In Edgar Cayce on Sweeteners versus ‘Fake Sugar’, I shared some quotes from Edgar Cayce about sugar. Tl/dr: Many of the recipients of Cayce’s readings asked how to satiate their sugar cravings. Honey and date sugar were preferred sources of sweet calories. Beet sugar was usually acceptable to sweeten coffee.
Something I’ve wondered about is Cayce’s preference for beet sugar over cane sugar. This preference is seen in the various recipes for herbal formulas and for general consumption. From that previous email:
Sidenote: I haven’t figured out the difference between cane sugar and beet sugar from Cayce’s perspective. […] there’s probably not a huge difference between sucrose refined from beets vs. sucrose refined from sugarcane.
In our modern world, almost all U.S. beet sugar is made from roundup-ready GMO beets. In theory all the DNA and pesticide residue is refined out of the white sugar in the bag. Some companies sell organic beet sugar made with heirloom (non-GMO) beet varieties. European beet sugar brands, such as Diamant, are non-GMO.
In theory, beet sugar and cane sugar are both sucrose, which is molecules of glucose and fructose bonded together. The chemical formula for sucrose is C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁. This is 12 Carbon atoms, 22 hydrogen atoms and 11 oxygen atoms.
After years of thinking about this conundrum, I think the best candidate for the difference between beet sugar and cane sugar is that beets are better at excluding heavy hydrogen.
99.9844% of the hydrogen in our world is a single proton (+) and a single electron (-). A very small percentage of hydrogen — 0.0156%, or 1 of every 6400 hydrogens — also has a neutron. Science calls hydrogen-with-a-neutron “heavy hydrogen” or “deuterium”. Water is two hydrogens with an oxygen: H₂O. Heavy Water is water that contains one or two heavy hydrogens (D): HDO and D₂O.
Deuterium is measurably less reactive than regular hydrogen (protium). The metabolic processes of both plants and animals prefer using protium over deuterium. The amount of heavy hydrogen in foods is highly dependent on how much heavy hydrogen is in the water they’re grown with. Water at high elevations has less deuterium than seawater, or rain that falls on plants grown close to the coast. Sugar beets are often grown in cooler, northern and higher-latitude areas (such as Idaho or Michigan), while sugar cane is coastal and tropical.
What’s important, from Cayce’s perspective, about heavy hydrogen is that our metabolic processes are less efficient when the hydrogen is heavy. Science uses the term ‘kinetic isotope effect’ to describe how enzymes react more slowly with heavier isotopes like deuterium than with regular hydrogen (protium). Heavy hydrogen bonds more tightly than regular hydrogen and slightly wears down the biological nanomotors in our mitochondria that churn out ATP (the chemical energy molecule that runs our bodies).
The difference between sugar cane (a type of grass) and beets is that sugar cane is a C4 plant, while beets are C3 plants. C4 plants are more efficient in hot/dry conditions than C3 plants. But this efficiency comes with a cost: C4 enzymes are less picky about differentiating between protium and deuterium, so the hydrogen in carbohydrates produced by C4 plants has a higher percentage of deuterium than in C3 plants. Beets and other C3 plants are also better at excluding the heavier C13 carbon, so their isotopic signature shows more of the lighter C12 carbon. C4 plants can’t exclude heavy carbon very well, so they have more of the heavier C13 carbon.
High Fructose Corn Syrup [HFCS] has the same “heavy hydrogen” and “heavy carbon” isotopic signature as Cane Sugar. This is how testing can reveal if a sweet product such as maple syrup, orange juice or honey has been ‘stretched’ by adding cheap cane sugar or HFCS.
There are people who advocate for “deuterium depleted water”, but this is very challenging to make at home. The amount of heavy hydrogen in my water is pretty low on my list of things to be concerned about.
This is just my personal theory for why Cayce recommended beet sugar. It’s not really something to worry about: the difference between the amount of heavy hydrogen in beet sugar, cane sugar, honey, corn syrup and maple syrup are relatively small. Simply implementing Edgar Cayce’s recommendation for getting sweet calories from fruit, honey, and beets will effortlessly reduce your heavy hydrogen intake.
Honey and dates have nutrients to go with their sweetness. I’ve switched to using more honey in my coffee.
-James Knochel