How is it made ? - Raw cane sugar is crushed to extract the juice. The juice is boiled water is evaporated leaving pure panela.

Is it known by other names ? - Yes. Gur or Gur Jaggarey(India); Raspadura(Ecuador, Brazil);

The earliest records of panela date back to 3000BC in India, where it was known as Gur Jaggery or more commonly today Gur. Its arrival in South America was as a result of Christopher Columbus's second expedition in 1495 when he founded the first sugar cane plantations in Santa Domingo.

Today the art of sugar cane production has reached its zenith in the Valle de Cauca, Colombia, where some of the most fertile soils in the world are used to grow one of the most ancient and richest sources of food known to man.

The best known use of sugar cane is the refined and crystallised white sugar we find in almost every home in every Country in the world, but this sanitised product with many additives and chemical changes is very distinct from the original form.

Panela is pure natural cane sugar concentrated by boiling into four distinct forms:

• Guarapo   - Cane sugar juice - crushed cane, as natural as it comes.
• Miel         - Cane sugar honey - lightly boiled in copper pans to a concentrate.
• Panela - Cane sugar block - boiled to extract the water and left to harden.
• Polvo - Cane sugar flour - panela block crushed and sieved.

There are no additives and each product differs only by the reduction of water content.

In addition to being a food source as rich as honey, panela has been discovered to have some unique medicinal properties, which are well documented but until recently, almost forgotten. Some of these include:

• Whole sugar prevents tooth decay.
• Natural high energy replacement.
• Constipation (in babies), which is very frequent with white sugar, disappears.
• Prevention of nutritious anaemia.
• Whole sugar prevents rickets.
• Thrush or aphthae rarely returns.
• Children are more alive and full of vitality.                                                 Dr. N.H. Beguin, Pronatec S.A. - Switzerland

 

• Healing of both internal and external wounds.
• Closure of contaminated wounds.
• Healing of ulcers.                                                                                         Prof Titular Dr. Gonzalo Reyes G                                                                                                                        - Universidad de Bogota

                                                                                                                       Dr. Luis J. Giraldo - Universidad de Antioquia

• Prevention of wound infection in perforated appendicitis.                         Dr. Am Surg