To stop sweet vendors from deceiving clients into thinking they are offering “sugar free” food, the Odisha government will shortly release thorough guidelines for sweet vendors throughout the state.
For many sweet meals, stores will reportedly be required to advertise “less calorie” rather than “sugar free.” The State Food Security Commission and the Sweet Traders Association spoke about the matter. The dealers allegedly wanted some extra time to put the suggested method into place.
The action was taken in response to a stir caused by the discovery of sugar traces in supposedly sugar-free sweets sold at a Bhubaneswar market in October. The test results of samples taken from the market revealed that the operators of the candy store had allegedly misled customers by advertising “sugar-free” candies.
The food security office gathered more samples from various sweet shops in the state capital as the revelation caused confusion among diabetes patients who had been consuming various foods marketed as “sugar free” sweets. The test results revealed that there was sugar in the food.
According to sources, these delicacies cannot be referred to as “sugar free” because they contained more than 5% sugar;’sugar free’ sweet dishes must have a sugar content of less than 0.5%.
Aside from this, sweet dishes marketed as having “less sugar,” “minimal sugar,” or being part of a “healthy diet” must have less than 5% sugar. Training programmes will be organised for shop owners and traders in addition to issuing detailed guidelines to the sweet shops for selling various types of dishes.
Prasanta Patnaik