Sugar as bad by another name

Last month I was in Delhi checking out some of the newer retail outlets where my line of earth-friendly products will soon be available. Because the manager was taking me to all his retail points in Gurgaon, an extension of Delhi I was visiting for the first time, I was being politically correct by making a purchase in each store. After having bought some products I needed, I stopped to look at mints, sweets, licorice, chewing gum etc, strategically placed at impulse purchase points, to see which were the healthiest ones I could pick up. The sales staff eagerly assured me that they were all sugar-free. Taking a closer look I discovered that they were indeed free of plain simple sugar. But they were replete with white poison i.e processed sugar and substitutes which are widely believed to be harmless. Of course they arent, though they may be marginally better than pure white sugar. The same is true of a whole range of healthy, natural, diet-food, fat-free, low-calorie food ingredients. I had to look very hard to find a non sugar-free lozenge, the good old-fashioned one. My grandparents had the good fortune of living with jaggery or gur, sans bleach or colour. My parents have had to live with white sugar, bereft of the goodness of gur. I am living with all kinds of chemicals infiltrating my air, water and food. Worse, they seep into the earth. Its somewhat akin to nature’s revenge for trying to be one up on her. Genetically modified, hybrid, irradiated and pesticides-heavy foods, all contribute toward making us more sick than we already are with the consumption of refined or empty foods which fill the belly but do nothing to supply nutrition to body cells, which is the very purpose of eating. The gastronomical satisfaction of such food is its only virtue. Therefore the true connoisseur or gourmet is a person who is able to taste and appreciate wholesome food as nature intended. If you have tasted genuinely organic fare, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Because of my long and close connection with pure and safe food, an involvement which began with my desire to feed my family right, I have carefully studied the role of sugar in our lives. It’s sad to learn that there’s a political angle even to something as simple as a citizen wanting a natural sweetener. I have been advocating the virtues of non-chemical, non-bleached and non-coloured jaggery for over a decade and have prompted start-ups which produce traditional gur shakkar (golden sugar) from chemicals-free, earth-friendly sugarcane which — its health benefits apart — is easier to spoon into your beverage than jaggery. I have also been involved with the production and marketing of palm jaggery from Goa (coconut palm) and Kerala (fan palm). They not only infuse the body with instant energy but with beneficial minerals as well. A close runner-up is khandsari (raw sugar) which although nutritionally not on a par with gur is more beneficial than white sugar. It is free of chemicals that…