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.
Just Want Truth… (22:24:33) :
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
Or a clean, green, honkin’ big nuke plant.
Mike
renewable, sustainable, and 100% organic 🙂
Erik Ramberg (20:53:10) :
Massive change? You mean like this? click
Can’t see the change? Try this: click
Your “massive change” is in the hundredths of a percent of the atmosphere.
OK Anthony – I am inspired by this wonderful new Carbon-Free Sugar.
I have just declared myself a Carbon-Free Trade Zone. Every morning, I add up all the CO2 I’ve use in my previous day’s activities. Then I buy Carbon Offsets from myself, carefully taking money from my right pocket and transferring it into my left pocket.
There! All better! I’m Carbon-Free!
Carbon-Free at last! Carbon-Free at last! Great God Almighty, I’m Carbon-Free at last!
Say! Maybe I could sell my Carbon Offsets to other people and especially to big bad business. First I’ll have to get my government to REQUIRE people and companies to buy my Carbon Offsets. We’ll call our scheme “Cap and Trade”. I’ll make Billions, I tell ya!
I’ll be rich AND Carbon-Free! And I’ll keep my SUV!
Wait a second, you say it’s already been done? Some guy named Al Gore? Aw shucks! Now what are the odds of that?
*******************************
Although I agree with the other points you made in your post, I have to say that the Egypt mass slaughter of pigs is not due to swine flu hysteria, Moslem authorities did that to piss off the christians living in Egypt. Like in this Sugar ad example, there are witty people around us who don’t believe in these things, but they play along to make a profit, either commercial, religious or both.
I will NOT let these idiots tango my twice weekly double shot mocha latte treat. Nor the iced Danish that accompanies it.
No different from:
Made without chemicals.
Which has been used in hundreds of products for years.
I’d like to see a new resistance group… K.A.P. & T.R.A.D.E… Kids Against Propaganda & Teachers Raging Against the Destruction of Education…
I just love the Red Star over the ‘I’ in their Domino logo. Sign of things to come?
Katherine (23:44:01)
Massive change? You mean like this? click
Can’t see the change? Try this: click
Brilliant! Best laugh all week. We are fortunate to have this fantastic blog site, even more so to have a editorial policy that allows posts from people of all persuasions, including befuddled alarmist snipping snippers (sorry – just get SO frustrated with ’em sometimes).
Erik Ramberg (20:53:10) :
OK, Eric, we take your point, which is perfectly valid. But this redefinition of what normal language means is pernicious. “CarbonFree” (no doubt ®) has been redefined in the small print to mean something other than what the ordinary reader will think on first sight, and first impressions are what advertising works on. Similarly, “Organic” has been hijacked to mean other than something that is or was alive. (Ever tried eating an inorganic potato? Most people call them flints!) “Climate change” is also subject the same sort of manipulation. It does leave me with a slight problem in that I should like to call myself a Climate Change Denier (BTW what has that got to do with nylon stockings?) but can’t because I recognise that the climate has been changing ever since Earth had an atmosphere.
On your last point, since the atmosphere receives and loses some twenty times as much CO2 each year as man emits it is very hard to maintain that CO2 levels are increasing because of human input. Do you know of any other natural system that is so finely balanced that a 5% increase will throw it out? Much more likely that the CO2 rises we are seeing today are the result of warming in the past leading to the loss of permafrost and drying-out of peat bogs, etc.
My link pasting didn’t work. You’ll have to go to Katherine’s original post to get the clicks to open…
I Think I will switch to honey on the cornflakes !! Think of all that hard work by the bees , the greenies will certainly approve that honey be deemed carbon neutral !! The formula is still the same though.
Is this what you call ‘radical innovation’?
Or sugar’s answer to cubic zirconia?
a few more suggestions:
‘pork-free porkers for Muslims’?
‘grape-free wine’?
‘English-free football in England’?
Eh????
Around here we have a large greenhouse industry.
So they have large refrigerated CO2 tanker trucks taking the CO2 to the greenhouses.
Apparently it makes the plants grow.
Proof that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
I think you’re correct in saying that you are “being a bit extreme.” But so is the advertising. At least you recognized that. Few if any of those posting thus far did.
The “carbon free” statement made by the manufacturer’s labeling addresses the “carbon footprint” associated with the manufacture of the product (sugar in this case); in this case the refer to the following: “clean renewable energy, which replaces the use of fossil fuels” and a “renewable energy facility [that] generates eco-friendly power”.
The “carbon free” statement does NOT refer to the actual contents of product.
Clearly, the company’s lawyer’s played their part in dreaming up this semantics-splitting advertising.
Anthony, are we going to have to snip your headline? Thanks for the chemistry lesson and all the laughs from the fine wits and exasperated carbon-based entities. I hope you and your fellow scientists go after Erik Ramberg’s “the massive change in our planet’s atmospheric composition” big-time. Make it something for the general public so it can go viral, if I dare make such a suggestion at this particular time.
As consumers we can let companies like this know that towing the line behind a batch of bad science isnt going to sell any sugar. You would be suprised how effective a little note to the company really is.
On an off note.. I wonder if they mix their waste ‘wood’ with conventional fuel to get that tax credit.. hehehe.
I wonder if Gore found a way to make a buck off of it?
The ad must have been created by carbon-free lifeforms.
One possibililty we should consider is the new uses in cooking that could result from the development of carbon free sugar. For example, it may be that carbon free sugar could be the only sugar that will dissolve, at room temperature, in hydrogen free water. Thus allowing the first true upside down cake to be cooked in a normal oven. We live in such wonderful times.
I’m awake now and reviewing the posts here. I’m stunned, people.
Here is a sample:
“And how is “burning the cane stalks” good? Does that not then release CO2 back into the atmosphere…”
“Whether it is coal burned to heat boilers or sugar burned biologically to heat humans, the result is CO2 expelled. – Anthony”
————————————————————
Do you not understand that burning plant matter that is grown now is fundamentally different than burning coal, whose carbon was laid down hundreds of millions of years ago? You guys ridicule Domino sugar for their ignorance, but then display quite a bit yourself.
Very simply: when you grow plant matter and then burn it, you are taking one molecule of CO2 out of the atmosphere for every CO2 molecule that you return. That is called carbon neutrality.
Here’s another stunner:
“On your last point, since the atmosphere receives and loses some twenty times as much CO2 each year as man emits it is very hard to maintain that CO2 levels are increasing because of human input.”
I urge you people not to go down the road of trying to argue that man is not fundamentally changing the atmosphere and oceans. It is 100% guaranteed that you will lose that argument. Feel free to argue whether those changes will induce other changes, or whether these changes are good or bad – but make no mistake about it: the atmospheric composition and the oceanic P.H. are being significantly affected by burning of fossil fuels.
How about this then?
http://www.nuclearpowernothanks.co.uk/
The symbol is of a smiley sun.
This is at least as stupid as the phrase ‘stop climate change’.
I think this perfectly illustrate why some people are chemists and others work in marketing or public relations.
It’s also another great example of how science education has failed in this country. Since I live in Kansas, I can really appreciate that.
OT: The new governor of Kansas worked out a deal to allow a new coal-fired plant to be built in the western part of the state. (http://www.kansascity.com/637/story/1178538.html)
If you read the details, you will see that some older, dirtier power plants will be taken offline as part of the deal. The net effect is cleaner air.
Carbon free charcoal! Created by burning wood – a renewable. Packaged in paper – comes from trees -renewable.
Buy some today.