Sweet mass poison

India’s middle class and affluent are steadfast in one respect: they love sugar. Over the years, the craving for anything sweet has been growing enormously. Mithais to carbonated soft drinks to breakfast cereals and even health products like chavanprash come loaded with sugar. And we devour it.

No wonder, India is the world’s largest consumer of sugar and the second-largest
producer of sugar.

When food and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar said in Parliament the other day that he was worried at the drastic slump in sugar production, falling by more than 40 per cent this year, and was therefore considering duty-free imports, I wasn’t surprised. Rising prices of sugar, more so when the festival season is upon us, can have political repercussions.
Pawar, as we all know, represents the sugar lobby.

His interest therefore is to increase sugar consumption which in turn benefits the industry. Obviously the stakes are high for him. But I wonder why the electronic and print media is also backing over-consumption of sugar. I am often asked whether the government’s decision to allow duty-free imports auger well for the domestic sugar industry.

I usually reply that the present crisis in sugar production should serve as an opportunity to educate the consumers against their growing preference for sugar. Instead of allowing duty-free imports, India should let the prices go up to a reasonable level so that consumption can come down. What the nation needs to be told is that sugar is harmful for health and therefore its use should be restricted and phased-out. Our tastes have to change.

In a country which has now become the diabetic capital of the world, with some 70 million people expected to be suffering from diabetes by the year 2050, the situation is truly alarming.

You might say that diabetes is more to do with the changing lifestyle, but the fact of the matter is that processed food and carbonated soft drink intake is multiplying and is increasingly becoming part of the neo-rich lifestyle. Sugar has no vitamins and minerals and weakens the immune system.

In her book Sugar: Pleasure or Poison, Dr Carolyn Dean says that as sugar consumption increases, more people suffer from diabetes, hypoglycaemia, heart disease and hyperactivity. In another study in Norway, higher intake of sugar has been found to be linked with mental problems in the young.

Much of the increased intake of sugar in the young people is from soft drinks. Incidentally, China, India, Vietnam, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries are the major markets for the soft drink industry.

Dr Dean illustrates how sugar intake is increasing worldwide. Some brands of ketchup have more sugar per ounce than ice cream. Non-dairy creamers have more sugar than a chocolate bar. There are 20 teaspoons of sugar in a milk shake and about eight teaspoons in most desserts.

It is speculated that the sugar industry has been able to force the World Health Organisation (WHO) not to make public one of its damming studies on the health impacts of sugar.

This is similar to what happened with tobacco consumption. The industry knew about the dangers of tobacco but fought against any disclosure or government warnings.

In India, from an average of 5.3kgs per annum in the early 1960s, sugar consumption has grown to 18kgs per capita per year in 2006. Since averages in a country like India do not mean much, let us look at the consumption pattern in the urban areas, where the nation needs to be worried.

In Punjab the per capita consumption of sugar exceeds 72kgs, closely followed by Haryana at 70kgs. Both these predominantly agricultural states are far ahead of the rest of the country. Maharashtra and Kerala stand at 42kgs each; Gujarat with 41kgs, Uttar Pradesh with 36kgs; Tamil Nadu with 30kgs against an average for urban India at 32kgs.
Ideally, sugar consumption should be below 25 kg per year.

Instead of waiting for the government to educate us about the inherent dangers from increased sugar consumption; we need to take steps in a healthy direction. Replacing sugar with organic jaggery (gur) could be one option. Children particularly should be discouraged from consuming processed foods and carbonated drinks.

Replace these with fresh fruits and vegetables. Like the movement against plastic bags and crackers, school children should be encouraged to launch a similar movement against sugar. As for the government, pressure has to be applied to bring in adequate safety provisions under the newly constituted Food Safety Authority.

The writer is a food policy analyst.