Sugar & Salt

[Sbharrisat]

rudy-canoza@excite.com wrote:
> IanW wrote:
> > Why doesn't sugar and salt go off? ie: not get polluted by
> > microorganisms?
> >
> > Bigus
>
>
> No protein present in either one.

COMMENT:

But honey doesn't decay or ferment either, and it certainly
has enough protein to provide some nutrition for microbes (not
to mention bee larvae).

The main reason for the self preservation of sugar is the
osmotic one explained. If you dilute honey with water so the
osmotic forces are low enough, it WILL ferment. Then you get
mead. Indeed, if you make even dilute sugar water with that
horrible supposedly nutrition-free "white refined table
sugar," it will grow all kinds of interesting microbes as
well. It is not, of course, quite pure. And the difference is
everything.

SBH