Category Archives: sustainability

What’s the big deal about sustainability, anyway?

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You’re hearing it more and more these days.  Seems everyone is talking about “sustainability” and every company is using the word to try to sell you on their product.  But what does it really mean when it comes to food and why should you care?

Think about this: in less than 100 years, since the end of World War II and the introduction of chemical-based, factory farming we have done more harm to our physical environment than at any previous period in human history.  Digest that for a second.  Scary, right?  The current system is on a collision course; it’s simply not a sustainable way to persist if we expect the human race to survive and thrive on a continued basis.

The good news is that we’re still in a period where much of the damage is reversible or can, at the very least, be mitigated.  So, your food choices matter.  Every time you eat you “vote” with your food choice for the type of system you want to live in: one on a path to collapse or one that can continue to sustain itself and life on our planet.

We’re not experts at this and we’re not about to jump on a soapbox about it but it’s worth starting to care about and you can learn more about the growing sustainability movement from these guys, who are just a few of the fantastic organizations working to increase awareness and provide educational resources to consumers:

Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!!

Yours truly,
Sug + The Cap’n 

Our Ingredients: Coconut Palm Nectar

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The primary sugar used in Barbary Brix caramels is the delightfully healthy and delicious Coconut Palm Nectar! We use it for a lot of meritorious reasons, which I will now illuminate for you below…


  1. It’s the most environmentally sustainable sweetener crop in the WORLD! Well, at least according The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)…
  2. It’s lower glycemic than almost any other sugar!
  3. It’s good for you with vitamins, mineral and enzymes your body needs!
  4. It tastes delicious on its own or in other foods – especially caramel!

I know what you’re thinking… “Prove it!” So here goes…

Coconut Palm uses a very small amount of water compared to other sweetener crops. In addition, it is grown in tropical climates with lots of rain so the farmers don’t have to do any irrigating. The plants themselves produce a very high yield of nectar for a small crop area and they also – get this – REPLENISH nutrients in the soil rather than depleting it. In addition, the farmers don’t have to destroy the plant to harvest the nectar, making the sugar a renewable resource. On top of all that, unlike conventional sugars like white sugar (mostly made from GMO beets) the Coconut Palm Nectar is unrefined so it retains the vitamins, minerals, and enzymes your body needs in order to digest it well. Which, brings me to my next point – when you talk about lower glycemic sweeteners, it doesn’t get much lower than this.

What exactly does that mean and why should you care? To get a really easy-to-understand explanation of how different types of sugars are broken down in your body, read our guest blogger, Alex Mart’s post here! In the meantime, to make it short and sweet (pun intended), when your body processes sugars it needs certain enzymes and nutrients to do it without causing a huge spike in blood sugar.

Coconut Palm Sugar is loaded with B-vitamins, macro-nutrients like Potassium and Zinc, and plenty of good enzymes your body needs. Eating nutritious sugars, like this, allow your body to break the carbohydrates down gradually without depleting your stored mineral and vitamin resources. So, this is obviously good for everyone but the lower glycemic index make it especially good for diabetics, people with hypoglycemia and children who suffer from sugar-induced spastic episodes (so pretty much ALL of them).

Wanna see a comparison chart of different sugars’ nutrient content? Check it!

Last, but certainly not least is the fact that Coconut Palm Nectar tastes amazing and is a perfect addition to our caramels. Not too sweet but rich and complex, it creates layers of flavor so you end up with a smooth, fragrant caramel that tastes like caramel, not sugar. Don’t believe us? SF Weekly food writer, Jon Kauffman, recently described the flavor by saying: “While the Barbary Brix sweets are as sticky as conventional sugar caramels, the rice and coconut sweeteners give them a deeper, most complex flavor — similar to the difference between a piece of toast smeared with butter-flavored Crisco and one slathered in Irish cultured butter.” You can read more of his review here.

Are you also wondering where we get ours from? I’ll tell you anyway! While over two thirds of the ingredients in our products are local, there aren’t currently any Northern California coconut palm farms so we import this ingredient from Big Tree Farms, a sustainable co-op of small scale farmers in Bali. The technique used by these farmers to collect the nectar is the least damaging to the tree as it involves collecting nectar from the flower (inflorescence) rather than “tapping” the tree for sap. Big Tree Farms’ Coconut Palm Nectar is the most eco-friendly Palm Nectar on the market today and we feel great about their commitment to social and ecological responsibility.

Want to read more?? Here’s some cool links:

Other Cool Sustainable Products: ColcaSac

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Heyoooo! Sugar here…

So, I recently replaced my old, antiquated iBook with a shiny new laptop, which I desperately needed after leaving my desk job for the world of better-for-you sweets! Of course, I also needed a way to protect my little efficiency facilitator from damage so I went on the hunt for a case. I was looking for something that, like Barbary Brix candy, was made with quality, sustainable materials in a responsible manner.
What did I find? Only the coolest electronics case company out there, ColcaSac!! Not only are these babies handmade using sustainable materials but they are affordable and the company itself belongs to 1% For The Planet to boot! You can choose from tons of different designs for your iPad, MacBook, iPhone, or Kindle. They even make shoulder bags!!
I’ve been using my Lappy (aka laptop) sleeve for over a month now and it’s FANTASTIC. I love how soft and snugly it fits. Speaking of snuggling, I feel like I’m tucking it into a fuzzy, warm sleeping bag every time I put it away. (Sweep tight, wittle Wappy!!) Bottom line, it looks great, does its job, and makes me feel good knowing how it’s made. Needless to say, I’m a huge fan and I’m not the only one:
ColcaSac has the Official Sugar Stamp of Approval!

My packaging can beat up your packaging!

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Our new and improved candy wrappers have finally arrived!

If you’ve had Barbary Brix caramels up until now, you’ve been eating them out of a natural, recycled wax paper wrapper. We certainly don’t want to diss the lovely, and compostable little guys that have served us so well but they tend to seep a bit of oil, making things a smidge greasy. :(
The good news is that our Innovia Films, custom cut NatureFlex ™ wrappers have arrived! Innovia is a company that makes a fantastic, sustainably manufactured, compostable film similar to cellophane. It’s clear, so you can see the caramel better and it prevents that distracting oily film on the outside. Yay! As if that weren’t enough, they are, I’m trying to find a good description…uber-compostable. Basically, not only can you compost them in a municipal compost bin, they would even compost in your home compost in a mere 34 days! Really.
Incidentally, I heard that worms loooooove them. Even fancy worms that wear fancy worm top hats. (Don’t worry if you don’t follow, that was an Always Sunny reference for that crowd…)
Bet you’d like to, maybe, know whyyyy we are so excited about this? I’ll tell you.
Well, for starters, candy packaging is a big contributor to landfill waste. You might think those little wrappers can’t make much of a difference but the average American consumes a staggering 23.8 pounds of candy per year according to the US Department of Commerce! (2008, most recent data.) That’s a lot of packaging; it adds up, yo. In fact according to a, maybe outdated but interesting 1997 study (Ackerman), food packaging is about one third of municipal waste in the United States. Yikes.
Something else to think about is the environmental impact of manufacturing that packaging… How many food companies disclose that or are they even aware?
Theeeen, and probably more troubling, is the fact that food manufacturing is one of the more significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in the US, 20-30%. Whoa. Candy is a big part of that industry and you don’t hear much about sustainable food or confectionery manufacturing, now do you…
So, long story longer, as a small part of how we are trying to pay attention to and be responsible for our own environmental impact, we feel really good about using this environmentally low-impact wrapper as a part of our eco-friendlier packaging line-up!! Check back for other posts on the rest of our eco-friendly packaging later… :)
In summary, PLEASE REMEMBER TO COMPOST THESE WRAPPERS!!
Hugs,
Sugar
PS This is an interesting research report for your reading pleasure.

Countdown to launch…

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Our launch party invite has been sent!

Whew.
In a matter of two short months of nearly around-the-clock devotion, we’ve managed to get ramped up to the point where we can make this product available for sale. Our launch party is going to be a great event where we get to talk about what we are doing and feed you samples of our candy while plying you with delicious specially-paired cocktails to boot!
You might be interested in a little background on how Barbary Brix came about…
Growing up, every year my mom would make delicious caramels at the holidays to give away as gifts to neighbors and friends. It was a family tradition that included cooking, stirring, wrapping, packaging, and delivering, all while being forbidden to consume too much of the candy. You can imagine, for a child, the difficulty of this task.
A couple of years back, all grown up now, I got together with my very good friend Rob (aka Captain Rob) to continue the family tradition and with his culinary expertise, improved the recipe to rave reviews. The subsequent year, we ramped up production and started testing new variations all the while hearing, “Please sell these!”
Well, this got the wheels spinning.
But here’s the rub… candy is not a very eco-friendly nor sustainable product due to the production methods, packaging, and the farming methods used to produce the ingredients! In addition, the ingredients used can be very detrimental to the public’s health as well as a contributor to problems like childhood obesity and diabetes, to name a few. So how could we feel good about contributing to those problems even if we were making people happy with a yummy, gourmet, hand-crafted candy?
Well, to keep it simple (we’ll discuss in greater detail later) after months of research we realized that not only was it possible to source local, sustainable and organic ingredients, eliminate preservatives and stabilizers, and use compostable and biodegradable packaging, but we could also make a candy with a lower glycemic index that tastes DELICIOUS.
It is not too good to be true. Try it for yourself! We are confident you will walk away a believer.
In fact, we will have tons of samples available at our launch party!
When: December 7, 2010, 8:00 pm
Where: Sip Bar & Lounge, 787 Broadway in San Francisco
This company and our caramels are truly a labor of love for us and we’re so excited to share that with all of you!
Hugs,
Sugar