Odisha To Issue Guidelines For Sweet Traders On ‘Sugar Free’ Dishes

Bhubaneswar:  The Odisha government will soon come out with comprehensive guidelines for sweet traders across the state to prevent them from misleading customers in the name of selling ‘sugar free’ dishes.

According to reports, the shops will be required to mention ‘less calorie’ instead of advertising ‘sugar free’ for different sweet dishes. The issue was discussed between the state food security commission and sweet traders’ association. The traders have reportedly sought time to implement the proposed mechanism.

The move comes following a controversy after traces of sugar were found in ‘sugar-free’ sweet dishes sold in the market in Bhubaneswar in October. The test report of samples collected from the market showed the sweet shop owners have been allegedly misleading people by advertising ‘sugar-free’ sweets.

As the revelation triggered confusion among diabetes patients who have been consuming different dishes being sold as ‘sugar free’ sweets, the food security office collected more samples from different sweet shops in the state capital. The test reports showed presence of sugar in the dishes.

As the sugar content in the dishes was more than 5 per cent, these delicacies cannot be called ‘sugar free’, sources said, adding that the presence of sugar must be less than 0.5 per cent in ‘sugar free’ sweet dishes.

This apart, sweet dishes being sold as ‘less sugar’, ‘minimum sugar’ and ‘healthy diet’ must contain less than 5 per cent sugar. While detailed guidelines would be issued to the sweet shops for selling different varieties of dishes, training programmes would also be organised for shop owners and traders.