Ahh, you sound confused by the sugar industry marketing. Brown and "raw" sugar are still processed sugars by many definitions. For instance, see [https://www.

Ahh, you sound confused by the sugar industry marketing. Brown and "raw" sugar are still processed sugars by many definitions. For instance, see [https://www.cancercenter.com/discussions/blog/natural-vs-refined-sugars-whats-the-difference/ https://www.cancercenter.com/discussions/blog/natural-vs-ref...] Brown, raw, and white sugar are all extracted and highly concentrated from the harvested plant products. When you read about processed suger in medical research, they're almost certainly making a distinction between extracted and concentrated sugars vs sugars that are still bound in plant products such as fruits. I don't doubt that these studies and the Mayo Clinic doctor warned your friend about processed sugars. However, they were almost certainly directing towards fruits and vegetables and away from white sugar, brown sugar, and "raw" sugar (which is a marketing term for a still highly processed sucrose extract from plants). And while we're throwing around Mayo Clinic doctors, my dad recently retired, but he was a practicing physician who did his residency at the Mayo clinic, and he certainly considers brown and "raw" sugar to be processed sugar.