has some minerals (but very small amount). l prefer the flavor if i eat it raw.

it’s just as sweet as normal sugar so either it’s your own personal placebo affect or your not getting the sugar dissolved into whatever drinks you’re using it in.

I only use it in the rare event that I get coffee at a restaurant because it’s usually the only actual sugarcane sugar they have for that.

I suspect marketing bullshittery. I’ve bought “sugar in the raw” a few years ago to try, and it reminded me of back in In high school chemistry II in which I did an experiment where I took a brand name sugar and a lower budget brand sugar and examined it under a microscope. The budget brand sugars’ crystal structure was larger but hollow. Weighing the two by volume showed less mass for the budget brand. Putting the same volume of the two in a mortar and grinding with a pestle yielded less volume for the budget brand which means for the same volume you’re getting less sugar.

I believe that “sugar in the raw” does the same thing to give you less for more price, but compounds it’s marketing by telling you it’s unprocessed and more natural. Maybe that’s true but you’re certainly getting less product for the price. One would think less processing would cost less. The only difference from the experiment was that you were paying less for less. Kind of interesting how business ethics have changed over the years.

My first thought was that maybe the Sugar in the Raw packets have less product in them, since turbinado sugar is more expensive than white sugar, but a quick googling tells me that Sugar in the Raw packets are 5 grams and standard sugar packets are in the 2.3- 3 gram range. So if you use a comparable number of packets out of habit, you really are doubling your sugar intake.

So I think it must just be a solubility thing, as suggested below. The big crystals do end up sunk to the bottom of a cold drink undissolved. If it’s a hot drink… 🤷‍♀️