Can You Really Get Sugar from a Sugar Beet?

Sugar is manufactured from the roots of the sugar beet, the leaves and tops being removed after harvesting and used as stock feed. The roots are cut into cossettes, or chips, at the sugar factory, and the cossettes are crushed to remove the juice. The pulp remaining after the extraction of the juice is a rich food for domestic animals.

After extraction, lime is added to the juice; the remainder of the process is similar to sugar production from sugarcane. Beet molasses is fed to livestock; table molasses is not made from beets because of difficulties in purification. The sugar that is produced from the sugar beet is chemically identical to the sugar that is derived from the sugarcane.