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.
Tell me, what does
mean exactly?
Yeah, I’ll bet it “displaces” alright.
Sorry, gotta go, keeping the kids awake with my uncontrollable laughter…
It also seems that Domino’s label may run afoul with FDA labeling standards, which state that:
“Free. This term means that a product contains no amount of, or only trivial or “physiologically inconsequential” amounts of, one or more of these components: fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, sugars, and calories. For example, “calorie-free” means fewer than 5 calories per serving, and “sugar-free” and “fat-free” both mean less than 0.5 g per serving. Synonyms for “free” include “without,” “no” and “zero.””
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/qa-lab8c.html
While carbon has not been addressed by the FDA, the use of “free” on a food label generally indicates that, “a product contains no amount of, or only trivial or “physiologically inconsequential” amounts of” the component that “free” is qualifying, in this case “carbon”.
Erik Ramberg (20:53:10) According to the IPCC reporting in 2001, the annual human contribution for the 1990’s was 23,100 million metric tons of gas out of a total amount of 793,100 mmtg, or 2.9%. Not a whole lot we could do “to try and halt the massive change in our planet’s atmospheric composition“, even if we contributed zero.
Hahaha… Yeah! And sucrose is synthesized by photosynthetic organisms from CO2:
http://biocab.org/Outline_of_Photosynthesis.jpg
And both phototrophic and chemotrophic organisms disintegrate sucrose through cell respiration and release CO2 to the environment.
Erik Ramberg (20:53:10) : “Regardless of whether you think excess carbon dioxide will cause global warming, the true conservative position would be to try and halt the massive change in our planet’s atmospheric composition.’
Why? CO2 is good for plant growth, seems to have negligible if any impact on global temperatures and as far as we’ve learned thus far is otherwise innocuous. The conservative position is to focus our scarce resources on the areas where they will have the greatest positive impact. CarbonFree sugar isn’t one of them. It’s a silly sales gimmick…
Right. So if I can produce oil with donkey pumps powered by solar cells or wind turbines, can I sell this as “carbon free oil” or even “carbon neutral oil”?
Tell me exactly how “burning their wood waste” is carbon neutral exactly? I must have missed something here.
I wonder where the study is that says “the sugar cane plant converts sunlight to energy more efficiently than any other major crop.”
1. sunlight is energy Did they mean to say “to carbohydrate”?
2. Is this true even when worded correctly? I’ve seen any number of fruiting plants singly produce hundreds of pounds of fruit with sugars exceeding 10%. Cane and sugar beets reach about 22%. Grapes can reach well above that to 28%. Let’s ask them to post their definitions, methodology, and data on-line and see if it stands up to an audit.
I’m sorry, I just can’t seem to let this one slide by Erik. You cannot possibly be serious about your statements. There is no way, let me say that again “no way” that this sugar is “carbon neutral” even in the sense that they may or may not portray here. I would challenge this whole heartedly. This is complete bogus crap.
You all are being a little hysterical about this. Domino is doing a good thing by burning the cane stalks (called bagasse) to run their process. It certainly deserves a lot more support than all the bogus organic certifications, which are fundamentally anti-science.
REPLY: So how is a “bogus organic certification” any different than a “bogus carbon free certification” on food labeling? Recyling and saving energy is fine, food labeling however, comes under legal jurisdiction. The point is that this labeling is over-the-top silly, and wrong to boot.
Let’s turn it around. Let’s say I create a “sustainable” coal mine, where all of the energy used to mine and process the coal comes from renewable or green energy. Wind power turbines and solar cells run the whole process. All the soil is replaced, trees planted, runoff contained, water purified.
I slap a “carbon free” label on my product. Now tell me who will be “hysterical” when they read it. Whether it is coal burned to heat boilers or sugar burned biologically to heat humans, the result is CO2 expelled. – Anthony
Carbon free sugar…
It’s like trans fat free corn chips. I know they mean in the ingredients–supposedly. But how do you keeps trans fat out of the deep frying???
And how is “burning the cane stalks” good? Does that not then release CO2 back into the atmosphere (not that I am personally the slightest bit worried about that). How about the other particulate matter that goes along with it? Have you ever been to a sugar cane refinery? I have many times, and they are extremely smelly and dirty from .. wait for it .. burning cane stalks. You think burning coal is dirty? ha, try tons upon tons of cane stalks… jeez… get a clue..
Again, there is NO WAY that this is carbon neutral by any measure! This is a marketing gimmick plain and simple!
The sugar marketing guys should take the hint from the fat marketing guys. Instead of containing 2 per cent fat, it is marketed at 98 per cent fat free. They should tune down their claim a bit, to 57.8 per cent carbon free sugar.
Can minimal sunspot activity cause hallucinations?
Just when you think this can’t get any dumber….it does!
How do you fight this?
An electric car is co2 free…. but don’t you have to plug it in to an electrical outlet to charge the co2 free power source for the car?
Co2 is produced in making electricity.
REPLY: Unless you have it connected to a solar array. – Anthony
Ridiculousness has now reached new heights!
Carbonfund.org bears closer examination…
AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!
The ignorance of these idiots hurts my brain!
Water, for the love of Pete!
Couldn’t they have at least have called it “Carbon Neutral”? It wouldn’t have hurt so bad!
Erik Ramberg said: ” The carbon in sugar comes out of the atmosphere, powered by sunlight, thus making cane sugar a very close to carbon neutral product.”
Would you be able to enlighten me as to what foodstuffs do not derive their carbon from the atmosphere?
Serious madness and total lies. What’s new in the AGW space?
The compnay I work for pops up a message on my PC to say “Please power off your PC at night to reduce your carbon footprint.”, trouble is it’s on a timer if you don’t respond. So it uses, marginally, more power than my previous power down method anyway. Also, we can’t unplug nor power off any other device like a screen.
Madness!
John F. Hultquist (21:53:46) :
I wonder where the study is that says “the sugar cane plant converts sunlight to energy more efficiently than any other major crop.”
I would say it as follows: “the sugar cane plant converts light to chemical energy more efficiently than any other major crop”.
Of course, the assertion over the super-efficiency of sugar cane plants is not true because maize and sorghum are more efficient than sugar cane on converting light to chemical energy.
Mr Bateman said: (21:15:43) :
“The true conservative approach would be to address the issue top down.
Reduce the immense waste in oceanic and continental transportation.
Reduce the immense waste in power plants who make $$$ running with generators offline or powering Vegas style lighting grids while everyone is sleeping (or trying to sleep !).
Cute little bottom up efforts are swallowed whole by the vast distribution and generation system.”
I’m not so sure. The top-down / bottom-up question has to be considered individually in relation to each issue. In some situations waste happens at the top more than the bottom, and in some it’s the other way around. As a general rule I believe the conservative position is to look at things from the bottom-up, after all there are a lot more people at the bottom than at the top.
Electricity generating companies don’t do it for fun, it is a business. They have to maintain supply capacity and that means there are quiet periods when demand is low and there are busy periods when it spikes to a huge extent. If they supply more than is needed at the quiet times there is waste, it will be diverted to where it does no good but it can’t just sit still and wait until it has to go somewhere. Yet they have to maintain a minimum level of production to keep the whole operation rolling. Our morning cup of tea (OK, coffee over the pond) cannot be made unless the system is operating and overnight that often means a lot of supply is generated and wasted because they need to keep a minimum output in order to be able to respond to morning demand. They improve their systems all the time but they cannot provide an exact supply-on-demand service with current technology.
As for “the immense waste in oceanic and continental transportation”, I have to ask: what waste? International cargo haulage companies (whether operating by sea or air) don’t want waste, they do everything they can to prevent waste because waste means lost profit which means fewer jobs. Their purpose is to make profit not to make jobs, but more profit and more business means more jobs. Those jobs are a cost to the business, but that cost is worth incurring provided they make more profit. The same goes for air and sea transport of people.
There is only one universal measure of waste, that is money. Money exists purely as a measuring device. I measure out £5 and buy a packet of cigarettes, the shopkeeper previously measured out a little less money in order to buy that packet of cigarettes. How do we measure waste from power plants? You can measure it in kilowatt-hours if you want to, but you will only be deceiving yourself. The owners of the power plant know the only measure is money. If they have no customer for their supply they will cut it off if they can. If they can’t they will tick-over and bear the loss because it is part of the price they pay to make a profit in the busy hours.
Whatever we need to measure, we need to identify the appropriate unit of measurement. In every single aspect of business the appropriate measure is the yen, dollar, euro, baht, pound or whatever else applies to your market. Measure in anything else, such as amount of carbon dioxide emitted, and you will cause viable businesses to fold because their customers pay them in money not gases. The result is, and always will be, that the little people at the bottom of the pile lose their jobs in far greater number than those higher up the ladder, and they are the least well placed to find alternative employment.
I apologise that this has turned into a rant but one of the few things that really boils my goat is to read or hear an argument that puts vague theory above the jobs of the little people. The little people are the ones who are hit hardest by everything that damages the ability of business to make a profit.
TC Moore (20:07:39) : “…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.”
But did you read the label on the back of the carton, TC? How much orange juice is really in there? Hmm?
Initially I was stunned by this. I had nothing I could think to say… It was just so oxymoronic…
Then it hit me: I can now placard my car with “Carbon Free Diesel!” since I often use biofuels! (As an OPEC protest).
BioDiesel can be farmed using equipment that runs on bioDiesel, so it’s a very short trip to make my car Carbon FREE!!!! (Just ignore the soot cloud that comes out the back when I floor it … it’s an OLD Diesel 😎
By the way, Miscanthus sinensis (Zebra grass) is the more efficient plant on converting light to chemical energy (light to carbohydrates).