The 50 year-old actress who once stole your heart is now running behind an 8 year-old boy with chocolate coated cereal. She’s playing a mother to a fussy boy who’s only chance of getting nourishment is through the cereal. They don’t explicitly show it but in your head, you have already imagined that there is low fat milk in it. Thankfully, the boy has the meal, he loves it in fact, and now the mother and son celebrate this meal by playing a video game.
Another 50 year-old actor, beats mountains, traffic and death itself to pick a bottle of what the EU calls as SSB or sugar sweetened beverage. That essentially expands the list beyond the colas to include packaged fruit juices, probiotic yogurt drinks, energy or sports drinks.
Kids from 9th standard hang out in cafés sipping from monstrous glasses of cold coffee or choco shakes after tuition classe. When they study, they quickly make themselves some noodles, or now pasta, in two minutes. They watch TV programs 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 in it but I hope you are beginning to realize that the sugar is hardly a problem. The product, positioning, pricing is. That our kids are moving lesser on bikes and sitting more in cafes is. That we reduce 50 year old women to aunties and 50 year old 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 rag pickers 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? We are sure that governments cannot be held accountable, food companies or any industry is above the law and 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 eat the Marie biscuit to go with it. Marie or digestive is a healthy choice because its not as sweet as a regular biscuit. There you go, the sweetness is the problem. So no more sweet fruits like – Mango, seetaphal, Jackfruit, Chickoo etc. Doesn’t matter if they are local, doesn’t matter if they contain natural fruit sugar, fructose. American Diabetic Association can recommend Mango to Diabetics but in the land of its origin, its banned by the doctor and dietitian. We don’t outrage about it on social media. We are quite cool about the bannistan as long as its about all local fruits and produce in general.
Once sugar is the problem, then you can replace it with substitutes. The sugar substitute market is expected to reach 16.53 Billion USD by 2020. The growth is driven by the health conscious modern consumer looking for sugar alternative in their food and beverages, and the health and personal care industry demands from developing countries like India and China.
In USA, Clinton and Sanders fought over soda tax in their presidential campaign and UK will levy soda tax from April, 2018. What we must consider before buying into the fear of the West about sugar is that Nutrition science, as we knew it, something that split everything into carb, prot, fat and calories is changing. Food scientists world over are acknowledging the fact that there is more to food than what meet the carb, protein and fat split.
Sugar to India is as ancient as Yoga and Ayurveda itself, it firmly occupies the position of being 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 based on the season and region. 

-Diwali to Sankranti period has festivals that celebrate the power of sugar cane as that is also its harvest time. Sugarcane is not just great to taste but is a fibre, mineral and vitamin rich plant. Its also a folk remedy for jaundice. Sugar cane juice boiled with pulses is a nutritious and 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 winters of North India. In Bengal, it gets turned to Sandes, the delicacy whose mere thought can uplift the most cynical leftists. 

- The mishri with suaf is the digestive aid for the summers post a meal. 

- And the crystalline sugar is in everything, from a Prasad to a sherbet, to beat the heat or a sprinkle on your sabzi to bring out the richness of its flavours.
None of the traditional ways we use sugar are mainstream or find depictions in ads or marketing. Why must we give up on the traditional uses of sugar and use packaged products that use sugar substitutes?
Sugar is not the problem. India now consumes 3 times more sugar than what it used to just in 1970s and that’s not because its eating more ladoos, halwa and sugar in chai. But because its drinking more colas, packaged juices, cereals. It is distributing brownies, cup-cakes and frozen yogurts instead of dryfruits, ladoos and traditional mithai for Diwali. Because it is patronizing food products from big food companies over the small women run enterprises that made mithai. Because it is funding the third house or a reclining bed on the food company’s CEO private jet instead of the dance class for the daughter of a small family business that sells Puran poli. Sugar is not the problem, giving up on food traditions without a thought is.
P.S: I wrote this for Sunday Times and was published in May 2016.