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India saw a similar thing with the sugar craze once the economy opened up in the 1990s— although the diabetes rate has only gone up 2% in three decades.

by sss111 2y ago

FirmwareBurner 2y ago
Similar in Eastern Europe after the fall of USSR when western snacks came on the market and we fell pray to advertising after decades of isolation: "Those sugary western snacks can't be bad for you since they come from the developed west and rich westerners eat them". Oh boy, if we only knew back then what we know today. Probably why a lot of millennials today don't look very healthy.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  I imagine it has more to do with the smoking and drinking rates than sugar. I very clearly remember an aunt of mine losing her mind in the 90s about me drinking coke, while smoking when she was pregnant.
- Tade0 2y ago
  I'm from the region and to me it was always about "ooh, this is real chocolate, not Compound chocolate". Even as recently as a decade ago local producers would be using vegetable oils and less sugar so as to keep costs down. I remember being surprised how much sugar there was in plain cookies in Italy. British sweets I cannot touch to this day because they're commonly packed with salt as well as sugar. Same goes for American products - Reese's cupcakes are my holiday season guilty pleasure which inevitably gets me sick every time. They're violently flavourful. On the flip side when I visited Ukraine in 2006 I noted that the local pralines had barely any sugar. The Swiss and Germans seem to understand sweets on a deeper level than the rest. Notable exception is Lindt, which roasts the cocoa beans to seven hells for consistency, achieving a consistently sour-bitter aftertaste in its products.
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    Lindt is bottom of the barrel slop with fancy branding attached to it. It's the McDoanlds/Starbucks of chocolate.
jajko 2y ago
> India ranks second after China in the global diabetes epidemic with 77 million people with diabetes (google) Maybe it went up by 2% only, but it depends what were the actual numbers to start with. I've spent 6 months backpacking all over that country and although food is top notch, the sweets are ridiculously bad, often just distilled sugar with some (rather good) flavoring like safron. I guess when you scorch all your taste buds since early age with all those chillies (its quite common to just eat raw chillies as a side dish to already crazy spicy foods on levels that most westerners going to their local indian restaurants will never experience), then to get any sensation from sweets they have to go over board.
- roncesvalles 2y ago
  The culture around sweets in India is different than from the West. You're supposed to eat one little square piece of a sweet or a couple of gulab jamun balls and that's it. Indians don't sit with a big plate of Indian sweets like it's the "dessert" course of their meal. That's why Western sweets are less sweet. You don't just eat a single one-inch cube of cheesecake, you eat a whole plate-sized portion of it which is like ten such cubes. Naturally it can't be as sweet as an Indian sweet. Even growing up my parents said you're supposed to eat 1 Skittle and put the packet away (no joke). The fact that people in the West snack on a whole packet of Skittles was a culture shock.
lotsofpulp 2y ago
Just looking around in India, I don’t believe the 2% figure. Maybe it’s not officially diagnosed, or the source for the figures is not accurate. In the 1990s, an overweight (not even obese) person was a rare sight. People were actually be surprised to see a non skinny person. Nowadays, overweight and even obese people are everywhere you look. And type 2 diabetes is strongly correlated with being overweight.
rramadass 2y ago
No, it is much more than 2% because a lot of it is undiagnosed and a ticking time bomb in India. A couple of must-watch videos; 1) Gravitas: Researchers identify gene variant that makes Indians susceptible to diabetes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBe8E0bqZZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBe8E0bqZZw 2) Diabetes Hits Hardest in Poor Countries That Aren't Overweight. Why? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGuED1JczbI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGuED1JczbI (this includes generational studies done in India and highlights the insidiousness of "skinny fat").

India saw a similar thing with the sugar craze once the economy opened up in the 1990s— although the diabetes rate has only gone up 2% in three decades.

by sss111 2y ago

India saw a similar thing with the sugar craze once the economy opened up in the 1990s— although the diabetes rate has only gone up 2% in three decades.

FirmwareBurner 2y ago

Similar in Eastern Europe after the fall of USSR when western snacks came on the market and we fell pray to advertising after decades of isolation: "Those sugary western snacks can't be bad for you since they come from the developed west and rich westerners eat them". Oh boy, if we only knew back then what we know today. Probably why a lot of millennials today don't look very healthy.

llm_trw 2y ago
I imagine it has more to do with the smoking and drinking rates than sugar. I very clearly remember an aunt of mine losing her mind in the 90s about me drinking coke, while smoking when she was pregnant.
Tade0 2y ago
I'm from the region and to me it was always about "ooh, this is real chocolate, not Compound chocolate". Even as recently as a decade ago local producers would be using vegetable oils and less sugar so as to keep costs down. I remember being surprised how much sugar there was in plain cookies in Italy. British sweets I cannot touch to this day because they're commonly packed with salt as well as sugar. Same goes for American products - Reese's cupcakes are my holiday season guilty pleasure which inevitably gets me sick every time. They're violently flavourful. On the flip side when I visited Ukraine in 2006 I noted that the local pralines had barely any sugar. The Swiss and Germans seem to understand sweets on a deeper level than the rest. Notable exception is Lindt, which roasts the cocoa beans to seven hells for consistency, achieving a consistently sour-bitter aftertaste in its products.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  Lindt is bottom of the barrel slop with fancy branding attached to it. It's the McDoanlds/Starbucks of chocolate.

jajko 2y ago

> India ranks second after China in the global diabetes epidemic with 77 million people with diabetes (google) Maybe it went up by 2% only, but it depends what were the actual numbers to start with. I've spent 6 months backpacking all over that country and although food is top notch, the sweets are ridiculously bad, often just distilled sugar with some (rather good) flavoring like safron. I guess when you scorch all your taste buds since early age with all those chillies (its quite common to just eat raw chillies as a side dish to already crazy spicy foods on levels that most westerners going to their local indian restaurants will never experience), then to get any sensation from sweets they have to go over board.

roncesvalles 2y ago
The culture around sweets in India is different than from the West. You're supposed to eat one little square piece of a sweet or a couple of gulab jamun balls and that's it. Indians don't sit with a big plate of Indian sweets like it's the "dessert" course of their meal. That's why Western sweets are less sweet. You don't just eat a single one-inch cube of cheesecake, you eat a whole plate-sized portion of it which is like ten such cubes. Naturally it can't be as sweet as an Indian sweet. Even growing up my parents said you're supposed to eat 1 Skittle and put the packet away (no joke). The fact that people in the West snack on a whole packet of Skittles was a culture shock.

lotsofpulp 2y ago

Just looking around in India, I don’t believe the 2% figure. Maybe it’s not officially diagnosed, or the source for the figures is not accurate. In the 1990s, an overweight (not even obese) person was a rare sight. People were actually be surprised to see a non skinny person. Nowadays, overweight and even obese people are everywhere you look. And type 2 diabetes is strongly correlated with being overweight.

rramadass 2y ago

No, it is much more than 2% because a lot of it is undiagnosed and a ticking time bomb in India. A couple of must-watch videos; 1) Gravitas: Researchers identify gene variant that makes Indians susceptible to diabetes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBe8E0bqZZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBe8E0bqZZw 2) Diabetes Hits Hardest in Poor Countries That Aren't Overweight. Why? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGuED1JczbI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGuED1JczbI (this includes generational studies done in India and highlights the insidiousness of "skinny fat").