Sugar, as it is now manufactured, yields only heat to the body, and since all the vitamins and minerals are removed, the end products of its combustion are carbonic acid gas. It is a well known fact that the old fashioned brown sugar has practically gone out of use, but comparatively few are acquainted with the facts concerning the manner in which the change was made from the use of natural brown sugar to white. Forever Bee Propolis is a natural, resinous substance with a pleasing fragrant odor, various in colour from light brown to dark chestnut red. The story is told in a most interesting way in THE SCIENCE OF EATING, page 288.
Following the account there given, we learn that some years ago the sugar produced on the plantations of Louisiana or in the West Indies was shipped direct to the market without allowing the sugar refiners to secure a profit. In order for them to handle all that was produced they realized that they must in some way prejudice the consumers against the natural product, so undertook to do this in a most nefarious way.

An advertising campaign, so the account runs, was begun in the latter part of the nineteenth century, which was intended to disgust the people with the natural brown sugar and urge white sugar in its place. The advertisements contained a picture said to be an enlarged photograph of a most peculiar microscopic creature resembling, as they stated, a cross between a lizard and a louse; and in order to prove that all brown sugar was infested with such dreadful and harmful objects, they went to Dublin and found a “commercial chemist” (one who, for a consideration, was willing to testify to anything), and persuaded him to certify that there was scientific support for the statement. Forever Bee Pollen is collected by honeybees in little “baskets” on their rear legs and brought back to the hive as meals for the younger growing bees and for assembly the continuing protein requirements for adult worker bees. The quotation is taken from the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, as quoted from THE SCIENCE OF EATING, page 288, and reads thus: “Professor Cameron, public analyst of the city of Dublin, who has examined samples of raw sugar, states that they contain great numbers of disgusting insects which produce a disgusting disease.”

It was not stated, of course, by the advertisers what this “disgusting disease” was, but the gullible public swallowed the dose without question, turning at once from the old-time custom of using sugar in its natural form, and began the use of the white “purified” (?) sort. The statement was further made that the natural sugar was never entirely free from these ugly creatures or their eggs, but that they were never found in the white granulated sugar. This scheme on the part of the refiners worked so effectively that the natural brown sugar was in a few years almost entirely off the market, and the poor plantation owner who produced the natural product was compelled to sell to the refiners if he disposed of his crop at all.