I’m truly sorry for the title, but it says what I think about this succinctly. I tried half a dozen variations and kept coming back to the one word.
There are days when I think I just won’t see anything stupider cross my inbox. Then, today brings a new surprise on the winds of change. Carbon Free Sugar. Let me repeat that. Carbon Free Sugar – certified even.
Those of you who remember their basic high school chemistry might remember this simple and indelible truth: sugar contains carbon.
There is no getting around that. Don’t believe me? Try frying up some sugar in a sauce pan and watch the results. Or just pick up a used mass spectrograph on Ebay and run an analysis.
Or just consult any number of chemical handbooks. Sucrose is common table sugar (as pictured in the bag) and has the chemical formula: C12H22O11
Looks like twelve atoms of carbon combined with eleven molecules of H2O doesn’t it? That’s why it is called (drum roll please) a carbohydrate.
Eating and digesting sugar turns it into water and carbon dioxide that we exhale, so for it to be truly “carbon free” as the label says, we have to get those twelve molecules of Carbon out. So how do they get the carbon out of that sucrose anyway? It’s really easy, all we need is a catalyst.
Reacting sucrose with sulfuric acid (H2SO4) dehydrates the sucrose and forms the element carbon, as demonstrated in the following chemical equation:
- C12H22O11 + H2SO4 (as catalyst) → 12 C + 11 H2O
So assuming they get the acid out of the mix, we are left with some pure carbon and a bunch of water. Yummm! Perfect for cereal in the morning.
Ok, I’m being a bit extreme, I realize the idea is to promote a carbon neutral production of sugar.
But really, couldn’t the marketing people at Domino realize how stupid this claim sounds? I’ll bet the guys at the Domino company labs are having a fit. I’d love to see the emails that went flying when they learned of this one. Beakers were probably flying across the lab too.
But some companies will do anything to appear green these days, because they want to keep that “other green footprint” high.
Ah, the sweet smell of success.
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Another fine example of turning ignorance into money.
They better not mess with Imperial Sugar or my Dublin Dr. Pepper!
It’s as bad as the words “Natural”, “All Natural”, “100% Natural”. If you can’t find it growing in the wild, it ain’t natural.
I think what they meant to say was “carbon neutral” sugar. Which is also a non-statement.
Great post Anthony, but the sad reality is that this works in North America. Nummerate people who have even a basic grasp of science are about one in fifty.
Let’s face it, the curent president and his collection of ivory tower idiot advisors would grasp this as proof that their theories are correct. Now there is a reason to hope for change.
It has nothing to do with science. This is akin to holy water. Those who buy it and use it will feel more righteous. They are doing their little part to “save the planet”. Hallelujah.
The only appropriate reaction:
Facepalm
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b24/Nightmare30/Funny%20stuff/facepalm.jpg?t=1241492789
Anthony…thanks for a great laugh to end the evening, I needed this one after being hit with the Tropicana Orange Juice Carton just now, which proclaimed that I could save the rain forest…but not for its own sake, but because loss of the rain forest leads to climate change. Isn’t the rain forest worth saving on its own merits? Sigh. My son then informed me that the media, swine flu and global warming had formed an unholy alliance to irritate me each day. Anyway, my wife is a chemist, and loved your work on this one as well (she wants to know how much mass specs are going for on eBay.) Expanded our definition of an “alternative chemical reality” too…
If it were not for the dumbing down of America by the public school system, they would not be able to get away with such nonsense.
Utterly tasteless!
They’ll have to pry my Demerara Cane sugar out of my dead cold hands. Ha!
Not only has truth gone out of “science” these days, “Truth in Advertising” is gone out as well!
At a buffet a few years back, the guy at the dessert table said that all the desserts were made with fat-free sugar. My friend Martha, known for her acerbic wit, nearly lost it right there.
Duhhhhh !!???
Remember the old saying – was it P.T. Barnum?
“Never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.”
If I see any products like this on the shelves at my local supermarket then I think it’ll be time for me to change brands.
Do not apologize for the title. That’s a word (along with another vulgar and more precise term) that I’ve been using a lot lately. If we don’t vent our heads will EXPLODE !
Biofuel baby.
From the ad,
“The label CarbonFree® means the product’s carbon footprint is rendered neutral by cutting green-house gases. And that’s a sweet thing for all of us!
Our certification is unique because our Florida farmed products’ carbon neutrality is the result of our own production and supply of clean, renewable energy, which replaces the use of fossil fuels. Our renewable energy facility generates eco-friendly power for our sugar milling and refining operations as well as tens of thousands of homes.”
They are using some forms of renewable energy (hope it is not Ethanol!) to power the sugar mill and refinery. They are probably burning the sugar cane in a boiler, after the syrup is squeezed from it.
Nothing to do with changing the chemical structure of sugar.
This will allow the company to sell carbon credits, likely for a sizeable profit.
We should all get used to this sort of thing. It will be seen more and more as Global Warming laws are enacted.
Sugar without carbon is water.
People have been stupid enough to pay a fortune for water in bottles for years. It’s no coincidence that Evian is naive spelled backwards.
Now they are being invited to buy water in a packet and to pretend it’s sugar. If they believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden and that computer games can provide proof of the ridiculous, let them also believe that water is sugar. It’s no skin off my bulbous nose.
There is, however, a serious point here. An additional serious point to the one identified by Mr Watts in the article. There seems to be an increasing trend towards carbon-free this and carbon-free that. Even if we accept that turning carbon into carbon dioxide will result in seven type of hell before breakfast, carbon itself is not the enemy of anything. It is an example of what happens when hysteria is whipped-up.
“What is carbon dioxide?”
“I’m not sure but it’s got carbon in it”
“So it’s got carbon and dioxide. What’s dioxide?”
“Never heard of it, never seen it in the shops.”
“We’d better watch out for that carbon stuff then.”
And so hysteria against a gas (harmful or not) turns into hysteria against pencils. We are seeing exactly the same thing happening in Egypt where they are engaged in a mass slaughter of pigs because of so-called swine flu even though it is human-to-human contact that puts (a tiny number of) people at risk and Miss Piggy is innocent of anything.
Last summer while lecturing aboard a ship on a trans Atlantic run I picked up a cup of yogurt that made a big deal on its lid about being from a carbon neutral company. I sent the company a note pointing out that the fermentation of the milk sugars in the process of creating yogurt emits quite a bit of CO2 (in percentage terms).
There was a link from a WUWT post to an article about a town in India with no carbon emissions, but plenty of soot from burning homefires. (I don’t have to point out the obvious, do I?)
Carbon free sugar, carbon neutral yogurt, and burning wood that does not have CO2 emissions . . . clearly the majority of our citizenry did not do well in high school science classes. The level of stupid continues to rise. I say, bring back the fine art of ridicule.
I am afraid that it will become much worse before it gets any better. Buy smaller belts while you can boys it is going to be hungry time around here soon.
Bill Derryberry
“Carbon-free” is one of those PC merit badges that gets you into the club of international leftie approved businesses, along with “fair trade” (as if free trade isn’t fair), “dolphin safe” (Free of Flipper meat), “organic” (hey, pure C12H22O11 is an organic chemical, right?), “free range” (because fences = private property = bad), “BGH Free” (ghu forbid that the consumer be able to afford cheaper milk), “Bt Free” (as if plants safe from pests are dangerous for people).
I am speechless! (OK, not really) I can’t decide whether to keep laughing at the stupidity or scream…at the stupidity. Maybe my dream of fat free, calorie free great tasting milk chocolate candy is right around the corner!! Assuming we leave enough CO2 in the atmosphere to actually let the cocoa plants grow.
My God, man. Settle down. They explain in the ad what “Carbonfree” means. It is a certification about carbon neutrality from an independent site – carbonfund.org. Plain as day.
Why are you so worked up? Do you think that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is a BAD thing to do? Forget about whether it is a GOOD thing or not. Are you going to start attacking efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emission?
Oh – and by the way – where do you think the carbon in sugar comes from? Obviously from the CO2 in the atmosphere – thus making the production and consumption of sugar a carbon cycle. You act like it’s a fossil fuel or something.
I repeat – this is not a bad thing.
THe amazing part is, the cane and wood is harvested without using any fuel! Yep… and the lights in the factory, as well as the printing presses for the packages and, big one, the DELIVERY TRUCKS that cart the product away and warehouse it, and deliver it to supermarkets all over the continent… all Carbon Free.
I know it’s true because that’s what their ad says. Carbon Free. And you can’t lie in an advertisement, right? That’s against the law.
Their point is that the carbon in the sugar is absorbed from the atmosphere when the cane is growing. It is returned to the atmosphere when the sugar is consumed by a person and he or she exhales CO2. I’d prefer the term “carbon-neutral” to carbon-free.
However, I bet the planting and harvesting of the sugar cane is done with diesel-powered equipment, and the refining and packaging in factories that run on coal-fired electricity. It is delivered to the stores by petroleum-powered trucks. As a result, each package of sugar requires some amount of previously sequestered coal, oil or natural gas and spews CO2 into the atmosphere.
So, unless all the machinery is running on ethanol, I don’t see how the product can be carbon-neutral.
Sorry Anthony, I’m sure you meant to write atoms, not molecules when describing the contents of the sucrose molecule. Doh!
But as to the point of your post, I agree. It’s incredibly stupid marketing that will be quite successful for the scientifically illiterate society in which we live.
REPLY: Yeah sorry, fixed. I was blinded by science. – Anthony