109 Fun Facts About Sugar

Which sugar is a component of the antigens on red blood cells that determine your blood group?

Galactose. In people with type B blood it is the sugar that caps a chain of sugars on the cell surface; in type A the cap is a close chemical cousin instead.

What is the browning of sugar under high heat, which gives crème brûlée its crisp top, called?

Caramelization. Heat alone breaks the sugar down into the complex compounds that give caramel its brown colour and rich flavour, whereas the Maillard reaction needs amino acids as well as sugar.

As of 2022, which country grew the largest share of the world's sugarcane, close to 40%?

Brazil. Much of its cane never becomes sugar at all: it is fermented into ethanol, the fuel that the country's flex-fuel cars can run on.

Sugarcane is a giant member of which plant family?

The grasses. Sugarcane is kin to maize, wheat and rice, but it stores its sugar in a jointed stalk that can stand up to seven metres tall.

Sugarcane's main species is thought to have been first domesticated on which large island between Asia and Australia?

New Guinea. Papuan farmers there bred the thick, sweet cane, and Austronesian seafarers later carried it west across the islands of Southeast Asia.

The word 'sugar' traces through Arabic and Persian to śarkarā, a word in which language?

Sanskrit. Śarkarā first meant grit or gravel and only later ground sugar, and the word then travelled west with the trade through Persian, Arabic, medieval Latin and Old French.

Which hormone, made in the pancreas, lowers the level of sugar in the blood?

Insulin. Frederick Banting and Charles Best extracted it from dogs in Toronto in 1921, and the treatment that followed turned a diabetes diagnosis from a death sentence into something people could live with.

Which explorer introduced sugarcane to the Caribbean, where it became the islands' great industry?

Christopher Columbus. He took the cane aboard in Spain's Canary Islands, already a sugar producer, in the 1490s, and within a generation Spanish settlers had mills of their own grinding.

Henry the Navigator had sugarcane brought from Sicily to which newly settled Atlantic island?

Madeira. With Sicilian cane and know-how it became Europe's main sugar supplier by the late 15th century, and its plantations later gave way to the vineyards behind Madeira wine.

A polio vaccine given on a lump of sugar inspired a hit song in which Disney musical?

Mary Poppins. Songwriter Robert Sherman's young son told him the new oral vaccine had gone down on sugar at school, and 'A Spoonful of Sugar' followed.

Which spirit is distilled from sugarcane juice or the syrup left over from sugar-making?

Rum. It first turns up in records from Barbados around 1650 under the name 'kill-devil', and British sailors went on drawing a regular rum ration until 1970.

Cut off from Caribbean cane sugar by a British blockade, which ruler had his farmers plant beet instead?

Napoleon. He took up beet sugar in 1811, and though the industry stumbled after his fall it recovered: by 1880 the world was getting more sugar from beet than from cane.

Until the late 19th century, refined sugar was usually sold in what shape?

A cone. The 'sugarloaf' came out of its mould rock-hard, so households hacked at it with hammers and pliers-like sugar nips until granulated and cube sugar took over.

Sugarloaf Mountain overlooks which city's harbour?

Rio de Janeiro. A cable car has climbed towards the peak since 1912, and in the 1979 Bond film Moonraker the villain Jaws attacks 007 on it in mid-air.

A sugar cube holds about as much as which kitchen measure?

A teaspoon: each is about 4 grams. Jakub Rad patented the cube in 1843 after, the story goes, his wife hurt her hand breaking up a rock-hard sugarloaf and demanded something easier.

Which of these is the biggest source of added sugar in the American diet?

Sweetened drinks. One can of cola holds up to 40 grams of sugar, which on its own overshoots the 25 grams a day the WHO would ideally have adults stop at.

The WHO's limit on 'free sugars' counts the sugar in which of these?

Fruit juice. The 2015 guideline asks for free sugars under 10% of daily energy, and it exempts fresh fruit, vegetables and milk because no harm has been shown from the sugars in them.

Which is the only common sugar that cannot be extracted from plants?

Lactose. It is the one common sugar of animal origin, found only in milk, and roughly two-thirds of the world's adults lose much of their ability to digest it after infancy.

Which natural sugar is the sweetest, sweeter gram for gram than table sugar?

Fructose. It is why honey, which is rich in it, tastes sweeter than table sugar, and why food makers use enzymes to turn the glucose in corn syrup into it.

Naturally occurring glucose is also known by what other name?

Dextrose. The name comes from the Latin dexter, 'right', because a glucose solution twists polarized light to the right.

A burst tank sent a 35 mph wave of what through Boston's North End in January 1919?

Molasses. More than two million gallons poured out, killing 21 people and injuring about 150, and Boston reportedly went on smelling of it for years.

The 1764 Sugar Act halved a widely dodged import duty but finally enforced it, feeding the anger behind which conflict?

The American Revolution. Smugglers who had shrugged off the old duty could now be tried without a jury, in a vice-admiralty court in distant Nova Scotia.

In 1791 a best-selling pamphlet urged Britons to give up West Indian sugar in protest at what?

The slave trade. William Fox's Address argued that everyone who bought slave-grown sugar shared in the crime, and it ran through some 25 editions within a year.

The French colony of Saint-Domingue, the 18th century's richest sugar colony, is which country today?

Haiti. The people enslaved on Saint-Domingue's plantations rose up in 1791, ended the sugar boom that had made it France's richest colony, and declared independence in 1804.

Which Caribbean island became the world's leading sugar producer in the 19th century?

Cuba. After revolution wrecked Saint-Domingue's plantations, Cuban planters took the lead with the most mechanized mills in the world, while slavery lasted on the island until 1886.

American Sugar Refining, the forerunner of Domino, was a founding member of which stock index in 1896?

The Dow Jones. Known as the Sugar Trust, the company controlled about 98% of US sugar refining, yet in 1895 the Supreme Court ruled that the new Sherman Antitrust Act could not touch it.

Lyle's Golden Syrup tins illustrate the Bible riddle 'out of the strong came forth sweetness' with which animal?

A dead lion. Bees swarm the carcass, as in Samson's riddle in the Book of Judges, on a tin so little changed since 1885 that Guinness named it the world's oldest packaging in 2006.

Which London art gallery was founded with the fortune and paintings of a Victorian sugar refiner?

The Tate. Henry Tate offered the nation his collection of British paintings in 1889 and gave £80,000 towards the Millbank gallery, which opened in 1897 and is now Tate Britain.

Constantin Fahlberg discovered saccharin after noticing a sweet taste on his hand while working at which university?

Johns Hopkins. Fahlberg later patented saccharin without telling lab head Ira Remsen and claimed sole credit; Remsen, who wanted recognition rather than money, protested to his fellow chemists.

Saccharin is hundreds of times sweeter than sugar, but leaves which aftertaste?

Bitter. The metallic edge is why the original Sweet'N Low mixed saccharin with cyclamate, each sweetener covering the other's off-taste.

Which US president snapped that anyone who called saccharin harmful to health was 'an idiot'?

Theodore Roosevelt. Chemist Harvey Wiley had come to him in 1908 seeking a saccharin ban, but the president's own doctor had him taking it every day to slim down.

Yellow-capped Coca-Cola, sweetened with sugar in place of corn syrup, is bottled in the US each year for which holiday?

Passover. Many Jews of Eastern European descent avoid corn during the holiday, so the corn syrup that US Coca-Cola has used since the 1980s is swapped for sugar.

William Morrison, who co-invented machine-spun cotton candy in 1897, practised what profession?

Dentist. Morrison and confectioner John Wharton took their spun sugar to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and sold it by the box at a steep 25 cents each.

What do Australians call the spun-sugar treat that Americans know as cotton candy?

Fairy floss. It was the treat's original name when it went on sale at the 1904 World's Fair, and Australia kept it after Americans switched to 'cotton candy' in the 1920s.

Calaveras, sweets pressed from cane sugar in moulds and decorated with icing, are made for which Mexican celebration?

Day of the Dead. The calaveras are sugar skulls: families give them as gifts and set them on home altars as offerings for the dead, who are believed to return for the holiday.

Which Canadian province produces nearly three-quarters of the world's maple syrup?

Quebec. Its producers keep a strategic reserve of syrup in rural warehouses, and in 2011 and 2012 thieves drained nearly 10,000 barrels of it, a haul worth over C$18 million.

A 2019 review of 31 studies found that sugar leaves people feeling more what within an hour?

Tired. The analysis found that sugar improved no aspect of mood and lowered alertness, which is why its authors called the 'sugar rush' a myth.

'Sugar, Sugar', the 1969 US and UK number one, was credited to which fictional cartoon band?

The Archies. No such band existed: session singer Ron Dante sang lead for the comic-book characters, and the single still finished 1969 as the biggest hit of the year in the US.

Which boxing 'Sugar' was born Walker Smith Jr. and took his ring name from a borrowed amateur card?

Sugar Ray Robinson. Too young to get an amateur card of his own, he used one issued to a Ray Robinson, and the name stuck for the rest of his career.

Which opponent quit in the eighth round against Sugar Ray Leonard in 1980, reportedly saying 'No más'?

Roberto Durán. He had beaten Leonard for the welterweight title only five months earlier, then turned his back and gave up in the rematch, known ever since as the 'No Más Fight'.

The Sugar Bowl, played annually since 1935, is held in which city?

New Orleans. The game has left the city only once: Hurricane Katrina left the Superdome unfit for use, so the January 2006 Sugar Bowl was played in Atlanta.

In which ballet does the Sugar Plum Fairy dance to the tinkling sound of a celesta?

The Nutcracker. Tchaikovsky came across the newly invented celesta in Paris and wrote the dance for it, but the 1892 premiere was not a success and he did not live to see the ballet catch on.

Which 1979 single by the Sugarhill Gang introduced rap to a mass audience and reached the US top 40?

Rapper's Delight. Its bass line came from Chic's 'Good Times'; Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards threatened to sue and were added to the songwriting credits.

In which 1959 comedy does Marilyn Monroe play Sugar Kane, the singer in an all-female band?

Some Like It Hot. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon hide from Chicago mobsters by joining her band in drag, and the film ends on the line 'Well, nobody's perfect!'

Which band recorded the 1987 rock anthem 'Pour Some Sugar on Me'?

Def Leppard. The album Hysteria was all but finished when producer Mutt Lange heard singer Joe Elliott strumming the hook and asked what it was; the late addition reached number two in the US.

The sugar glider, which glides between trees on skin membranes, belongs to which group of mammals?

Marsupials. The sugar glider is a small possum named for its sweet tooth for sap, gum and nectar, though it will also eat lizards and small birds.

Which country brought in a national soda tax in January 2014 to curb soaring obesity and diabetes?

Mexico. The tax of one peso a litre cut purchases of taxed drinks by about 6% across its first year and 12% by that December, most of all in the poorest households.

Which dry sugarcane fibre, left after crushing, is burned to power mills and pressed into disposable tableware?

Bagasse. The word comes from the Spanish for dregs or refuse, yet burning it gives a mill all the heat and power it needs, with some to spare for the grid.

Green plants build sugar out of carbon dioxide and water in which process?

Photosynthesis. Sunlight supplies the energy, and the oxygen in the air we breathe is the by-product, released when the plant splits water.

Which country grew almost a fifth of the world's sugar beet in 2022, more than France, Germany or the United States?

Russia. Its 48.9 million tonnes beat France's 31.5 million; beet thrives in cool temperate climates where cane cannot grow.

Pliny the Elder said sugar, a kind of honey found in cane, was used only for what?

Medical purposes. Greek and Roman physicians prescribed the hazelnut-sized lumps, imported from India and Arabia, for stomach, bladder and kidney complaints.

Which zero-calorie sweetener comes from the leaves of a plant native to Paraguay?

Stevia. The Guaraní people have used the leaves for centuries to sweeten yerba mate, and the compounds in them can be around 300 times sweeter than table sugar.

Sugar Hill, once home to Duke Ellington and Thurgood Marshall, is part of which New York neighbourhood?

Harlem. The name stood for the 'sweet life' of the prosperous Black families who made the hill their home from the 1920s; a pioneering rap label later borrowed it.

In the 600s, which country's emperor sent missions to India to learn sugar refining and began planting cane at home?

China. Emperor Taizong of the Tang made known his interest in sugar, and Chinese records describe at least two missions to India, from 647, to bring the refining technique home.

Nearchus, who told of Indian reeds yielding honey without bees, was which conqueror's admiral?

Alexander the Great. The reeds were sugarcane, and Nearchus's report of his 325 BC voyage back from the Indus, quoted by later Greek writers, gave the West an early account of it.

Which Italian republic ran sugar estates near Tyre from the 12th century and refined for Europe?

Venice. An 1123 treaty promised the republic a third of Tyre and of the countryside around it for its help in the siege, and by the 15th century it was Europe's chief sugar refiner.

Where was the first New World sugar harvest gathered, in 1501?

Hispaniola. Spain's first settlers in the Americas planted the cane there, and within about twenty years sugar mills had spread to the neighbouring islands.

The candy-coated racing world of Sugar Rush first appeared in which Disney animated film?

Wreck-It Ralph. In the finale Ralph brings down the Mentos roof of Diet Cola Mountain, setting off an eruption that saves the racer Vanellope's world.

Sugar plantations drew hundreds of thousands of contract workers from Japan, the Philippines and elsewhere in Asia to which Pacific islands?

Hawaii. With so many languages in the plantation camps, the workers and their children forged a common one: Hawaiian Pidgin, the islands' creole English.

Which household pets cannot taste sweetness at all, because a gene for their sweet receptor is broken?

Cats, wild and domestic alike, carry a mutation that stops their taste buds binding sugary molecules, leaving them indifferent to dessert though they find the savoury taste of tuna irresistible.

Which English monarch's teeth did a German visitor describe as black in old age, blaming too much sugar?

Elizabeth I was in her sixty-fifth year when the traveller Paul Hentzner saw her; he thought black teeth a defect the English were prone to, and noted her false red hair.

Which toxic metal's sweet-tasting acetate, once nicknamed a 'sugar', was long used to sweeten wine?

Lead acetate, known as sugar of lead, went into wine for centuries as a sweetener and preservative, and a ban of about 1750 failed until chemists found ways to detect it.

Which animals, released in Queensland in 1935 to eat sugar-crop beetles, became a notorious pest?

Toads were no help, because the beetles lived high on the stalks and toads are poor climbers; the poisonous cane toad has become an invasive pest in Australia.

Agave syrup, a sugar alternative, comes from the blue agave, the plant distilled into which spirit?

Tequila must be made from a single blue-grey cultivar called Weber Azul, while syrup makers let each plant grow for seven to fourteen years before cutting it.

Which medieval warriors brought sugar home to Europe after meeting caravans carrying 'sweet salt'?

Crusaders met the 'sweet salt' in the Holy Land, and the chronicler William of Tyre soon called sugar very necessary for the use and health of mankind.

Trials have found no good evidence that sugar causes which 'sugar rush' behaviour in children?

Hyperactivity after sweets is generally accepted by scientists to be a myth; where caffeinated products seem to cause it, the caffeine may be to blame.

Which former One Direction singer topped the US chart and won a Grammy with 'Watermelon Sugar'?

Harry Styles made it his first US number one in 2020, and it earned him the Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance the following March.

Which mascot fronts the Kellogg's cereal first sold as Sugar Frosted Flakes?

Tony the Tiger outlasted the word 'Sugar', dropped from the name in 1983; one actor, Thurl Ravenscroft, voiced him for more than 50 years.

Which sweetener in sugar-free gum, also known as birch sugar, is poisonous to dogs?

Xylitol can send a dog's blood sugar plunging within an hour and, at higher doses, cause liver failure, yet it is safe enough for people to be used in toothpaste.

Which band's 1971 album Sticky Fingers opens with the US number one single 'Brown Sugar'?

The Rolling Stones released it as the album's first single, written primarily by Mick Jagger, and it reached number one in Canada as well.

Which band is seen crashing weddings around Los Angeles in the video for the 2015 hit 'Sugar'?

Maroon 5 borrowed the idea from the 2005 comedy Wedding Crashers, whose director David Dobkin also shot the video; the song peaked at number two on the US singles chart.

Marzipan, rolled out to cover Christmas cakes, is a paste of sugar and which ground nuts?

Almonds are ground to a meal for the paste, and two cities hold protected European status for their versions: Toledo in Spain and Lübeck in Germany.

Meringue, the crisp base of a pavlova, is traditionally made by whipping sugar with which ingredient?

Egg whites stiffen into peaks as beating unfolds their proteins, and a little lemon, vinegar or cream of tartar is sometimes added to help.

What do mouth bacteria make from sugar left on the teeth, dissolving the enamel and causing cavities?

Acid is released as the bacteria living in dental plaque break down sugar, so it is their waste, rather than the sugar itself, that eats into a tooth.

Which Irish actor plays John Sugar, a Los Angeles private investigator, in the Apple TV+ series Sugar?

Colin Farrell is also an executive producer of the series, in which a wealthy movie producer hires the detective to find his missing granddaughter.

Sugar Land, which grew up as the company town of Imperial Sugar, lies on the edge of which US city?

Houston's downtown is about 19 miles away; local plantations merged into the Imperial Sugar Company in 1908, and the town became a city only in 1959.

The Sugarland Express, a 1974 Goldie Hawn film, began which director's work with composer John Williams?

Steven Spielberg directed the film, about a couple who take a police officer hostage and flee across Texas, and Williams has scored nearly all of his films since.

Sugar beet makes its sugar in the leaves, but in which part of the plant is it then stored?

The root, a fleshy, conical taproot, is roughly three-quarters water and one-fifth sugar, with pulp making up the remainder.

Which condition, a drop in blood sugar below normal, can bring on shakiness, sweating and confusion?

Hypoglycaemia is usually defined as a reading under 70 mg/dL, and it can strike otherwise healthy newborns who have gone a few hours without feeding.

Which sweetener, sold as NutraSweet and Equal, was discovered in 1965 when a chemist licked his finger?

Aspartame turned up while James Schlatter was making a compound for testing an anti-ulcer drug: some got on his finger, and he tasted it as he went to lift a piece of paper.

Which sweetener, sold as Splenda, is made by replacing parts of a sugar molecule with chlorine?

Sucralose is about 600 times sweeter than table sugar, so the powder sold as Splenda is bulked out with fillers made from corn.

The West African miracle berry, once chewed, makes foods with which taste seem sweet instead?

Sour foods such as lemons and limes taste sweet afterwards thanks to a protein called miraculin, though the berry itself is low in sugar.

In which field does 'syntactic sugar' mean a shorthand that makes something easier to read or write?

Programming languages are full of it: Python, for example, lets coders write list[index] in place of a longer method call that behaves identically.

Which Islamic festival, marking the end of the Ramadan fast, is nicknamed the Sugar Feast in Turkey?

Eid al-Fitr is called Şeker Bayramı in Turkish, and sweet dishes are often prepared for it because the holiday follows a month of fasting.

The sugar cube was invented in the 1840s by Jakub Kryštof Rad at a refinery in which present-day country?

Czechia's town of Dačice has a monument topped with a sugar cube; Rad set to work after his wife hurt herself chopping a sugarloaf.

Indentured labourers from South Asia worked the sugar plantations of which Pacific colony from 1879?

Fiji's British rulers ran the scheme until 1916, and the workers' descendants, the Indo-Fijians, speak a language of their own, Fiji Hindi.

On which English island colony did cane growing take off in the 1640s, transforming its economy?

Barbados at first turned its cane into rum, yet by 1642 sugar was the focus of the island's industry, which grew into one of the world's biggest.

The first beet sugar factory opened in 1801 at Kunern, Silesia, a village in which modern country?

Poland's village of Konary, as Kunern has since been renamed, was where Franz Karl Achard set up, decades after his teacher Andreas Marggraf first isolated sugar from beet in 1747.

The Oscar-winning film Searching for Sugar Man follows a hunt for which musician adored in South Africa?

Rodriguez had never found success at home in the United States, and his Cape Town fans set out to learn whether the rumours of his death were true.

Which single-celled fungus turns sugars into alcohol, giving beer and wine their strength?

Yeast of the species used by brewers and bakers is called Saccharomyces, from the Greek for 'sugar fungus', and it gives off gas as well as alcohol when it ferments.

In candy making, syrup that forms brittle threads when dropped in cold water has reached which stage?

Hard crack comes shortly before the point where the sugar itself starts to break down and turn amber; the names go back to a time before cooks could afford thermometers.

In what form do the liver and muscles store spare glucose, ready for release when the body needs energy?

Glycogen in an adult's liver amounts to only about 100 grams, yet that small store is what keeps blood sugar steady during a fast.

Which sugar, released as starch breaks down in germinating seeds, is named after brewers' sprouted grain?

Maltose takes its name from malt and is simply two glucose units joined together, the repeating link from which starch is built.

Which sugar joins with phosphate groups to form the twin backbones of the DNA double helix?

Deoxyribose was discovered in 1929 by Phoebus Levene, and its name describes it: the sugar ribose with one oxygen-bearing group swapped for a hydrogen atom.

Which English philosopher wrote in 1620 that hard sugar sparkles when broken or scraped in the dark?

Francis Bacon noted it in his Novum Organum; the flashes show best with Wint-O-Green Life Savers, whose wintergreen oil turns invisible ultraviolet into blue light.

Which German chemist won the 1902 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on sugars and purines?

Emil Fischer found that phenylhydrazine turns sugars into crystalline compounds he named osazones, which let chemists identify sugars more definitely than had been possible before.

Which artist installed a giant sphinx with a skin of sugar in Brooklyn's old Domino refinery in 2014?

Kara Walker's sphinx was about 75 feet long, built from polystyrene blocks and coated in sugar, of which Domino donated roughly 80 tons.

What caused the deadly 2008 disaster at the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Georgia?

A dust explosion killed fourteen workers when built-up sugar dust was shaken into the air and ignited, setting off a chain of secondary blasts.

What name is given in South Asia to unrefined cane sugar sold in golden-brown blocks?

Jaggery can also be made from the sap of palm trees, and a mixture of jaggery, water and peppercorns is offered to Lord Rama at the Rama Navami festival.

Which of these fresh fruits has the most sugar, about 15.5 grams in every 100 grams?

Grapes edge out bananas, which have about 12.2 grams, and carry nearly twice the sugar of peaches at 8.4.

Under EU rules, which kind of alcohol must generally contain at least 100 grams of sugar per litre?

Liqueurs are spirits with added flavourings and sweetening, and the crème liqueurs go further, with so much sugar that they are close to syrups.

Weight for weight, which of these dried fruits is the sugariest, at nearly two-thirds sugar?

Dates are 63 to 64 per cent sugar once dried, ahead of dried apricots at 53, figs at about 48 and prunes at 38.

Which Kellogg's cereal did Consumer Reports find in 2008 to be more than half sugar by weight?

Honey Smacks had at least as much sugar per serving as a glazed doughnut, the magazine found; launched in 1953 as Sugar Smacks, it had been renamed to play that down.

On a Champagne label, which French term marks the sweetest wines, over 50 grams of sugar per litre?

Doux sits at the top of a scale that runs down through Demi-sec and Brut to Brut Nature, which has no added sugar at all.

Which kind of tinned milk has sugar added until there are nine parts sugar to every eleven of milk?

Condensed milk first had sugar added in 1835, when the English engineer William Newton used it as a preservative; evaporated milk is the version made without it.

Which of these fruits contains almost no sugar, less than one gram in every 100 grams?

Avocado has just 0.66 grams of sugar per 100 grams, because its flesh is 15% fat and only 9% carbohydrate; papaya has more than ten times as much.

Which of these fruits has the least sugar, under 5 grams per 100 grams, despite its sweet reputation?

Strawberries have about 4.9 grams of sugar per 100 grams, less than sharp-tasting grapefruit at 7.3 and roughly half as much as blueberries.

Which of these spreads is more than half sugar by weight?

Nutella is only 13% hazelnuts and mostly sugar and palm oil, whereas gianduja, the traditional Piedmont recipe, is roughly 71.5% hazelnut paste.

Which of these vegetables has almost no sugar, about half a gram in every 100 grams?

Yams are nearly all starch, with 27.9 grams of carbohydrate but only half a gram of sugar; the orange 'yams' sold in the United States are really sweet potatoes, with about eight times as much.