Sugar

"Sugar" is a movie about a Dominican kid trying to make it in the U.S. major leagues, so its title is a bit of a loaded weapon. Sugar, after all, is a commodity with a history of harsh worker exploitation in that part of the world. And "Sugar" is the work of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, whose movie "Half-Nelson" posited that inner-city high school kids could be inspired to learn if teachers made more use of the word "dialectic," part of the No Child Left Awake initiative. But "Sugar" turns out to be happily manifesto-free, with a reserved, quiet, almost documentary look at a pitching prospect who makes his way from the Dominican Republic to the midwestern United States and ultimately New York City (watch out for the detours)

New research by the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that sugar can enhance the effectiveness of calcium in women's diets to prevent osteoporosis, a weakening of bones that affects mainly elderly women, scientists said last week. Scientists at the department's Nutrition Research Center on Aging, at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., found that about a teaspoonful of glucose sugar taken with calcium can increase the body's absorption of the mineral by nearly 25 percent. Glucose polymers, which are sold in drugstores as calorie supplements, are as effective as sugar, the researchers said.

No joke. Penn & Teller's new book, Penn & Teller's How to Play With Your Food, can be dangerous to your health. Yesterday Villard Books recalled about 100,000 copies noting that a trick "sugar pack" not only doesn't work right, but contains a chemical that can be an irritant if eaten. The idea is that you mix the fake sugar pack, found on Pages 134-135, with real ones at a restaurant, and watch gleefully when your bud can't open the supposedly unopenable pack. Turns out a scissors will do it. But worse, the stuff inside contains cobalt chloride, a potential health hazard.

White sugar is that great rarity among foods, a genuinely pure product. Free of contaminants and all proteins, complex carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals, between 99 and 99.8 percent sucrose, it is virtually uniform and absolutely dependable. Though all of it comes from beet roots or the stems of sugarcane, the finished product is so highly refined that its connection with nature is difficult to imagine. Sugar is a concentrated source of calories that has no other nutritional value, which has led many medical experts to blame it for unbalancing the American diet.

In a world where people sue McDonald's for serving coffee too hot, a Philadelphia woman has sued a Dunkin' Donuts for serving coffee she says was too sweet - so sweet it sent her into a diabetic coma. Danielle Jordan, 47, of Oxford Avenue near Langdon Street in Crescentville, filed a personal-injury lawsuit against the Dunkin' Donuts on Frankford Avenue near Bridge Street and Northeast Donut Shops Management Corp. Jordan is seeking unspecified damages for problems caused after she ordered coffee with artificial sweetener on June 15, 2009, but the server put sugar into the brew, according to the suit, which was first reported by the Courthouse News Service.

Sugar works. "Sugar what?" would be a likely response from the average person. Brigitte Lermen has worked hard to perfect the culinary art of "sugar working" - one that uses a mixture of melted sugar, glucose and water to form intricate and, technically, edible, designs and shapes. Lermen, who's currently not employed in the pastry business, practices the craft at home to keep up her skills. Wandering into the modern, white kitchen of the Center City apartment where she and her husband, Kai Lermen- executive chef of the Ritz Carlton at Broad and Chestnut streets - have lived in since May (they moved from Canada)

For the first time in 74 years, not every sweet thing with Tastykake on the label will be made in Philadelphia - or even in the United States. The Tasty Baking Co. has started importing sugar wafers from Canada. Company officials say this is the first time the venerable snack cake and confection company has ever sold a product not made in the City of Brotherly Love. A spokeswoman said the company had "no plans to import other products. " "This is an experiment," said Kathleen Grim, a spokeswoman for the company, which was started in 1914 by a Pittsburgh baker and a Boston egg salesman.

NUTRASWEET SPOONFUL. $1.59 per 1-ounce or $2.39 per 2-ounce container. BONNIE: A new technology similar to freeze-drying has made possible a new kind of NutraSweet that looks, pours and measures like sugar, while containing about 1/8 of sugar's calories. A spoonful of sugar contains only 16 calories, Spoonful, 2. Like the other forms of NutraSweet, Spoonful is not heat-stable, so it can't be used in home cooking or baking unless it's added after the food is removed from the heat.

"Thirteen dollars and ninety-five cents for a quart of maple syrup? Are you sure this price is marked correctly?" "Ayuh. " "But how can anybody charge that much? That's more than a quart of vodka costs, more than 50 quarts of gasoline. Are you sure that's right?" "Yup. " "I know. I'll bet you have this high price marked, but you're willing to bargain, right? Would you take $5 for this quart of syrup?" "Nope. " "But this must be a special outrageous price for the tourists from Philadelphia, right?

Once I thought that addiction to television was doing more to destroy America than drugs and alcohol combined. Lately, however, I'm convinced that a less conspicuous addiction leads our youth into habits of cigarettes, drugs, drink, brain-damage music and brain- dead television as surely as tugboats take tankers into open seas. I am talking about the addiction to sugar. A few years ago, my daughter Rachel's mother, who has always worked with young children, became convinced that sugar made the difference between a well-adjusted child and a problem child - between a child willing and wanting to learn and a child with no attention span.