My crusade against sugar in all food

If you are not too young, you must have had the experience of wonderful "desi" Chinese food in Dhaka. During my childhood, eating out at Chinese restaurants was the peak of family entertainment. 

Back then, migrant Chinese families ran those restaurants and they modified their menu in accordance with our taste buds. So the food they served had distinct hot, sour and sweet flavours. And we loved them so much. Every time we had enough money to afford it, we would go there to eat that Chinese food again.

But this is a matter of "glorious" past. Now the "desi Chinese" food stinks. If I see those Chinese food being served, I just excuse myself and run for my life. Why? You ask. My answer is simply "sugar"!

I once asked one of the top bosses of a very big company (it's the champion of horrible bread makers) if he ever had the bread his company makes at his breakfast table. He looked perplexed. Why do I ask this question? He did not answer me clearly. He said something like - these breads are aimed at a different "class" of people. He meant the poor class.

Yes! They use sugar in everything, like they have found the holy grail of a sureshot recipe. Fried chicken tastes sugary. Soup sugary. Beef chilly vegetable sugary. Fried rice with extra sugar. And I can't swallow a bit of their noodles because it tastes like they dipped the noodles in the juice of rasagolla.

And they are selling it, day after day, and people are eating that horrible food. What's wrong with your taste bud?

Oh! Why blame the desi Chinese makers only. They mix sugar in almost every processed or cooked food item in Bangladesh. Biriyani in old Dhaka? Chicken or mutton curry? Desi mixed vegetables? Polao? Borhani? Yes! Yes! Yes! These chefs believe a few spoonfuls of sugar adds a "great flavour" to the items they are cooking! 

Wrong! Sugar never makes the food taste great, when the food is NOT supposed to taste sweet. In fact, anyone responsible for adding sugar in chicken or beef bhuna should be publicly caned and then executed Mughal period style.

Whoever was the first chef in Dhaka in the eighties to have "discovered" that adding some sugar to Biriyani will fetch him likes and shares by toddlers should be uncovered by the CID and exposed to the media, before being executed for food genocide. He has popularised this concept beyond our imagination because there was no socio-political resistance. This was worse than extreme communism or communalism. 

Why? You ask. Just imagine, he could be an implant of the pharma companies that sell diabetes drugs and dental solutions. You can call it a conspiracy theory—but what if it's true?

You buy brand bread from the shops. Toast them. They will never be crispy. They will burn disproportionately and always feel soggy in your mouth. And they taste horrible because they use huge amounts of sugar there, because they think that's the way to make it.

I once asked one of the top bosses of a very big company (it's the champion of horrible bread makers) if he ever had the bread his company makes at his breakfast table. He looked perplexed. Why do I ask this question? He did not answer me clearly. He said something like - these breads are aimed at a different "class" of people. He meant the poor class.

But I told him that his company makes the bread suited to torture of criminals. In the past, cops used boiled eggs to torture culprits. Now they use these breads. Why do you use so much sugar in your bread? Why should the poor class be fed unhealthy bread? He had no answer.

I am not being anti-sugar because the anti-sugar lobby paid me a bribe to write this down. I am a born-again anti-sugar guy.

Back in the seventies, when I was a kid—there was a massive sugar crisis in the country. In those days, we used to enjoy one crisis after another, because the world was poorer and the supply chain was not as efficient as it is today. 

So anyway, my grandfather was a businessman. He thought of how to help my mom's family and bought my mom a big sack of sugar. My mom unbundled that sack of sugar and put the whole lot of it in a trunk. Yes, you read that right. In a trunk. 

My mom was apprehensive that if we boys (me and my brother) knew about the sugar—we would finish it. So she hid this trunk under the bed and we were not even aware of the whole transaction. The amount of sugar was actually two years worth of supply.

Then one day my brother and I discovered the sugar stash while playing hide and seek. O my god! What do we do with a trunk full of sugar? We started devouring the raw sugar till we felt like throwing up. 

Then the next day, upon returning from school, we stole sugar again and went to the kitchen while everyone else was taking their afternoon nap. We made sugar omelettes (they become very dark because of the sugar) and we made puddings (we just learnt how to make them by watching BTV).

Within a month or two, we brothers completely devoured the sugar in the trunks—like land grabbers devour rivers and lakes. And my mom discovered that around one month after we were done. She used her sandals and broom stick on us. We did not mind. We were ready to pay the price.

We used to eat the whole can of condensed milk or a pack of Glucose D in one go. Now I shudder thinking about it. Many years later we discovered that the condensed milk did not have any milk in it! Just vegetable concentrate mixed with sugar! Disgusting!

Then at a certain age, we switched to other tastes in food. The world full of only sweet food is bland. Then for the last three decades, I noticed there is a steady rise in the usage of sugar in processed or cooked food.

I blame my university classmate Shafiq for making sugary bread buns popular. Before him, I saw nobody preferring sugary breads. If you like your bread sweetened, go buy a butter bun. But Shafiq saved money to buy the cheaper sugary buns. If the bread did not taste sweet, he would ask a tea vendor to pour a bit of condensed milk on his bun. His economic model of breakfast was soon stolen by others in the campus. Thus sugary breads became the new standard in Bangladesh. Bread makers should reward my friend Shafiq for popularising this horrible taste without using Instagram.

I oppose the indiscriminate usage of sugar. Unfortunately, no political party will join me in my protest. No party waged any movement against sugary food makers. Nobody wanted to hang anybody for using sugar in hot chilli sauce or paste.

Therefore, the food makers perversely continued adding sugar in every item that is not supposed to taste sweet. Meanwhile, diabetes in Bangladesh caught up, with around 15 percent of the population now impacted, from just 5 percent in 2001.  

Lo and behold. The tax department is finally considering imposing more taxes on sugary foods. This is a welcome step. But we need you, the readers, to put your food down at the places you eat. If the food is not supposed to taste sweet but it tastes sweet—reject their food and let them know what you think. Bring back the rule of the original desi taste bud. Are you with me on this? 

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not reflect the opinions or views of The Business Standard