Carolyn Ellis  age 11. of Dallas. Texas:

Is cane sugar different from beet sugar?

Dip into the sugar bowl and put a few grains of the white crystals on the tip of your tongues Taste buds on the tip are best at tasting sweetness. But they cannot tell you whether your sugar was taken from a sugar cane or a sugar beet. Chances are it came from sugar cane. because two‑thirds of the worlds sugar comes from cane. only one third from beet.

The sugar beet and the sugar cane look just about as different as two plants can be. But they have one thing in common. Both store huge quantities of plain sugar. All plants. of course manufacture great amounts of sugar. They do it with green chlorophyll carbon dioxide and water. Such sugar is the basic ingredient of all plant food. In most plants it is quickly changed into starch. protein. cellulose and oil. Even the perfume of flowers is made from simple plant sugars.  But the sugar cane and the sugar beet choose to store their sugar as is. which is lucky for us.

The sugar cane thrives in loamy. damp. tropical or semi‑tropical fields. Its slender stalk is jointed and trimmed with slim green leaves. Its cane stem may be purple green red, yellow or even gayly striped. New plants sprout from the joints in these canes. though the cane grows a ‑feathery plume and tiny seeds. If they were 100 times bigger. the seeds would look like grains of wheat. Cuttings of cane from 12 to 24 inches long are used for planting. They are placed end to end in furrows and lightly covered with soil. Roots and sprigs sprout from the joints in about a week. Harvest may be ready between nine and 24 months later. By that time the jungle of canes may be anywhere from 10 to 40 feet tall.

The canes are cut. trimmed of leaves and chopped into sections. They are toted to a mill where a machine knifes then into shreds without squeezing the sugary .juice inside them. The rich juice is then pressed out through rollers. This raw stuff is brownish and teeming with molasses and impurities. Squeezed‑out cane is sometimes used as furnace fuel in the mill. The raw juice is often sent to be refined at another mill. The refining is a complex job of washing. whirling. vacuum and chemical processes. Molasses is a by product. The finished product is white crystals of pure sugar.  Of all the different kinds of sugar.. this one is called sucrose.

Sugar beet thrives in moderate climates. Like the cane. it needs lots of water. It is planted from seed and ready for harvest in about 7 months. Above ground is a crown of handsome green leaves' The sugar is in the root which looks like a long. tapering turnip. At harvest. the leaves are lopped off and roots sent to the sugar mill. They are carefully washed and shredded into oblong strips.

Sugar juice is extracted from the beet in hot water compartments. The raw juice is purified much as is cane juice. The squeezed‑out pulp is a valuable cattle fodder. The molasses from beet sugar is often used to help make plastics. The finished product is a sugar called sucrose ‑ no wonder you can't tell the difference because beet sugar and cane sugar are the same substance.