Indians Advised to Eat More Sugar

It's not something you hear every day
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 8, 2020 8:00 AM CST
Indians Advised to Eat More Sugar
Stock photo.   (Getty Images)

It's not a piece of advice you hear often these days: Eat more sugar. But it's what India's mills are now telling the country's people. The BBC explains that the country's production should jump 13% to about 34 million tons in the 2020 to 2021 season due to favorable rains—just as the government suggests it might kill the export subsidies that have helped make its sugar more attractive overseas. Bloomberg explains: The country has a "chronic oversupply," a situation fed by the "favorable incentives" growers get in politically important areas. And while the country consumes the most in total, its people individually eat less than the global average: about 42 pounds a year, versus 51 pounds.

Getting Indians to that 51-pound target is the goal. It would up domestic consumption by 5.2 million tons annually, per a food ministry official, which would eat away at the surplus. And so the Indian Sugar Mills Association is out with new messaging and a campaign that features the likes of medical and nutrition experts and celebrity chefs. The mills' message: "Sugar is the most preferred source of the body's fuel for brain power, muscle energy, and every natural process that goes into proper functioning of our body cells." The country's food secretary chimed in: "There are a lot of myths going around about sugar and sugar consumption without scientific basis." (More India stories.)

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