Another 50-year-old actor overcomes mountains, traffic and death itself to pick a bottle of what the EU calls SSB or sugar sweetened beverage. That essentially expands the list beyond the colas to include packaged fruit juices, probiotic yogurt drinks, energy and sports drinks.
Kids from Class IX hang out at cafés sipping monstrous glasses of cold coffee or choco shakes after tuition classes.When they study , they quickly make themselves some noodles, or pasta, in two minutes. They watch TV programmes interspersed with ads that ask them to mix powders in milk to grow taller, run faster or simple look cooler.
All of the above have tons of sugar but I hope you are beginning to realize that sugar is hardly the problem. The product, positioning and pricing is. That our kids are moving less on bikes and sitting more is. That we reduce 50-yearold women to aunties and 50-yearold men to dudes is. That we don't have a policy on how junk food should be advertised is. That we don't tax food companies or hold them accountable for the garbage that they create with their packets, tetra-packs and bottles is. Pick on the big guys and leave the ragpickers of Deonar alone, man. But that's not how this works.
So instead of looking at the picture in totality we reduce our problem to sugar. Sugar is the enemy.Sugar is killing us. Sugar is making us fat. Sugar is giving us diabetes and the likes. Isn't there a word for it -deflection? Or hey! don't change the subject if you are just a middle class, angrezi-speaking Indian like me. We like intelligence sold to us in easy-tounderstand terms. We are sure that governments cannot be held accountable, food companies are above the law -probably even making the law -and we are too short on time for any kind of activism. If we look at the total problem, we don't know what to do. But if we have something fairly simple to make a lifestyle choice with, we will adopt it.
So, no more sugar for me in the chai but I will have a Marie biscuit to go with it. Marie or digestive is a healthy choice because it's not as sweet as a regular biscuit. There you go, the sweetness is the problem. So no more sugary fruits like -mango, seetaphal, jackfruit, chikoo, etc.Doesn't matter if they are local, doesn't matter if they contain natural fruit sugar, fructose. The American Diabetic Association can recommend mango to diabetics but in the land of its origin, it is banned by the doctors and dietitians. We aren't outraged about it on social media.We are quite cool about the banistan as long as it is about all local fruit and produce in general.
The sugar substitute market is expected to reach $16.53 billion by 2020. This growth is driven by the health-conscious modern consumer in the West, and the demands of the health and personal care industry of developing countries like India and China.
In the meanwhile, Clinton and Sanders are fighting over soda tax in their presidential campaign and UK will levy soda tax from April, 2018. What we must consider before buying into the West's fear of sugar is that nutrition science as we knew it -where everything can be split into categories such as carb, protein, fat or calories -is changing. Food scientists the world over are acknowledging the fact that there is more to food than these categories.
Sugar to India is as ancient as yoga and ayurveda itself. It is one of the panch amrits or nectars of life.What has changed is the way India consumes its sugar. Being a native plant, we have had the sophistication to use the plant in diverse, versatile ways depending on the season and region. From Diwali to Sankranti, there are festivals that celebrate the power of sugarcane because that is also harvest time. Apart from taste, sugarcane has fibre, mineral and vitamins. It's also a folk remedy for jaundice. Sugarcane juice boiled with pulses is an inexpensive but complete meal for the tribals of western Maharashtra.
Jaggery and ghee combinations along with bajra and other millet rotis are known to provide the body with warmth and the joints with mobility in the harsh north Indian winter. In Bengal, sweet, delicate sandesh is known to lift the spirits of even cynical leftists. The mishrisaunf combo works as a digestive aid in summers. And the crystalline sugar is in everything, from prasad to a sharbat.
None of the traditional ways in which we use sugar is depicted in ads or marketing campaigns. Why must we give up on the traditional uses of sugar and use packaged products that use sugar substitutes? India now consumes three times more sugar than it used to just in 1970s, and that's not because it's eating more mithai or has more sugar in its chai. But because it's drinking more colas, packaged juices and eating sugared cereals. It is distributing brownies, cup-cakes and frozen yogurts instead of dryfruits, ladoos and mithai during Diwali. It is patronizing food products of big companies and not the small women run enterprises that make mithai. It is funding the third house or the private jet that the food company's CEO is buying and not the dance class the daughter of a small entrepreneur who makes puran poli wants to attend. Sugar is not the problem, giving up on food traditions without a thought is.
Diwekar is a leading nutritionist.Her latest book, Indian Superfoods, is on the Juggernaut app