At the heart of the American sugar industry was the Domino Sugar Company, which was founded in 1807 during the Industrial Revolution. In the late 1800s, the newly consolidated refined white sugar industry, which didn't have full control over brown sugar production, mounted a smear campaign against brown sugar, reproducing microscopic photographs of harmless but repulsive-looking microbes living in brown sugar. The effort was so successful that by 1900, a best-selling cookbook warned that brown sugar was of inferior quality and was susceptible to infestation by "a minute insect.” The strategy worked effectively, causing public preference to shift heavily toward refined white sugar and permanently altering commercial production norms. So, what’s the difference in the two sugars. White sugar is pure sucrose; brown sugar is white sugar mixed with a little bit of molasses. White sugar is fully processed to remove all the molasses, while brown sugar keeps the molasses. When it comes to nutrition, there’s really not much difference between the two.
