19:06

They're literally the reason for everything. And photosynthesis, you know, helps explain it, but people, you know, eyes glaze over it, you know, cocktail parties, which I never go to, but I would imagine they do. Like ball games, at ball games when I'm talking about photosynthesis. You know, it's amazing. So thank you for explaining that.

Emily: 19:28

And if we do that podcast, I think we are gonna need a lot of diagrams to show the process. So you got them. There you go. Yeah.

Chris: 19:37

Look at... This is a diagram of the Calvin cycle. I'll try to scan this so people can see it online better. But it's very comp... It's like a Rube Gold Goldberg machine when you really start picking it apart.

Chris: 19:52

It's like nature just decided to... Alright. That works here. We'll pull that from... It's just pulling things together into this one system that's not all the way efficient, but it gets the job done.

Chris: 20:03

Whole life on this planet's dependent upon it.

Emily: 20:07

I'd say it's doing an alright job. Mhmm. Yeah. And we're talking about this because Halloween, we're gonna be consuming quite a bit of sugar here. That was the inspiration for it.

Emily: 20:17

But I love that we did lay that foundation of... We're talking about natural sugars. It's a natural flavor profile that plants have, like for eons. We as humans have evolved to appreciate and seek sweetness. I was reading, was you know, like there's 10,000 receptors on our taste buds, you know, like in our mouth.

Emily: 20:41

And so when you bite into something sweet, like that triggers a reaction in your brain, like a hit of dopamine. It makes you feel better. I think anyone who has enjoyed sugar before has had that experience where you get this hit of dopamine, so you want more. And that's from plants. That's the survival mechanism.

Emily: 21:03

I would also say like, I think sugar sometimes does get a bad rap because of some of the processes we're gonna talk about here and like what we do to it, but as a natural product, sugar in a balanced diet, it accompanies all the nutrients that plants provide. We didn't even mention like lactose, which is in milk. There's a lot of types of sugars as you hinted at, I'm not a nutritionist. But I also, I've been curious about nutrition for a while. And personally, I guess I'll just say that we got to understand sugar better before we just go ahead and say it's bad because it's a natural byproduct of photosynthesis.

Emily: 21:49

Want to defend it a little bit. And then we kind of get like, we muck it up and put a lot of, we take away some of the natural stuff out of it. We'll get there. At its... Sugar is not inherently bad.

Chris: 22:04

Everything in moderation.

Emily: 22:06

That's the

Chris: 22:06

There you go.

Emily: 22:07

In moderation. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Go...

Emily: 22:13

Oh, go

Chris: 22:13

ahead. Could I just throw in there as a transitional piece maybe for, Ken? So plants produce all of these sugars, but when we bite into an oak tree leaf, it doesn't taste sweet. But there are plants that we do use. And I I mentioned that the the the...

Chris: 22:35

In photosynthesis, they make this three carbon chains. Well, there's also... That's the c three plants. There's also c four plants, which I think we also mentioned this during our sedum episode. But c four plants operate a little bit differently.

Chris: 22:49

There's far fewer c four plants on the planet, but there's important... There are some important agronomic crops that are c four plants, and they produce four carbon chains. And one of those plants is sugarcane. So, Ken, tell me about if I can't get a sweet treat from an oak tree leaf, what do we use for making sugar, making our stuff sweet?

Ken: 23:19

Yeah. So I guess before we started having processed sugar and things like that, know, honey, fruits, fructose stuff, that is what was used to sweeten stuff. But nowadays sugar comes from one or two plants. We've got sugarcane, and this is a tropical plant, gets 20 feet tall, potentially. Kind of looks like if you're not...

Ken: 23:42

If you've ever seen it, I've got some here, this is stuff like a month old, so it's all shriveled and gross looking. But there's green, there's red, kind of looks like bamboo. It's got nodes, and stuff on it. And it's got a much higher sugar content, sucrose content in it than, you know, typical plants. And then we also have sugar beets, as well.

Ken: 24:04

So those are kind of the two sources of that... Of sugar or table sugar. I guess for now on, we're talking about table sugar, sucrose, for the rest of the podcast. So, with sugarcane, that was first discovered or kind of first used in New Guinea around eight to ten thousand years ago. People would chew on it.

Ken: 24:24

So there's different types of sugarcane. There's six or seven different species. Saccharum aficionarum is kind of the sugar cane we use for the most part nowadays. But you've got stuff that's more high fiber that they may have used for construction and then softer ones that will have more juice in it, they would chew on it, get the sugar that way. And as those people from New Guinea kind of spread out across Southeast Asia, know, going to different islands and stuff, they would take sugarcane with them and they would move that around the islands and stuff particular with them and spread that.

Ken: 24:57

You know, The Philippines, Fiji, Got to Hawaii around 600 BCE... Between 600 BCE and 600 CE. I was wanting to think it was introduced into Hawaii. Got to India around 3,000, 2,000 BCE, same with China. So now going into Mainland Asia here.

Ken: 25:19

And around 400 BCE, there's evidence that in India, they started creating a kind of a crude sugar product. So they would kind of dry that sap out and it would crystallize a little bit. And that's allowed kind of for the transport of that sugar product. Because with just the canes, they'll dry out and they'll kind of go bad rather quickly. But when you start getting this somewhat crystallized form that can now be spread long distances, and you start getting trading with, outside of India, of sugar, from India.

Ken: 25:50

Buddhist monks took that processing, the crystallization methods to China. So you start seeing that show up there. One of Alexander the Great's admirals, was it Nearchus, encountered sugar in India. So that's kind of how it got introduced into... Or Europeans became aware of ancient Greeks around 03/25.

Ken: 26:14

And then we've got Persians and Arabs starting to move sugarcane throughout the Middle East into Egypt and North Africa. And then that refining process becomes more refined, I guess. You know, Egypt, really kind of, really kind of dialed in that refining process. You start getting the white sugar, that we would be familiar with today around seven hundred, seven ten CE. And then we started having the Crusades come in, from Europe, they're going in to Holy Land, they encounter sugar.

Ken: 26:47

So then they bring sugar back with them, after that, and we start seeing it, being grown in Spain and in Cyprus and things like that. And then when was it? And then it's introduced into the Canary Islands in 1420. And at this point, we're starting to see they're starting to use indentured servants to do this. So basically you sign a contract, sometimes willingly, sometimes not, to go work in these fields.

Ken: 27:18

They transport you there. They cover kind of your basic costs, but eventually you're kind of released from that. You know, people start dying doing this. They start importing slaves from Africa to do this. And then in 1493, Christopher Columbus on a second voyage brings sugarcane into Hispaniola.

Ken: 27:38

And again, they enslave the native peoples there. They all started dying. They started bringing in African... Again, they were bringing in indentured servants, Europeans and stuff. They started dying because they started bringing in...

Ken: 27:49

And then we kind of started getting that industrial level slave trade during this time. Can you hear me?

Emily: 27:55

Oh, wait. Yeah. I can. Okay. Something's happening because I can't hear Chris now.

Chris: 28:00

I'm sorry. I muted myself. Okay.

Emily: 28:02

My goodness.

Chris: 28:04

But you you cut out, but it didn't... You didn't drop. You just like... There was a pause and then it just sped up and caught caught back up. Okay.

Ken: 28:13

Okay. Alright. So that's so that's what kind of... We're start to get this this... Again, the industrial level slave trade.

Ken: 28:20

So you're bringing in millions of people from Africa into quote unquote, the New World, North And South America. And I came across a stat... Was it 70% of all African slaves that were brought to The Americas were taken to sugar plantations? So in The United States, we think about cotton and tobacco, but vast majority of them are brought in for sugar plantations in The Caribbean and Brazil. Eventually sugarcane makes it into The United States, Florida, Louisiana.

Ken: 28:48

We've got a little bit in Texas, as well as where production is nowadays. And then, know, with the dark side of sugar, know, is the slave trade, know, the triangle slave trade. And like the working conditions are kind of horrific. You've got, you know, when they're harvesting this, you've got to basically process it right away because again, the sugarcane starts going bad, more or less you start losing that sugar content. So they're crushing this and boiling it, you know, in these giant vats 20 fourseven.

Ken: 29:19

So it's really hard. You've got boiling sugary liquid splattering on people. The leaves of the sugar cane are very sharp. It says you're out working in the fields, you're getting cut up. You hear references of people going blind because getting hit in the eyes with the leaves.

Ken: 29:34

I think the average lifespan I read was seven years for somebody working on a sugar. Once they get to a sugar plantation, average lifespan was seven years. And like in The United States, on cotton and tobacco plantations, see the slave populations increasing, birth rate and stuff is greater than the death rate. Whereas on sugar plantations, have a negative growth rate, so you have to keep bringing in more and more slaves and stuff. So it's got an incredibly dark history.

Ken: 30:05

When we talk about sugarcane, you know, there's a lot of a lot of information out there. We're not gonna kind of dwell on that. But there... We do need to acknowledge that there's some pretty bad things that happened throughout history, when it comes to to sugar and stuff. And even in in Hawaii, you know, the sugar plantations, you have Americans coming over, developing sugar plantations in Hawaii, and that led to the the the the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and annexation of Hawaii to The United States.

Ken: 30:34

So it's it's not... It's happening in what is now The United States, as well. So that's kind of the history sugarcane. And then for sugar beets, so these are... They are the same species as beet root or garden beets, what we call garden beets usually in The US.

Ken: 31:12

So for sugar beets, in the sixteenth century, was a French scientist who discovered that a process where you can create a syrup from beetroot, garden beets, But it wasn't sugar, you know, sugarcane was it was well into production, so it didn't really take off, and didn't taste the same because it wasn't fully refined. That syrup didn't taste as good as what you would get from from sugarcane. Then in the mid eighteenth century, in an area that is now Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, you start getting, some some kind of people looking into this. So Frederick the Great of Prussia, was funding experiments looking into the sugar extraction process. It was in 1747.

Ken: 32:04

Somebody from the Academy of Science in Berlin isolated sugar from sugar beets. At this point, you get... Or from beets, you get 1.3 to 1.6% sugar content from those beets. And they found that as the best white beets, white colored beets are the best. You know, typically when we think of beets, we think of red beets, but the white beets had a better sugar content compared to the red ones.

Ken: 32:27

And they also demonstrated that the sugar extracted from beets is identical to sugarcane, which I think sometimes people don't realize. Sucrose is sucrose, it doesn't matter where it's coming from. And then in 1786, people started breeding beets for sugar content. By 1800, you're getting 5% to 6% sucrose in those sugar beets. Modern varieties were at 16 to 20%, sucrose in those sugar beets.

Ken: 32:56

In eighteen eighteen o one, eighteen o two, we saw two different dates on this. We've got our first sugar beet factory, in what is now Poland. France starts building one as well. Then eighteen o six, England has a continental blockade, during the Napoleonic Wars. So Europe does not have access to sugar, and the sugar beet really takes off in Europe because they can't get sugarcane anymore because of the blockade.

Ken: 33:20

So in 1840s, 5% of sugar was from sugar beets. By 1880, was 50% of the sugar worldwide was coming from sugar beets. And we talk about The United States when it comes to sugar beets. First production in The US was in 1879 in Alvarado, California. And then, you know, sugar beets, you know, sugarcane is a tropical species.

Ken: 33:46

So you're limited to where you can grow that. And we're talking about The United States. Sugar beets is more of a cool season crop. So this is more of a Northern thing. In The United States, there's 11 different states where you have a commercially grown.

Ken: 33:59

Michigan is the only one East Of The Mississippi River. Most, I think 60% of the acreage is in the Red River Valley in Minnesota and North Dakota. So that's where a majority of our sugar beets are coming from. In The US. I think it's 55 to 60% of sugar production in The United States comes sugar beets.

Ken: 34:18

So most of the sugar we're producing is from beets, not from sugarcane. So a brief history of sugar.

Emily: 34:26

Well, think that was great job. Because there is a huge amount of history, and so you covered it very well. With sugarcane and sugar beets, I think... So like you said, most northern states that we can kind of grow sugarcane in is kind of like Louisiana is where it's kind of tops out. Right?

Ken: 34:47

Yeah. At least in the... Yeah. In The US. And I think this may be worldwide too.

Ken: 34:51

Yeah. Louisiana is kind of the... It's the farthest north that's grown commercially anyway.

Emily: 34:55

Yeah. And then so the beets, like we can grow them in Illinois. We can go... Because we can grow garden beets. We could grow sugar beets if we wanted to.

Emily: 35:04

But you said most of the commercial production is just north. So like when I think of sugar beet production, think of, I didn't know about Michigan, I'll be honest. But I think more of like the Dakotas, Montana, kind of like north, like Rocky Mountain region.

Ken: 35:21

Yeah. So you got Minnesota, North Dakota, that's where most of it. And then you've got Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, Wyoming. And then they kind of break it up into regions in California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington. And in Michigan, you know, think of Michigan is in the thumb region of the state, at least from the maps I've seen, and then a little bit into, Ontario as well.

Emily: 35:43

Do you have any more info... I guess I'm curious. How is it commercially grown? And maybe you didn't look into this. Like, how is it harvested?

Emily: 35:52

Because it's dug with, industrial... Sugarcane is harvested by kind of combining it and getting it very quickly to the manufacturer or the refining processes. But beets store longer and can be dug and transported or no?

Ken: 36:13

Yeah, so maybe we'll start with planting and then we'll work our way in.

Emily: 36:19

Okay, that makes sense.

Ken: 36:20

So with sugarcane, we've got different types. So you've got the green types, the red types, like I showed, and there's some that are more for chewing. So this would be like more of a home... If you're if you're living in, you know, Florida, you're gonna go sugarcane. A lot people are going like the chewing types.

Ken: 36:38

They have thinner skin. You just chew on it and and get the the sugars out that way. There's one that have... There are more fibrous types. There's ones for making like syrups.

Ken: 36:49

And there's ones for use for crystallization, which we would, what people would be growing for commercial production, to get those sugar crystals out of there. And when it comes to planting sugarcane, so these are vegetatively propagated. So you're taking, you know, these stalks, you're chunking them up. And I didn't realize on this one, actually, there was actually some buds on here and I think it actually started putting out roots. Should have paid closer attention and tried to plant it.

Ken: 37:11

But it'll, like see this, there's a bud, it's kind of dead on here. But they'll send out buds at the nodes. So they'll plant these these sticks, these stalks kind of like this in the ground. Usually you want five to six buds, per stock that you're putting in the ground just so you have make sure, because not all of them may grow, so you have enough. They're putting those in trenches and they're overlapping.

Ken: 37:36

So when putting them down, you're overlapping. You're not leaving a space in between the stalks that you're putting down. And a lot of times, you know, some stuff I found from University of Florida for like backyard production, usually they're saying, apply one pound of eight to eight fertilizer for every 10 feet, of row that you're planting. And where they're doing single or planted or single or double row, usually four to 10 feet apart, again, in kind of backyard production, I would imagine commercial is probably somewhat similar to that. And then it's going to take, in tropical conditions, ten to twelve months from planting until you can harvest.

Ken: 38:20

And more subtropical, it's probably more Florida, Louisiana, we're looking at twelve to eighteen months from planting to harvest. So this is a long term prep, not something we could really do, in Northern states just because it gets too cold. And it's not going to get to that 18, 20 feet tall, when they're harvesting it. When it comes to commercial production, they can harvest typically at four harvest, four harvests off of planting before they come in and replant. So when it comes to sugarcane harvesting, you know, in Florida, that's typically running mid October through mid March.

Ken: 38:56

So they're harvesting throughout that time and processing. Louisiana starts a little bit earlier because frost can be an issue. If you get a frost, plants are done typically September and can continue through early January. I did come across, you know, in Louisiana and some fields, because they have a little bit shorter growing season, you harvest it early, those plants aren't kind of fully grown, they don't have as much sugars, they will apply glyphosate, which is an herbicide, but if you do it at a sub lethal dose, low levels, it can slow the vegetative growth. And then all that energy is then put into making and storing extra sucrose so they get more sugar out of those plants that way.

Ken: 39:36

And it kind of depends on the cultivar, some respond better to it than others and when you're going to be harvesting, whether or not they actually do this. So in Florida, a lot of places they are going to be burned before they harvest, they'll go through, they'll burn a field, That's going to get rid of debris, dead leaves on the plants. So they can just come in and cut the stalks. They don't have to process that, strip the leaves off and stuff quite as much. That is, well, will say it's controversial.

Ken: 40:05

Mean, you have these environmental impacts from burning these massive fields. You know, if you live nearby, air quality is not that great. So there's controversy with that. But again, they're coming in traditionally, you're chopping this down with like a machete or something like that. And again, you know, a lot of accidents happening when this nowadays, it's mechanical harvesters coming in, cutting the stalks, chopping them up, and then getting loaded into trailers or wagons to be harvested.

Ken: 40:37

I'm not sure in Louisiana if they burn or not, but in other places, I think in Brazil, they don't really burn anymore. They're harvesting them green and they're stripping the leaves off with those harvesters to do that. And they're returning that to the field, that will break down and return some of those nutrients back to the soil. So that's how sugarcane works for sugar beets. Again, like your typical beet, it's a biennial.

Ken: 41:06

So we're typically we're growing this and harvesting it in the first year, just like carrots. We don't let those flower typically, unless we want to collect the seeds. Sugar beets are kind of a large conical. They're not like round like we typically think of for most beets that we're growing in the garden. More conical, kind of like a turnip rutabaga, if you're growing daikon radish, a little more like that longer.

Ken: 41:30

Still pretty wide, but a little more of a conical shape to it. And they're going to be white. And again, more temperate, I think came around latitudes between thirty and sixty degrees. So cooler climates, long days during the growing season, stuff like that. Typically those are going be planted in the spring.

Ken: 41:47

So, you know, here in Illinois, probably April, sometime depending on where you're at in the state, if you're going to do this. Kind of depends on when your frost is. Seeds are going be planted a half inch to an inch deep. Seeds are typically about one to three inches apart within the row, 15 to 30 inches apart, rows 15 to 30 inches apart. 18 to 24 is typically what's done that's going to maximize your yield the best for that.

Ken: 42:13

And one thing I came across, you know, consistently for commercial production, you you got to control your nitrogen levels. So you want nitrogen in the beginning. A lot of things reference, you want nitrogen to run out before harvest. Because if you have a lot of the nitrogen, it's going to keep putting on top growth and you're not going to get that sucrose. So you want you want the soil to kind of run, clinical run out of nitrogen so that sucrose starts getting, stored in that taproot instead of the energy being put into producing leafy matter and stuff.

Ken: 42:46

Then when it comes to harvesting sugar beets, typically late September and October is when this is going to happen again, depending on where you're at. What they'll do in is they'll come in with a defoliator commercially, that's going to remove all the foliage on the roots before they lift it. This way it's, they won't kind of start growing again in storage. And you don't want do it too soon so they don't re leaf while they're in storage as well. After that defoliation, they're going to come in and they're going lift those beets out.

Ken: 43:19

They're going to kind of knock off most of the soil, hopefully, while they're doing this, and get loaded into trucks. If it's real wet, that really slows things down. And the beets are usually a little bit dirtier, when that happens. The beets are then taken to like piling stations. So I listened to something with a grower from North Dakota, they'll pile these and they'll have vents and grates underneath, they'll actually freeze.

Ken: 43:43

They'll store them outdoors and freeze, and that's going to stop that sugar from breaking down and stuff. So they are stored climate controlled or outdoors to slow down that, the breakdown of that sugar. So they can be stored a little more long term than sugarcane, where sugarcane, you're trying to process, turn that around as quickly as possible. So that's kind of the basics of that. So if you're growing sugar beets at home, dig it, chop the top off, start processing.

Emily: 44:15

And so once they get to the process, found... Now it's time to actually get the sugar extracted from them. Before we get to that, I just want to ask, Ken, you lived in Florida and this might just be kind of showing my Midwestern culture. Do people actually chew on sugarcane? Like, do they grow it and chew on it?

Emily: 44:34

I'm

Ken: 44:37

curious. So was in like North Florida, there's no sugar. Like, sugarcane production is in South Florida, on Lake Okeechobee. But I mean, you can... When we were down there a couple years ago for a vacation, do you stop by a farm stand, roadside stand, those still stalks you can chew on?

Ken: 44:53

We bought one, started chewing on it. It tastes a little fermented. I'm not sure how long that had been. I did not give that one to the kids searching on that.

Emily: 45:04

Okay. Because that was gonna be my question. Was like, I mean, you have to almost... Because it breaks down so quickly. You'd almost have to grow it yourself and...

Emily: 45:12

Or there have to be some preservation. Anyways, that's, I think beyond what we looked into. But I saw that there were those three different types for the chewing, the molasses or the syrup, and then for crystals. And I thought, is chewing still a thing? Then good, it's alive and well, as far as we know.

Ken: 45:31

Well, these stocks that I have, I got these at a, I guess an Asian grocery store.

Chris: 45:38

So

Ken: 45:39

you can find them. You may have to hunt a little bit and go to a more of a, an ethnic grocery store than you would a kind of your traditional grocery store here in The US. At least in the Midwest.

Emily: 45:53

I'm glad you said that because I actually was wondering where you got those. Because I know you like to get things in to grow, to try interesting plants to grow. So next time maybe we plant them out. But let's talk about how we extract the sugar because that's what we're looking for here on Halloween. We want to make all the sweet treats for everybody and that refined sugar, like crystal.

Emily: 46:15

So the processes are very similar, but there's a few differences. So I think let's go through sugarcane first and then sugar beets second, and we can kind of just articulate some of the differences. But Ken, like you had mentioned, like sugarcane stalks, I'll say this is from the Sugar Association. And so they don't mention the burning, maybe because of the controversy or just maybe it's not a practice that's done so widely that they noted. But they just mentioned that they are harvested from the field and stripped of their leaves prepared to go to the processors where they are washed and cut into shreds.

Emily: 46:53

They're just shredded up because then they go through these huge rollers that press the sugarcane juice out of the stocks. And so that juice with all that sugar in is what they were going for in order to then clarify and concentrate. So kind of boil out the excess moisture out of it and crystallize. And so like through this process, they're trying to just extract like as much sugar as they can. Then, and I like this, this is probably new.

Emily: 47:24

It's not one of the processes that were original to crystallizing sugar, but then they use a centrifuge to spin it and to remove the liquid until it is and they describe it as they produce a golden raw sugar. I'm like, yes, that sounds so great, a golden raw sugar. So by this point, it mentions that the raw sugar at this point is 96% to 98% sucrose. So it's getting very, very close to that white sugar that we are familiar with, like in the baking aisle. They transport this to a refinery for it to be purified.

Emily: 48:06

And throughout the whole process, they're checking to make sure that they have the purity and the proper pH and then that sucrose content. While it's being refined and impurities are being removed, I thought this was interesting that some molasses crystals is what they're removing from the sucrose, and the amount of molasses that is left on the crystals, or sometimes added back in, that is what we're getting when we get light and dark brown sugar. I did not realize that. It kinda makes sense, you know, a substitute for not having brown sugar is to add molasses and white sugar together, but that's because that's what white and brown sugar is. Totally blew my mind, guys.

Emily: 48:54

I'm not a baker, so I didn't, like, ever really think about it much. But anyways, fun fact for sharing at the dinner table is that light and dark brown sugar is just the amount of molasses that is left on those crystals in the purification process of cane sugar. So anyways, back to your previously scheduled process. Once it is refined, then the impurities are removed. Sugar is crystallized and dried and packaged.

Emily: 49:24

So that's how we get pure white crystal sugar from sugar canes. The process for sugar beets and chime in here as if you saw any additional comments about the process. But sugar beets is similar to that in which they are harvesting the beets and storing them oftentimes. But when it gets time to processing, they wash them and slice them into these strips. And then they are trying to extract the raw juice out of them.

Emily: 49:59

They remove the impurities and the crystals form this syrup. So the syrup is then separated in the centrifuge, crystals are dried and the sugar is packed. So it feels like, at least by the descriptions that I was reading, that the sugar beets are there were a few fewer steps, but maybe that's just how they were articulating the process. But kind of the same thing. Squeeze the juice out, concentrate it, purify it.

Ken: 50:26

Purify it.

Emily: 50:27

Yep. And then crystallize it. So, and then it's delicious. Refined sugar.

Ken: 50:34

Say the, for beets, the, when they're cutting it up, they're called cassettes.

Emily: 50:40

Yes.

Ken: 50:41

If that... Some random trivia for you there. Look like french fries. And for that processing, the one thing I came across is there's some some byproducts, that are used from this. So for beets, you got beet pulp.

Ken: 50:54

So this can be used as animal feed. A lot of times, you're gonna be getting molasses from this. Don't know if molasses from, like, sugar beets tastes different than molasses from sugarcane. I would imagine it would because you just got a lot more stuff in there. I don't know, though.

Ken: 51:10

Anybody knows, put it in the comments. And then lime cake, because they're putting in during that clarification process, they're putting, what are they putting in? Calcium, milk of lime, calcium hydroxide, and carbon dioxide gas to precipitate out some of those impurities. So that that lime cake, can be used, on, for soil improvement on ag land, they say, for sugarcane. So not,

Chris: 51:40

not key lime pie. That... No. That's what I came to mind when you said lime cake. I'm like, oh, that sounds really good, but don't you need the sugar first?

Ken: 51:50

Yeah. I'm not sure this is gonna taste quite as good.

Chris: 51:53

Alright. So lime cake is not key lime pie. It goes on agricultural fields. Gotcha. Okay.

Ken: 52:00

And then for sugarcane, you've got the baguette. Baguette. I don't know how to pronounce that. So it's the residue left after crushing. Again, and in lots of cases, this is, you know, dried down and burned, to fuel those, that, that refinery process and, or can be used as roughage for animals.

Ken: 52:20

So different reasons you got it again.

Chris: 52:22

It's big gas.

Ken: 52:25

Big gas.

Chris: 52:26

Yes. Yes, it is. And I looked it up because I'm like, am I saying this right? Yep. There you go.

Chris: 52:35

Alright. Everyone... That sounds like a a vanity plate, in here in Illinois that you'd see on a car. But lime cake and bagasse, but... No.

Chris: 52:45

There you go.

Emily: 52:47

Educating the masses. Great.

Ken: 52:51

Yes. And then That's why

Chris: 52:52

I get paid big bucks.

Ken: 52:56

Yeah. And then you're getting, like, and you're getting molasses from sugarcane. So either you're cooking with that, make a rum, other alcoholic beverages out of that, livestock feed, what have you. And there's the filter mud, which sounds delicious. So it's the sludge of impurities and the big ass cello, which is the fine dust of the big ass, is filtered out.

Ken: 53:24

I'm to use it in, put on back on fields as a soil amendment. So it's kind of the whole... All of it's getting used eventually.

Emily: 53:33

Have we miss anything?

Chris: 53:39

Well, I just read about how flammable sugar can be. There was actually an explosion at a sugar processing plant in Georgia in 2000, 2008, I think. And that's because... I think sugar, just like any particle, when it's suspended in the air, you know, energy can transfer between the particles and static shock, I think, occurred. And it just lit up all of the particles in the air.

Chris: 54:11

And so, it can be explosive. I I think there, several people died in that explosion. So the... It... I I...

Chris: 54:20

You know, when we were talking about the history of it and and just how dangerous it was, that that story also came to mind. It's like, there's still hazards, when it comes to some of that sugar processing. So, yeah, be careful when you're doing this in your house. Make sure you turn on the the the oven fan or something. Yeah.

Chris: 54:39

The range fan.

Ken: 54:42

Yeah. I think the only other thing I had was just kind of sugar production, kind of around the world. So when it comes to sugar beets, Russia is the number one producer. They have 46, 47,000,000 tons. Tons as in NNES, tonnage.

Ken: 55:00

So the metric ton, not The US ton. Germany was second at 36.7, France 32.6, and The US at 32,000,000 tons. I think this was 2022, these numbers were from. As far as sugarcane, US is number nine in in sugarcane production at 31,500,000 tons, which is about 1.6% of the global production. Brazil is first at 38%.

Ken: 55:25

India has 23% and China has about 5.5%. I think... And The US does not produce all the sugar it needs. So we import sugars. Even though most of the sugar that we produce domestically, is sugar beets, the stuff we're importing, I think it's usually sugarcane.

Ken: 55:47

So most of our sugar is probably sugarcane. Or a lot of our sugar is.

Emily: 55:52

Yeah. I didn't realize India, I had read a little bit about that too. I didn't realize India was such a huge producer of sugarcane. They run a really, some of the other countries might be the same, and I'm not well versed in it enough to go farther than saying they really regulate their sugar industry. They've got some really interesting policies around sugar to make sure that they support that industry and go so far as to subsidize providing sugar to everybody.

Emily: 56:28

It's an interesting system where they do it. I'm not making a judgment statement about it. I don't know enough about it, but it was really interesting. They they have price regulation. They are limiting export and import flow to maintain that economy within the country.

Emily: 56:50

Anyways, So didn't know India was producing it. And then so then when I found that out, I thought, oh, I'm gonna read a little bit about that.

Ken: 56:56

Yeah. And like in in India and China, I'm not sure because there's other... So we talk about, you know, the noble or domesticated sugarcane, the sacrum aphicinarium, but there's also hybrid types in India, which is barbari and then China, which is senetsi. So I'm not sure if that's the type of sugarcane, they're growing both types, both multiple types of sugarcane, but there are some other types that are, I guess, used for production too. But usually it's the domesticated.

Ken: 57:27

Okay. Maybe

Emily: 57:29

we'll have to do a follow-up. Go ahead, Chris.

Chris: 57:32

Let me let me ask you guys. Has this inspired either of you to maybe give growing your own sugar a try? Like, I don't know. Emily, what what do you think about growing some sugar? Which way would you go?

Chris: 57:48

I think there's really only one choice here. But given a high budget, you could invest and grow some sugarcane.

Emily: 57:57

Yes. We could with an unlimited budget. I probably still wouldn't. I kinda like the idea of sugar beets. I like beets, garden beets.

Emily: 58:07

I like eating those. And so having some sugar beets alongside of it, I think would be fun and interesting to grow and then the process. But yeah, I don't have any interest in growing a bunch of plants that are going to reach, unless it's a tree, 20 foot tall and wound me when I'm going out there because their leaves are really quite sharp. So I'm going to pass on the sugarcane. How about you guys?

Emily: 58:34

More daring than me, Ken? You're... Yeah. He's going for it.

Ken: 58:39

I am investigating getting some sugarcane. Trying to figure out how, I probably need to order it soon so it doesn't freeze in shipping and then see how long I can grow it inside, transplant. I'm not going to get the twelve to eighteen months, but I do want to try. But yes, the figuring out where to plant. I don't know if I'd want to put that out at our Leuven Garden, because I will say that reading the stuff from Florida, do say, do not put this near areas of high traffic because the leaves will hurt you.

Ken: 59:05

So they may have to stay in my backyard. But yeah, I do want to try sugarcane and sugar beets both, Just to say I did it, if nothing else.

Chris: 59:15

Didn't we visit a greenhouse in Champaign Urbana where they were growing sugarcane and it was... Was it sugarcane? I was it sugarcane?

Ken: 59:23

It was really tall where you could easily grow something 20 feet tall and...

Chris: 59:27

You needed a tall greenhouse for this thing. Yeah. It was getting big. Yeah. I don't remember what it was.

Chris: 59:33

It was bamboo like. And yeah, I should probably go back and look at those notes. Yeah.

Emily: 59:39

Yeah. Well, Chris, would you grow one or both?

Chris: 59:44

I I definitely wanna give sugar beets a try. And, yeah, it... I I might find... See if I can twist someone's arm that might have a greenhouse nearby and get a big old horse trough and fill it with soil and see if we can grow a sugarcane plant.

Ken: 01:00:03

Do it. Yeah. Now if you grow the sugar, are you going to process it and make your own sugar?

Chris: 01:00:11

Yeah. I mean, but don't we have to try it raw first?

Ken: 01:00:15

Oh, yeah.

Chris: 01:00:16

Yeah. Yeah. I... That's... So we're...

Chris: 01:00:18

Well, we're gonna go through all the stages. And I'm a really big fan of molasses and brown sugar too. So... And I wanna know, Emily, can I just make brown sugar with sugar beets? That...

Chris: 01:00:31

Now I wanna figure that one out.

Emily: 01:00:34

Yeah. I don't know. I wanna say yes. But I don't know. That's just...

Emily: 01:00:39

I I want it to be a yes is what I'm saying. I don't know if it is or not. Personally, I would like that. Because honestly

Chris: 01:00:47

No. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Emily: 01:00:49

Well, I was just saying, honestly, brown sugar with that molasses flavor, it is better than white sugar. It's... Yeah. There's just something to it. So go ahead, Chris.

Emily: 01:01:00

That's a that's a... An opinion statement. But

Chris: 01:01:03

That is an... Let me reinforce this opinion. You know, you can lick your fingers when you get that white sugar on your... But, boy, I really like maybe when I get a little brown sugar on my hands, like, oh, I don't need to wash my hands. I can just lick that off.

Ken: 01:01:17

Just stick your hand in the package to get it on there.

Chris: 01:01:21

When I was a kid, definitely.

Ken: 01:01:24

We would stick it in?

Emily: 01:01:26

Yeah. I would. A little... Like, we would, you know, measure out the... You have to scoop it and pack it.

Emily: 01:01:32

So you'd use a spoon. And then we would get just, there'd be some remaining on the spoon, we would, I think we thought we were sneaking it, but I'm pretty sure my mom knew about it, which was like, just a little extra, not just the packed brown sugar on there, but just a little extra when we were making cookies or whatnot. So that's a fun childhood memory of mine.

Chris: 01:01:53

Yeah. Well,

Emily: 01:01:57

anything else? Because I have our Soup Talk question for the day. So I don't want to rush through sugar, but it's a little bit inspired by past soup talks and today. So anything else sugarcane or sugar beet related?

Ken: 01:02:12

The only other thing I forgot to mention during the history, back like in ancient times, like ancient Greeks, ancient Romans, into that, even Persian stuff, sugar was medicine. It was not necessarily used to... I think it was the Arabs and stuff that started incorporating into cooking, but traditionally it was used as a medicine. So think that for us. Oh,

Chris: 01:02:36

didn't even get into the whole... The classism that came with sugar too, like the '17 and the eighteen hundreds. Like, yeah, there were just stories of how, anyone other than aristocracy really could have sugary treats. If anybody else got ahold of those, say, non royal, none... None of your...

Chris: 01:03:02

No lordships or ladies, anyone else got ahold of that sugar, it was considered almost like a a drug. Like, it would make people act poorly, but but not if you had money and influence. So you could have all the sugar and candy and sweet treats you wanted. So, yeah, that... There...

Chris: 01:03:21

There's a whole novel out there about stuff like that.

Ken: 01:03:25

This could have been a five part Yeah. Podcast.

Chris: 01:03:30

No. There's only one Halloween a year, though, so we... We'll have to do this next time. Yeah. Yes.

Chris: 01:03:37

So is it time for soup talk, a podcast within a podcast?

Emily: 01:03:42

I think it is. I I do So think it for this week's, soup talk. So in the past, we've covered chili a couple of times. It's been mentioned. I do believe you too said you were making chili this week.

Emily: 01:03:52

First question, did it happen?

Chris: 01:03:55

Yes. Oh, it happened. Mhmm.

Emily: 01:03:56

Happened and it was phenomenal. What kind of chili?

Chris: 01:03:59

What'd you have, Ken?

Ken: 01:04:02

It was a red chili.

Emily: 01:04:04

Mhmm.

Chris: 01:04:05

I I had a a white chicken chili, in the crock pot. Put it in before work, came home, smelled delicious, and just gobble it up.

Emily: 01:04:15

Yep. That is delightful. When you know you have a really yummy meal waiting for you and you come in and it just hits you in the face. Good choice, sir. Well, okay.

Emily: 01:04:24

So my question is kind of centered on chilling. Let me set this up. So honestly, I've had this question for more than a couple of decades because when I was growing up, I went to a chili cook off and all the chilies were kind of the same, like that red chili. There were some white chilies, but then there was something called the Cincinnati style chili. My first question, have you ever heard of this?

Chris: 01:04:48

Yes. Yes. I've heard of it. I don't know if I've... Maybe I've had it.

Chris: 01:04:53

I guess describe it.

Emily: 01:04:54

Okay. So a Cincinnati chili, from my understanding, I've never eaten it either because I didn't know what it was, is a bit of a different flavor profile than white chili or red chili. So not like the tomato, jalapeno, like pepper kind of base of our traditional, like, red chili, not, you know, chicken chili, but it incorporates the spices, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves into the flavoring. So it's more of a sweet kind of chili. So that's my first question is do we prefer more sweet even if it's like the red chili?

Emily: 01:05:33

Like, do we prefer more of a sweet profile, or do we prefer more of, like, a spicy kinda chili profile? So that's question number one for soup talk. Like how would you guys describe your preference for chili?

Ken: 01:05:46

It sounds like pumpkin pie.

Emily: 01:05:49

It does. It gets better. Just wait. Just wait.

Ken: 01:05:53

I I guess I would be spicy. I never had the pumpkin pie chili.

Chris: 01:05:57

The Cincinnati chili sounds like it it has to be accompanying something. Like, it has to go on or in or with something. Because yeah, no, I think I'm more spicy.

Emily: 01:06:11

Okay. All right. I do fall on that. Although my red chili, I have been told is sweeter. Because we've established here, I'm not a spicy kind of connoisseur, but it's got more sweetness to it than, like I just omit some of the pepper, like more or less spicy peppers into that chili profile.

Emily: 01:06:33

But Chris, you are onto something. Cincinnati chili is also traditionally served over spaghetti noodles. So that I remember as a kid. That's why this has just like stuck with me for decades, is like, that is an unusual carbohydrate to to pair chili with. Yes?

Emily: 01:06:58

Has anybody ever used spaghetti as a carb supplement with chili?

Ken: 01:07:04

Spaghetti, no. Elbow macaroni. Yes.

Chris: 01:07:07

Yes. Chili mac.

Ken: 01:07:09

Yes. Yes.

Emily: 01:07:10

Okay. Okay. Are you familiar with goulash?

Chris: 01:07:15

Oh, yeah. I love Hungarian goulash. I actually have Hungarian paprika in my spice rack, like the real stuff from Hungary.

Emily: 01:07:25

Yeah. Okay. This is a future topic for Tube Talk. But... So I ask that because when I think of noodles, I think of goulash.

Emily: 01:07:34

I've never used it as the carb supplement for chili. So do you always or traditionally use like, chili mac as... When you make chili? Do you also... Is it assumed that we're having chili mac?

Emily: 01:07:48

Like, what crackers or, like, bread? Like, what do you eat with chili, or is it just straight chili on a spoon?

Chris: 01:07:57

I think it's the perfect food, also known as grilled cheese.

Emily: 01:08:01

Yeah.

Chris: 01:08:03

That that goes with all soup. All soup should come with grilled cheese in my book.

Emily: 01:08:11

Okay.

Chris: 01:08:11

That... That's that's the accompaniment for all all things. That's my carb. I think out of desperation sometimes, though, I might have used spaghetti pasta with some stuff. Just we didn't have anything, and we needed to bulk it up.

Chris: 01:08:26

We have used baked potatoes too. So

Emily: 01:08:28

Oh, sure.

Chris: 01:08:29

Any of that. Yeah.

Emily: 01:08:31

Okay. Good answer. Good answer. Ken?

Ken: 01:08:35

But, well, it depends on the chili. It's like white chili. A lot of times we use, like, do like cornbread or something or crackers. That'd be good. That'd be good.

Ken: 01:08:45

Red chili, like kids, they expect noodles with it. But it's kinda, I left over chili today for lunch. I just had a plane. I didn't make noodles with it.

Emily: 01:08:57

Okay. That seems interesting. Yeah.

Chris: 01:09:01

Never put my eggs on my Easter. Yeah. Noodles aren't expected for red chili in my household. It's a... Sometimes it happens, though.

Ken: 01:09:09

They just want to eat the noodles plain. I make them put chili on it.

Emily: 01:09:15

So I'm so pleased with this conversation because none of those are my answer in my house. And it's very simple and it's just how we grew up. It is either like the Ritz kind of crackers or oyster crackers we'll use sometimes or the club crackers. It's some cracker of your choice. We have done on top of potatoes rarely, but we've done that.

Emily: 01:09:45

Then we've also started dabbling in macaroni and cheese with chili. So instead of putting the cheese on it, we put the cheese on the noodles and then put it all, mush it all together. But I do... Okay. Maybe we'll have to do more than noodles.

Emily: 01:10:03

My kids love noodles, so that's easy, and I always like that. But the the mac... Or the grilled cheese, Chris, that might have to just become our new tradition. Like, I've heard that before, and man, yeah, that's It's the

Chris: 01:10:17

perfect food.

Emily: 01:10:18

It is.

Chris: 01:10:18

Mhmm. Goes with everything. I... And this season being the fall, leftover chili, got a little fire going, put the pot on a little grate, put hot dog on a spit, chili dogs. So Chili dogs.

Chris: 01:10:37

It's not too many. Remember, we've said this already in the podcast, everything in moderation. It's like your sugar.

Emily: 01:10:45

Yes. And look at the schedule. See what see what's coming up.

Chris: 01:10:50

What's coming up. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have to go be in, like, a a room with a bunch of people? Just be mindful of that.

Emily: 01:10:58

Make informed decisions always. Well, you guys. That was good. The Cincinnati chili thing has been on my mind for years. And I don't think it got resolved.

Emily: 01:11:14

I guess if viewers or listeners know anything about Cincinnati chili or, you know, are passionate about it, please share that with us. But I don't get it, personally.

Chris: 01:11:24

Well, that was a lot of great information about sugar and, you know, kind of the the background of it, the history, and maybe even us growing it in our own backyard. I'm... We're gonna try this next year, and and we'll see how it goes. Even if we're just... Well, even if I'm just eating a raw beet sitting here in my office, It'll get done.

Chris: 01:11:47

The Good Growing podcast, a production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by me, Chris Enroth. Emily, thanks so much for... Or or should I say, Rosie, thank you so much for being here today and helping us as we navigate through the world of sugar, the complex world of sugar.

Emily: 01:12:09

Oh, it's my pleasure. Yeah, this was such an interesting deep dive. And Ken mentioned, we could do so many more podcasts about this as we could with many global crops. But yep, this was really fun. And I do wish everybody a happy, safe Halloween.

Emily: 01:12:25

Enjoy seeing all the little, cute little goblins and ghouls touring the neighborhood. Hope you all, get to celebrate in a really fun, and memorable way. So thank you, guys.

Chris: 01:12:37

Thank you. Yeah. And, Ken, thank you so much for, going in there and figuring out, can we grow sugarcane? Probably not. Actually, no, we can't here in Illinois, unless you have one of those cool greenhouses.

Chris: 01:12:51

And then, sugar beets, which I guess we need to, like, figure out a variety or something, seed source. We got homework

Ken: 01:13:01

to do

Chris: 01:13:01

after Yeah.

Ken: 01:13:03

Yeah. I didn't even mention there's... I found some documents from early late eighteen nineties, early nineteen hundreds from U of I. They were looking at sugar beet production in Illinois. So there's some rather old information out there, from Illinois and how to grow sugar beets.

Ken: 01:13:17

We can link to that in the show notes. Thank you again, both of you for for dressing up. And let's do this again next week.

Chris: 01:13:28

Oh, we shall do this again next week. Maybe we won't take off these costumes. We'll we'll... Ken will come back next week as cotton candy, Emily as Rosie, me as chloroplast. I mean, getting comfortable here.

Chris: 01:13:42

I mean, Ken looks so comfortable in his outfit. It's not itchy at all. Oh my goodness. Yeah. We will be talking about...

Chris: 01:13:52

We're actually gonna be leaving the state again. We're going to be going over to Missouri talking about what's wrong with our plants. So plant diagnosis, that should be a fun episode. Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best and that is listening or if you watched us on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.

Ken: 01:14:22

Oh, this shirt is so hot.