Sugar

Do you like to eat things that are sweet like cookies, ice cream, and cake?

Many foods are sweet because they are made with sugar.

 

One of sugar's most important jobs is helping bread to rise so that we can have a nice fluffy loaf instead of a flat tortilla.

Where does sugar come from?

We get sugar from two different plants: Sugarcane and Sugarbeets.

Most of the sugar used in the world comes from sugarcane but some comes from sugarbeets too. Did you know we grow sugar both ways in the United States of America?

Sugarcane only grows in places that are very warm and get a lot of rain (the tropics/areas close to the equator) so we grow them in the states of Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana and Texas.

Sugarbeets don't like to get too hot so we grow them in California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.

Sugar from Sugarcane






Sugar from Sugarbeets



Additional Resources:

- Free downloadable Sugarbeet coloring book courtesy of Pioneer Sugar
(This is a coloring book covering the entire Sugarbeet journey from seed to store with short sentences at the bottom explaining the entire process.)

- Free download (Sugar from Field to Table) - courtesy of The Sugar Association
(This book is mostly informational for older students BUT it does have two very nice work sheets. The first one is a map for filling out where different kinds of sugar are grown - on page 6. The second worksheet is for labeling the parts of the plants (sugarbeet & sugarcane) and is on page 8.)

- Free download (A Journey with Sugar Cane and Sugar Beet)  - courtesy of The Sugar Association
(This one has a lot of coloring pages but most of them are more nutritional based.)