I keep mine in the freezer it stay soft in there forever.

Another tip for softening rock-hard brown sugar is to add a slice of bread to the bag or canister and let it sit over night. Presto-change-o, the next morning it'll be soft again

Issue with adding bread or apples or the like to sugar is that you run the risk of introducing unwanted tastes, or even having mold grow, sure sugar may not molder but the added items will. Yuck

The bread won't mold when it's dried out

I did not finish the article because it was too slow to wait for each picture to load. Do i really need a picture of sugar and items I see everyday?

In my experience powdered sugar tastes gross after a year in the cupboard. The sugar starts to break down and it tastes like SOAP. So please buy fresh unless you want your stuff to taste funny.

Keeping a soda cracker in with your sugar will also keep it from hardening.

get a clue...life is fatal. If sugar is the worst of it, good!

Too much sugar is causing type two diabetes at unprecedented rates, which is in fact often fatal and causes many people a lot of grief. While swearing off sugar entirely may be extreme, telling someone to "get a clue" when they say sugar can be dangerous is just a bit ironic.

So apparently sugar is toxic and the mother nature network shouldn't be promoting toxins *that occur in nature*. you now how toxic fruits are with all of their naturally occuring sugar. seiously...Let me guess all of the synthetic sweetners are superior in their health benefits than cane sugar. seriously? or better yet, a healthy diet shouldn't include anything sweet at all? I can't stand extremists. Obviously anything consumed excessively is going to cause problems. A normal diet for a healthy person

Sugar is not a toxin. Some form of sugar is necessary for proper health and probably for survival for people with properly functioning organs. ". Sugar can have negative effects when consumed in excessive quantities. That is not what. toxic means. Please cite your research that sugar is "toxic".

You may want to educate yourself on how you actually get diabetes before spouting off. Sugar is not a cause - http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/diabetes-myths/

As you said it is a myth and I have been referencing the ADA's research to no avail since my mother was a local chapter president in the early 1980's.

Yikes, sugar? microwave? when are people going to wake up to the fact that they're poisoning themselves and their children...Thought maybe the Mother Nature Network would not be the place to be promoting these toxins.

Since when do microwaves poison anyone? Paranoid much? LOL

Thanks for the info on brown sugar. I used to just throw it out because it was so hard.

I can't remember exactly, but I think it was my mom would put a piece of terra cotta in the brown sugar jar and somehow it stayed fresh. And a way to keep cookies fresh and chewy is to put a piece of bread in the tin with them (obviously changing the bread out as needed...if it's not edible, I toss it out for the birds. If it's still good but dry, I make croutons.)