Food Talk  Discussion Forum

Hi,
I have a 2 years old boy.Mostly he likes to eat sweet foods.How may i insted of sugar items to feed him.I have read about jaggery is better than sugar for kids,is it correct?What the difference between jaggery & brown sugar.Please reply me as soon as possible.
-aruna AN replied. Sorry for cut and paste from a scholar.

• Stephanie: What is the difference between jaggery and brown sugar? Is the difference
worth making the effort to go out and find jaggery?

Suvir: Jaggery is a sugar made from either cane juice or palm sap.
It has a delicate flavor that reminds me of the sweetness of grass with
the deep undertones of molasses. Jaggery gives the food a very deep, dark flavor and, to my taste, also lacks the chemical aftertaste of American brown sugar. As you train your palate in the subtlety of Indian flavors I think you'll want to use jaggery instead of brown sugar but don't forgo making this chutney because you don't have it on hand. You can buy jaggery at Indian and some Asian grocery stores.
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Palm jaggery can well replace sugar-cane jaggery. In fact some people prefer it to the latter. One advantage of palm jaggery over sugar-cane
jaggery is that it is less sweet and therefore one can eat more of it.
The All Indian Village Association has done a great deal to popularize
palm jaggery, but much remains to be done. If the palms that are used for
making tadi are used for making jaggery, India will never lack sugar and the poor will be able to get good jaggery for very little money.
Palm jaggery can be converted into molasses and refined sugar.
But the jaggery is much more useful than refined sugar.
The salts present in the jaggery are lost in the process of refining.
Just as refined what flour and polished rice lose some of their nutritive
value because of the loss of the pericarp, refined sugar also loses some of the nutritive value of the jaggery. One may generalize that all foodstuff are richer if taken in thier natural state as far as possible.