Sugar Or Sweeteners, For Bakery Products?

Bakery industry contributes a great deal towards satiating one’s craving for sweets. With an array of cakes, chocolates and cookies, it definitely helps in satisfying your sweet tooth. However the health conscious millennial, and even the elderly, are become averse to consumption of refined sugar. So how does the bakery industry cope with this dilemma? Are the bakery chefs keen to shift from sugar to other forms of sweeteners? Ashok Malkani tries to find whether sugar is really harmful to health and how the bakery products can continue to spread sweetness around.

- Ashok Malkani

Bakery industry, with over 2,000 industrial bakeries producing around 1.4 million tons of the bakery products and 1,000,000 small-scale bakeries producing 1.8 million tons of bakery products, is one of the biggest contributors to the country’s processed food industry.

According to Bizencyclopedia, the cake market is forecasted to reach US$ 882.24 million by 2024 growing at a CAGR of 12.5% during the forecast period from 2019 to 2024.

The bakery industry contributes a great deal towards spreading sweetness as it bakes goodies – ranging from cakes to cookies.

We are all born with a sweet tooth. The enjoyment one feels from eating something sweet is, according to scientists, facilitated by the same morphine-like biochemical systems in the brain that are thought to be the basis for all highly-rewarding activities. Sugar gives us druglike pleasures. However, some researchers suggest that sugars are toxins which cause obesity, diabetes, hypertension and Alzheimer’s disease. Sugar seems to have joined the list of dietary evils. Today, health experts are urging people to cut back their daily sugar intake.

The ancient Hindu preparation known as the five ambrosias, a dish fit for the gods, incorporated sugar along with milk, honey, yogurt and clarified butter. Its appeal knows no limits, as the medieval historian Albert of Aachen pointed out in his description of 11th-century European Crusaders when they first encountered sugar cane in the Holy Land: “They could scarcely get enough of it.” Sugar has been popular through the ages but recent studies have found that sugar is harmful to your health.