Nutritional and functional components of non centrifugal cane sugar: A compilation of the data from the analytical literature

• Forty-two publications with analytical data on NCS have been identified.
• NCS has nutritionally significant quantities of minerals and vitamins.
• It presents antioxidant properties correlated with its phenolics content.
• These results justify considering NCS a nutritional and functionally important food.

Non-centrifugal cane sugar (NCS) (panela, jaggery, kokuto, etc.) is a traditional sweetener of increasingly economic importance after a long process of displacement by refined sugar. By searching the analytical literature with the different local names of NCS (jaggery, gur, kokuto, panela, chancaca, piloncillo, rapadura, muscovado, unrefined sugar, black sugar) as key-words, this review identified the published data on its content of 7 proximate, 14 minerals, and 13 vitamins so to calculate its average and median values, as well as list its contents of potentially relevant functional components like phenolics, amino acids, complex sugars and others. The forty-two publications on chemical content and properties found to show that NCS has nutritionally and functionally significant quantities of minerals, vitamins and phenolics, among other constituents, as well as antioxidant capacities. This justifies its inclusion in food composition databases and in reviews of antioxidant properties and phenolic contents of foods. Higher awareness of the nutritional and functional properties of NCS could increase scientific, nutritional and health interest in this food.