The tax department is finally considering imposing more taxes on sugar-containing foods. This is a welcome step. However, we encourage our readers to leave their food where they eat.
If you are not too young, you must have experienced great ‘desi’ Chinese food in Dhaka. When I was a kid, eating out at Chinese restaurants was the pinnacle of family entertainment.
At the time, these restaurants were run by immigrant Chinese families who modified their menus to suit our tastes. Therefore, the food they served had a unique spiciness, sourness, and sweetness. And we loved them very much. Every time I had enough money, I would go back to eat that Chinese food.
But this is a matter of the “glorious” past. Now, “Digi Chinese” food stinks. Whenever I see Chinese food like that being served, I just make an excuse and run for my life. why? you ask. My answer is simply “sugar”!
I once asked one of the heads of a very large company (who is a champion of terrible bread makers) if he had ever eaten bread made by his company at his breakfast table. He looked confused. Why do I ask this question? He didn’t answer me clearly. He said something like – These breads are intended for different “classes” of people. He meant the poor class.
yes! They use sugar in everything as if they’ve found the Holy Grail of foolproof recipes. Fried chicken tastes sweet. The soup is sweet. The cold beef vegetables are sweet. Fried rice with a lot of sugar. And the noodles tasted like they were soaked in rasagolla juice and you can’t swallow them in the slightest.
And day in and day out, it’s being sold and people are eating that horrible food. What’s wrong with your taste buds?
oh! Why do we only blame digital Chinese manufacturers? Sugar is added to almost all processed and prepared foods in Bangladesh. Old Dhaka biryani? Chicken curry or mutton curry? Digimix vegetables? Polao? Borhani? yes! yes! yes! These chefs believe that a few spoonfuls of sugar add “amazing flavor” to a dish.
mistaken! Foods aren’t supposed to taste sweet, but sugar never makes them taste good. In fact, those responsible for adding sugar to the bhuna of chicken and beef should be publicly flogged and then executed in Mughal-era style.
Whoever was the first chef in Dhaka in the 80s to “discover” that adding sugar to biryani makes it more palatable and shared by young children will be exposed by the CID and exposed by the media before being executed for food genocide. Should. In the absence of socio-political resistance, he popularized this concept beyond our imagination. This was worse than extreme communism or communitarianism.
why? you ask. Please try to imagine. He could be an implant for a pharmaceutical company that sells diabetes drugs or dental solutions. You could call it a conspiracy theory, but what if it were true?
Purchase branded bread at the store. Let’s have a toast. It will never get crispy. It burns disproportionately and always leaves a soggy feeling in your mouth. And it tastes awful because they use a lot of sugar and that’s how they think it’s made.
I once asked one of the heads of a very large company (who is a champion of terrible bread makers) if he had ever eaten bread made by his company at his breakfast table. He looked confused. Why do I ask this question? He didn’t answer me clearly. He said something like – These breads are intended for different “classes” of people. He meant the poor class.
But I told him that his company makes bread suitable for torturing criminals. In the past, police officers used boiled eggs to torture criminals. I think I’m using this bread now. Why do we use so much sugar in bread? Why should we feed unhealthy bread to the poorer classes? He didn’t have an answer.
I’m not being anti-sugar because the anti-sugar lobby paid me a bribe to write this. I am a born again anti-sugar person.
When I was growing up in the ’70s, there was a huge sugar crisis in this country. Back then, the world was poorer, supply chains weren’t as efficient as they are today, and we were enjoying one crisis after another.
Anyway, my grandfather was a businessman. He thought of a way to help his mother’s family and bought her a big bag of sugar. Her mother untied the bags of sugar and stuffed them all into the trunk. Yes, that’s right. In the trunk.
My mother was worried that if we boys (my brother and I) found out about sugar, we would end up eating it. So she hid this trunk under the bed and we didn’t even notice the whole deal. The amount of sugar is actually equivalent to two years’ worth.
Then one day, while playing hide and seek, my brother and I discovered a stash of sugar. Oh my god! What to do with a trunk full of sugar? We started gorging on raw sugar until we felt like throwing up.
Then the next day, when we got home from school, we stole sugar again and went to the kitchen while everyone else was taking a nap. We made a sugar omelette (so dark because of the sugar) and made pudding (which I just learned how to make by watching BTV).
Within a month or two, my brothers and I had completely devoured the sugar in the trunk—like land grabbers devouring rivers and lakes. And my mom found out about it about a month after we finished work. She used sandals and broomsticks on us. we didn’t care. We were ready to pay that price.
We were eating entire cans of condensed milk and packs of Glucose D at once. I shudder when I think about it now. After many years, I learned that condensed milk does not contain milk. Just mix concentrated vegetables and sugar! Horrible!
And then, at a certain age, we moved on to other tastes in food. A world of only sweets is bland. And over the past 30 years, we’ve noticed a steady increase in the amount of sugar used in processed and prepared foods.
I blame my college classmate Shafik for popularizing sugary breads. Before him, no one liked sweet bread. If you like sweet bread, buy butter bread. But Shafik saved his money and bought cheaper, sugary bread. If the bread was not sweet, he would ask the tea vendor to pour some condensed milk on the bread. His economical breakfast model was quickly stolen by others on campus. Thus, sweet bread became the new norm in Bangladesh. The bread maker should reward his friend Shafik for spreading the word about this horrible flavor without using Instagram.
I oppose the indiscriminate use of sugar. Unfortunately, no political party is willing to join me in my protest activities. No political party campaigned against sugar-rich food manufacturers. No one wanted to be hanged for using sugar in hot chili sauce or paste.
So food manufacturers continued to add perverse sugar to all products that were not supposed to be sweet. Meanwhile, diabetes has caught up in Bangladesh, with about 15% of the population now suffering from diabetes, up from just 5% in 2001.
Behold, behold! The tax department is finally considering imposing more taxes on sugar-containing foods. This is a welcome step. However, we encourage our readers to leave their food where they eat. If food tastes sweet when it’s not supposed to be sweet, refuse the other person’s food and let them know what you think. Let’s bring back the original rules of desi taste. Are you with me on this?
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not reflect the views or opinions of The Business Standard.
