A sugar beet is a type of root vegetable grown specifically to make sugar. While it looks similar to a regular beet (with a thick, white root and leafy green top), sugar beets contain much more natural sugar in their roots than the red beets you might see at dinner.

For over 200 years, sugar beets have been one of the world's two main sources of sugar, along with sugar cane. Sugar cane grows in hot tropical climates, but sugar beets thrive in cooler places like northern Europe and the northern United States. This matters because it means countries with cold winters can grow their own sugar instead of importing it from faraway tropical regions.

To extract the sugar, farmers harvest the thick white roots, slice them into thin pieces, and soak them in hot water. The sugar dissolves into the water, and through various processes, workers eventually crystallize it into the white sugar you'd recognize in your kitchen. About one-third of the world's sugar comes from sugar beets rather than sugar cane, and you can't taste any difference between beet sugar and cane sugar once they're refined.