Sweets and diabetes at my desk

It was festive time at my home, just recently and there are still mithai-boxes piled in our fridge. At least 5-10kg of sweets were exchanged. And all that was eaten - modaks, pedhas, barfis - was saccharine sweet.


In my office, it is ritual (as has been mentioned in the article) to dump sweets at any modestly happy occasion (with a group mail - Sweets at my desk). At one time it got so bad, that we had to request people to get some namkins to go with the sweets. Just couldn't eat the high-calorie, high sugar sweets. This was of course even worse a solution, coz now you have deep fried stuff along with high sugar content stuff.


This article will certainly make people realise, that we can't continue gorging on sweets unchecked.





In its hushed but unrelenting manner, Type 2 diabetes is engulfing India, swallowing up the legs and jewels of those comfortable enough to put on weight in a country better known for famine. Here, juxtaposed alongside the stick-thin poverty, the malaria and the AIDS, the number of diabetics now totals around 35 million, and counting.



The future looks only more ominous as India hurtles into the present, modernizing and urbanizing at blinding speed. Even more of its 1.1 billion people seem destined to become heavier and more vulnerable to Type 2 diabetes, a disease of high blood sugar brought on by obesity, inactivity and genes, often culminating in blindness, amputations and heart failure. In 20 years, projections are that there may be a staggering 75 million Indian diabetics.



“Diabetes unfortunately is the price you pay for progress,” said Dr. A. Ramachandran, the managing director of the M.V. Hospital for Diabetes, in Chennai (formerly Madras).


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