Sugarcane juice

It is consumed as a beverage in many places, especially where sugarcane is commercially grown, such as Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, North Africa, mainly Egypt, and also in South America.

In the United States, where processed sugarcane syrup is used as a sweetener in food and beverage manufacturing, "evaporated cane juice" is considered by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be a misleading term for "sugar" on product labels because the FDA regards "juice" as a liquid derived from fruits or vegetables; the preferred term is "cane sugar".

[4] Drinking sugarcane juice in Egypt may pose health risks due to contamination with the mycotoxins aflatoxin B1 and fumonisin B1.

[11] Before sugarcane was introduced to the southern region, it had already been cultivated for many centuries in Southeast Asia and India for its sweet juice, which was used to produce crude sugar.

When Jesuit priests began growing sugarcane in what is now downtown New Orleans in 1751, they faced challenges in efficiently converting its juice into sugar due to the high costs, unreliability, and lack of profitability.

The earliest record comes from a 9th-century inscription, dated from the Medang Mataram period, that describes a sweet drink called Nalaka Rasa, which translates as "sugarcane juice".

[16] In the eastern region of Madagascar, sugarcane juice is fermented to make an inexpensive alcoholic beverage called betsa-betsa.

[2] Instead, the FDA recommends "cane sugar" or another term determined by manufacturers who should "review the final guidance and consider whether their labeling terminology accurately describes the basic nature and characterizing properties of the sweetener used".