Vedic Society

Jaggery preparation in Karnataka

Ayurvedic Texts (ayurvedic shastra) teach about jaggery (guda) and elaborately mention it’s health benefits and nutritive properties. Jaggery is sugar cane juice that has been concentrated by means of cooking it to reduce the water content. Rishis taught that as jaggery is kept to mature for some time, it becomes even more benifical for health. It is a sweetner that if taken in moderation is a great elexir to health but sadly a nearly forgotton food worldwide save it’s use in a few delicacies and special recipes in Indian cuisine. If one visits almost any Indian sweet shop one will find 99% of the sweets are preared with white sugar which is sugar can that has been refined to it’s chemical base sweetner of sucrose. All the chetana (pranic intelligence) and prana (life force) has been removed from this substance. Along with that in the “modern” process of “refining” the sugar, chemicals are used to extract and bleach and these chemical residues are highly toxic so all in all white sure is “pure”, “white” and “deadly”. It is a slow poison and as it gives an incredible high (and then a low some hours later), people are for the most highly adicted to white sugar. Consumption of white sugar has increased manifold in this century, and so has disease. Ayurvedic texts mention methods of refining sugar but these are all natural and near forgotten processes like open pan sugar (khandasari) refining and also distillation of sugar to prepare rock sugar. These preparations are still sometimes used by some Vaidyas. We will try to feature the production of both in our blog shortly.

So of course people are re-learning what sages have taught that jaggery is a great boon for health, but if you are taking jaggery it must absolutely be organic as the non-organic production of jaggery firstly is laden with chemicals from seed to the harvest (sugar cane is one of the most pesticided, herbiceded and fertilised crops in the world, being a “cash crop”). Secondly during the production of jaggery a number of chemicals are added to the jaggery all for different effects. We recently visited a cottage jaggery production (producing some 30,000 kgs per day so quite a large industry!), in Karnatake not far from Mysore. As the jaggery was cooked an unknown white chemical was being thrown into the jaggery. All the workers said was that it was a sulphur compound and that it helped the jaggery harden. There is no control of the chemical levels or the safety of the substance.

So whatever you do avoid non-organic jaggery. You will also notice that the non-organic jaggery often has a stranger almost chemical taste and smell and the colour can be quite off what it is meant to be (golden dark brown).

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