I walked down the ‘cooking and baking’ aisle in my local supermarket to see how much shelf space was given to sugar, not products including sugar in their ingredients, just sugar itself.
Brown sugar, raw sugar and icing sugar.
Sugar shelves
There are several brands available but the main one I recognise is CSR. This stands for Colonial Sugar Refinery although the company officially changed its name to Sugar Australia about 10 years ago. The brand logo and colour scheme is so strong that it’s little wonder they kept it.
Their marketing is brilliant, just about on a par (in this country – Australia) with MacDonalds and Coca-cola in my view. I’ve successfully avoided the latter two for over 30 years and minimise my association with the former as much as possible.
CSR market their range, on their packaging, as follows:
CSR has a versatile range for all your needs:
CSR Everyday:
White and Raw Sugars are your reliable everyday sugars.
CSR Baking and Syrups:
Brown, Dark Brown, Caster, Raw Caster, Pure Icing, Soft Icing and Rich Chocolate Icing are your trusted baking necessities.
Golden Syrup Squeeze, Golden Syrup and Treacle are versatile in baking, as toppings or for flavouring sauces and marinades.
CSR Speciality:
Coffee Sugar Crystals and Demerara Sugar enhance coffee flavour for a premium taste.
CSR LoGiCane:
Low GI Sugar is a great tasting cane sugar that provides longer lasting energy.
Alternative sweeteners
Wow!! I’m seriously out of touch. I had no idea that half these products existed. So I visited their site to see what more it had to show me.
There, in the News and Events section, another sugar range is being promoted. It’s called CSR Better For You Range and it features CSR LoGiCane, CSR Organic and CSR SMART Sugar Blends.
It’s a nice website, static, not too busy but enough tabs and articles to keep my interest. Some good pictures, recipes, about the company and what’s new. Plenty of info available.
I’ve learned a lot this morning and as yet haven’t even covered packaging, portion size, crystals and cubes, industrial v domestic product, and cafe and restaurant options.
And what about those artificial sweeteners ………….
Resources:
Photographs by Claire Brach with permission from The Manager, Woolworths Supermarket, Engadine, NSW.
CSR information from http://www.sugaraustralia.com.au and sugar packaging.
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