NEW DELHI: Sugar is India’s love language. We say welcome, congratulations, best of luck, balle balle, everything with it. There are sweet recipes even for shradh ceremonies and funerals. Whether it is a child going for an exam or a young woman for a job interview, the mother sends them off with cheeni. For many a home and hearth, the Eid just gone by was synonymous with sweet seviyan, and Ram Navami with puran poli. Weddings of course are storied for their dessert offerings. Come June 4, laddoos will keep every election win company.
You could say sweetness has similar affective weight all over the world. Good life is sweet life. But in India this relationship is the most ancient. Because 3,000 years ago it was Indians who first refined sugarcane juice into crystals, it has seeped into our culture and traditions in a more profound way.
First India Spread Sugar Across The World
From being used in ancient India for royal or ceremonial purposes, white crystalline sugar spread as a marker of pure luxury in Persia, China and other parts of Asia. Once Europeans started to love it, they used colonialism and slavery to get it in larger and larger quantities. When slavery began to be pressed back, indentured labour, including millions of Indians, were transported to various colonies to service sugar plantations there.
Sugar baron dynasties likewise sprang up in different locations – from Egypt’s Karimis to Cyprus’ Venetian Corner family, Barbados’s Lascelles, US’s Havemeyers and Fanjuls, and the Birla family in India.
Then Came Its Industrial Avatar
Fast forward to present day. Expansive global capitalism has put massive quantities of sugar in industrial food and beverages. It is now sold as a source of energy, marketed to militaries and schools. Even hospital shops are packed with fizzy drinks and patients are served sugary calories.
And India continues to round off the global supply chain from both sides. It is the world’s second largest sugar producer, with Maharashtra accounting for about a third of that production. It is also the largest consumer.
Left to its own devices, the reign of sugar will become even more commanding. Despite major growth in recent decades, in per capita terms, India’s 19 kg sugar consumption per year still lags the global average and the sugar industry would love for it to catch up. The cultural predisposition towards this is being amped up with more packaged food and advertising every day. This is bad, bad news.
Hand In Hand With Diabetes
Our country is already the diabetes capital of the world. With an estimated 11% of Indians diabetic, and 15% pre-diabetic, the disease incidence is already staggering. At the same time, treatment and control rates are low, because of various barriers to healthcare access, including cost. Growing disease incidence will likely see further rise in demand-supply mismatch.
It’s Now As Toxic As Tobacco
Whether it is on account of increased risks of obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, the question is if govts now need to regulate added sugars on the same war footing as tobacco? For Gary Taubes, author of The Case Against Sugar, the answer is an incontrovertible ‘yes’.
Interestingly, he also points out that Hindu physician Sushruta had described the characteristic sweet urine of diabetes mellitus, “and noted that it was most common in the overweight and gluttonous”, all the way back in 6th century BCE. This is in the same era as Atharva Ved was describing sugar as an object of desire. It is time to strengthen the former cultural strand, where only the latter has flourished.
As the 2008-20 ICMR-INDIAB study indicates, urban India accounts for 16% of diabetes prevalence compared to rural India’s 9%. This is one indicator that lifestyle and diet changes are the key culprits. Battling them is a two-front effort. Raising awareness and regulating better.
Save The Children
In UK, the introduction of a sugary drinks tax has been followed by a drop in the number of obesity cases among older primary school children. The tax rate increases with the amount of sugar added.
India by contrast taxes aerated beverages at 40% – 28% GST and 12% compensation cess. Critics say this flat tax disincentivises manufacturers from devising lower-sugar alternatives. Plus, there is no cap on the amount of sugar that can be added.
It’s unsurprising that both the Bournvita and Cerelac controversies centre on children. This is where the ‘hack’ starts. This is where it must be stopped. Both with better food and better education about how food works.
Take a school lunchbox. Its contents are changing too fast for most parents to properly track the changing nutrition stats. What are the hidden sugars in breakfast cereals, cured meats, bread, biscuits, cheese spread and ketchup?
Roland Barthes once argued, “Food has a constant tendency to transform itself into (a) situation.” For decades and centuries sugar has inveigled its way into the centre of modern life. Reversing this tide will mean nothing less than re-situationing food. And re-proportioning the sweetness of the good life.
(This story appeared in the print edition on May 1, 2024.)
