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appalachiablue

(41,052 posts)
3. Honey goes way back as a sweetener! Several sources note
Mon Jul 29, 2019, 05:07 PM
Jul 2019

that SUGAR= plant- based 'cane sugar' is distinguished from HONEY= 'honey,' made by bees and other insects which is interesting. So both are 'sweeteners,' but 'sugar' means cane plant-grown, to me.

(Wiki). Sugar was first produced from sugarcane plants in northern India sometime after the first century CE. The derivation of the word “sugar” is thought to be from Sanskrit शर्करा ('śarkarā'), meaning 'ground or candied sugar,' originally 'grit, gravel'. Sanskrit literature from ancient India, written between 1500 - 500 B.C. provides[citation needed] the first documentation[citation needed] of the cultivation of sugar cane and of the manufacture of sugar in the Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent. The Sanskrit name for a crudely made sugar substance was guda, meaning “to make into a ball or to conglomerate.”
...4.The spread of cultivation and manufacture of cane sugar to the West Indies and tropical parts of the Americas beginning in the 16th century, followed by more intensive improvements in production in the 17th through 19th centuries in that part of the world.
5.The development of beet sugar, high fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Known worldwide by the end of the medieval period, sugar was very expensive and was considered a "fine spice", but from about the year 1500, technological improvements and New World sources began turning it into a much cheaper bulk commodity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sugar

(A Brief History of Honey) Honey continued to be of importance in Europe until the Renaissance, when the arrival of sugar from further afield meant honey was used less. By the seventeenth century sugar was being used regularly as a sweetener and honey was used even less. As bees were thought to have special powers, they were often used as emblems..http://www.honeyassociation.com/about-honey/history

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