Bone char is calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate and activated carbon. It’s also the bones of dead animals. Dead animal bones that are usually from Pakistan, Argentina, India and Afghanistan to be exact. That’s right. There is an international trade for the production of bone char. This is less surprising when you consider that it takes about 8,000 cows to produce enough bones for one commercial filter and the cattle used has to be BSE-free. Since we can’t quite claim to be 100% free of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in this country, we buy cattle bones from other places to use in the production of bone char. The char itself is created by cleaning the bones and then heating them at extremely high temperatures in a limited amount of air. In this almost-vacuum, the bones become charcoal. Ok, so that’s the production of bone char, but what kind of commercial filter? What is a filter made of the bones of thousands of cows even good for? Surprisingly, sugar.

Have you ever wondered how sugar processing resulted in that bleached white color we associate with basic sugar? If you’ve ever cut open a sugar cane or seen one cut wide on a documentary, you know that the inside is a pulpy light yellow-tan color and the juice is similarly colored. If you’ve ever gone to Panera and used their raw sugar packets in your coffee, you may have noticed that that sugar is also tan-brown, like the plant. How then do we get that ghostly white sugar we use to bake or make icing out of? By straining it through an 8,000 cow, cow scaffolding sieve. This process bleaches out the sugar as aminos and other components bond to the carbonate in the char and are leached away from the sugar, leaving it that well-known bright white color.

You might already be wondering if brown sugar might be excluded from the process. After all, it’s brown, not white. While raw sugars that just happen to be brown may in fact be totally spared this process, typically brown sugar is just white sugar that has had some of the molasses removed during processing added back. So, to recap. Brown sugar is processed just as heavily as white sugar but then molasses, which is a by-product of the sugar producing process is added back giving it its color and slightly gooey texture. This is also good to know if you need brown sugar for a cookie recipe and are out. If you happen to have a little molasses in the back of the pantry, you can quickly wipe up your own. Anyway, unless it’s natural, organic, raw sugar, brown sugar gets the same char treatment as white.

There are a number of sugars that don’t undergo this process at all. Beet sugar for example is bone char free. Raw and organic sugar as we mentioned are also char-free most of the time. Additionally, a number of companies have made the arguably expensive move to switch to other methods of processing that don’t require or include bone char. Even Domino, one of the most recognizable white sugar brands around, is making a slow crawl towards a bone-free future. Right now, lot numbers starting with 1, 4, or 6 are apparently bone char-free.

Until they reach that goal, it’s good to be aware of where your sugar has been. Particularly for those who are vegan, knowing that thousands of cattle corpses were used in the production of the spoonful of sugar is pretty important. Included in the resource below is a list of sugar companies that are char-free. Enjoy!