Sugar Shortage - Who Eats All The Sugar In Thailand?

[david555]

Diabetes is an epidemic in Thailand now, thanks to the white poison.....

they dump tons of it in their noodle soup and suki. i cant handle all that sugar. guess thats why you see many thais overweight in BKK too thanks to sugar. true, diabetes is on the rise. i know a couple of locals who have it and blame it on other things, but the fact is they consumed a ton of sugar.

completely agreed with you , they puy it in every food , soup , meat , fish even in chips:sick: (waugh yek yek) like we use salt they use sugar

[afarang]

For biofuels, it is cassava, NOT sugar ,as the economics are not on.Thailand does have the highest rate of sugar consumption , per capita in the world.As well as nearly the highest rate of diabetes(type 2) in the world.My local Govt. hospital has special opening hours for testing of Thai diabetics,every Tuesday.I had to have my annual cholesterol blood test recently. I had to wait 1and a 1/2 hours, while ALL the diabetics were tested.(for that week) Before they would take my blood for testing.Strangely? 99% of diabetics were female.my area used to grow a lot of sugarcane, no longer, rubber has supplanted it. While the rubber is young(up to 4 years after planting, Cassava can be interplanted, then when the canopy has formed, no more cassava can be grown ( lack of sunlight). My family now grows a lot of cassava, Why?The price is now approaching B3,000 per ton. Just a few years ago, it was only B700 per ton.Why? biofuels. Definitely NOT sugar.Virtually NO sugar is grown in our area now. Previously it was a major sugar producing area. Oh, I live in Isarn.By way of explanation.

[Jimi007]

Oh good, there's a sugar shortage and my GF/wife's family has a 120 rai and are still getting paid little for sugarcane and need 10K Baht for fertilizer But, I was offered a good return! LOL. If you want to invest in sugar, PM me!

[moskito]

same here. TESCO never have sugar, and if, there are ppl pulling cars full of it out of the store

In MACRO Phuket same same. No single packs but I could buy a bunch of 50kg :jap:

Its obviously someone store the sugar somewhere, guess its the factory by itself

Edited June 24, 2010 by moskito

[DickFarang]

Two million tonnes a year or more than 20 kg per capita per annum ?!

That sounds very unhealthy to me.

I do not put sugar in my soup, etc.

Nor do I eat sweetened bread from 7/11 or drink sweetened fruit juice, coke, etc.

[DickFarang]

Diabetes is an epidemic in Thailand now, thanks to the white poison.....

The white poisons of LOS: sugar and monosodium glutamate.

Sugar we do not use, on pancakes we put honey: much healthier.

My Thai wife only puts monosodium glutamate in her own food and much less than other Thais, she says.

[beppi]

There is also clearly a shortage of cheese in this country, as shown by the very high prices for even the low-grade processed variety at Tesco and other supermarkets. It is time the government steps in here, too!!!

But seriously, government intervention will never work better than a free market and only give some officials the chance to line their own pockets. What's wrong if a sugar shortage increases prices and steers people away from eating too much of this unhealthy stuff?

(Of course a cheese shortage is a completely different matter altogether ...!)

[NHJ]

Soft drink makers are one of the major users. They cater to the Thai taste for intense flavours. Commercial iced teas contain large amounts. I believe that I read somewhere that Coke in Thailand contains almost twice the (already high) quantity of sugar that is used in Coke in many other countries.

nope it's the same , 10.5 grams per 100ml.

it's time for thailand to produce fructose wich is a healthy sugar, glycemic index is only 20 and sugaring power is 120 compared to glycemix index of 65 for saccharose and sugaring power of 100.

it would be of course more expensive but at least those who make the choice to buy the product would eliminate the danger of saccharose.

Edited June 24, 2010 by NHJ

[MaiChai]

Maybe keeping sugar prices artifically low does not help farmers; only helps big companies who need cheap ingredients to make their products? Me thinks the government are in cahoots with big business rather than trying to help the poor farmer.

[NHJ]

Diabetes is an epidemic in Thailand now, thanks to the white poison.....

The white poisons of LOS: sugar and monosodium glutamate.

Sugar we do not use, on pancakes we put honey: much healthier.

My Thai wife only puts monosodium glutamate in her own food and much less than other Thais, she says.

pure honey has a glycemic index very similar to refined sugar so it's not more healthy...

Edited June 24, 2010 by NHJ

[bf2002]

Sugar is not actually more cheap in Thailand, it is just that the Thai government is subsidizing it. Some governments use actual cash subsidies while others pass "laws". Either way, it creates a price difference, and market forces are going to lead to people trying to illegal export it (i.e. smuggling) to overseas customers willing to pay the real market price.

This is one reason the true per capita income of Thais are actually higher than reported. They get subsidized rice, sugar, and gas.

[phuketkenny]

Going off on a slight tangent with this subject, I wonder why the Thais seem to love to ruin so many food products with ridiculously high amounts of sugar, e.g. bread, pizza, 'natural' yoghurt, baked beans, and so many of their snacks etc? I can understand it's use in Thai cookery to counter balance the overuse of ingredients with such high salt content, e.g. soy, fish, oyster sauce etc., but I suspect there is a cultural/religious 'genetic' element too in the Thai psyche which was imported with the Indian religious beliefs of Hinduism and Buddhism (which of course, grew out of Hinduism). Hinduism classifies food and many other things in life as either sattvic, rajastic, or tamasic. which basically refer to whether what you eat accelerates your spiritual progress or slows it down. It teaches that eating sweet tasting food is sattvic, which means you are somehow imbibing good spiritual/moral qualities like vitimins or nutrients. Total bunkum I believe, as it has resulted in India having one of the highest rates of diabetes in the World!!!

Also my Thai lady, despite eating pork & chicken, seems to have an inbuilt revulsion to eating beef. A friend says his Thai wife is the same. This too could come from the Hindu reverence of the cow as sacred.

Please forgive my idle ramblings ................but interesting I think !

Many rural Thai children grow up with water buffalo. Taking care of them is their responsibility.

Not hard to understand that when the children grow older, eating them is out of order.

[Pacificperson]

“Sugar is not actually more cheap in Thailand, it is just that the Thai government is subsidizing it. Some governments use actual cash subsidies while others pass "laws". Either way, it creates a price difference, and market forces are going to lead to people trying to illegal export it (i.e. smuggling) to overseas customers willing to pay the real market price.”

“... heard that it's forbidden these days though to smuggle sugar over the border but im not sure about how true that is.”

A true oxymoron “forbidden to smuggle”

Anyway, if you provide an opportunity for profit, someone will find a way to commandeer it.

[glegolo]

Where is that sugar is supposed to be in short supply. Both now and last there was as story about sugar shortage there has been plenty of sugar available in the Pattaya supermarkets...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In Isaan i.e. Tesco Lotus, there is NO whitesugar at all some days, so I can understand their complaints.

If it is like the article suggest, that the sugar is being sold to political "members", that is a big shit no no

for Thailand. But if I am surpriced??? no no no no no,

Glegolo

[notime]

Soft drink makers are one of the major users. They cater to the Thai taste for intense flavours. Commercial iced teas contain large amounts. I believe that I read somewhere that Coke in Thailand contains almost twice the (already high) quantity of sugar that is used in Coke in many other countries.

nope it's the same , 10.5 grams per 100ml.

it's time for thailand to produce fructose wich is a healthy sugar, glycemic index is only 20 and sugaring power is 120 compared to glycemix index of 65 for saccharose and sugaring power of 100.

it would be of course more expensive but at least those who make the choice to buy the product would eliminate the danger of saccharose.

Thanks for explaining this. Can fructose be bought and used in place of sugar? What would be the Thai name?

[Phil Conners]

Where is that sugar is supposed to be in short supply. Both now and last there was as story about sugar shortage there has been plenty of sugar available in the Pattaya supermarkets...

It has been rationed, only 3 kgs per customer, in my local supermarkets in Chiang Mai for some months now. And even then can still sometimes be out-of-stock.

Oh so it is a Chiang Mai problem. Funny why it is posted as a Thailand problem.

[vcpilot]

Soft drink makers are one of the major users. They cater to the Thai taste for intense flavours. Commercial iced teas contain large amounts. I believe that I read somewhere that Coke in Thailand contains almost twice the (already high) quantity of sugar that is used in Coke in many other countries.

nope it's the same , 10.5 grams per 100ml.

it's time for thailand to produce fructose wich is a healthy sugar, glycemic index is only 20 and sugaring power is 120 compared to glycemix index of 65 for saccharose and sugaring power of 100.

it would be of course more expensive but at least those who make the choice to buy the product would eliminate the danger of saccharose.

Thanks for explaining this. Can fructose be bought and used in place of sugar? What would be the Thai name?

Replacing table sugar with fructose might not be a magic bullet, since fructose is not without it's ill effects either.

Fructose - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The medical profession thinks fructose is better for diabetics than sugar," says Meira Field, Ph.D., a research chemist at United States Department of Agriculture, "but every cell in the body can metabolize glucose. However, all fructose must be metabolized in the liver. The livers of the rats on the high fructose diet looked like the livers of alcoholics, plugged with fat and cirrhotic."[56]

Eating fructose instead of glucose results in lower circulating insulin and leptin levels, and higher of ghrelin levels after the meal.[58] Since leptin and insulin decrease appetite and ghrelin increases appetite, some researchers suspect that eating large amounts of fructose increases the likelihood of weight gain.[59]

Excess fructose consumption has been hypothesized to be a cause of insulin resistance, obesity,[37] elevated LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, leading to metabolic syndrome[38]. Fructose consumption has been shown to be correlated with obesity,[39][40] especially central obesity which is thought to be the most dangerous kind of obesity.

[Ricardo]

Where is that sugar is supposed to be in short supply. Both now and last there was as story about sugar shortage there has been plenty of sugar available in the Pattaya supermarkets...

It has been rationed, only 3 kgs per customer, in my local supermarkets in Chiang Mai for some months now. And even then can still sometimes be out-of-stock.

Oh so it is a Chiang Mai problem. Funny why it is posted as a Thailand problem.

Also Isaan & Phuket, from recent posts, perhaps that's why it's a Thailand problem, not just a Chiang Mai one ?

[ableguy]

Going off on a slight tangent with this subject, I wonder why the Thais seem to love to ruin so many food products with ridiculously high amounts of sugar, e.g. bread, pizza, 'natural' yoghurt, baked beans, and so many of their snacks etc? I can understand it's use in Thai cookery to counter balance the overuse of ingredients with such high salt content, e.g. soy, fish, oyster sauce etc., but I suspect there is a cultural/religious 'genetic' element too in the Thai psyche which was imported with the Indian religious beliefs of Hinduism and Buddhism (which of course, grew out of Hinduism). Hinduism classifies food and many other things in life as either sattvic, rajastic, or tamasic. which basically refer to whether what you eat accelerates your spiritual progress or slows it down. It teaches that eating sweet tasting food is sattvic, which means you are somehow imbibing good spiritual/moral qualities like vitimins or nutrients. Total bunkum I believe, as it has resulted in India having one of the highest rates of diabetes in the World!!!

Also my Thai lady, despite eating pork & chicken, seems to have an inbuilt revulsion to eating beef. A friend says his Thai wife is the same. This too could come from the Hindu reverence of the cow as sacred.

Please forgive my idle ramblings ................but interesting I think !

I suspect the revulsion for beef is really something else, I know many Thais who make a promise to Buddha in exchange for good luck in thier life, what do they promise? to give up eating beef, lets face it beef has not been on the menu in Thailand for any length of time so it gets around the problem of denying yourself something you will really miss. As for the shortage in sugar I suspect it all goes into soda pop, the only diet soda I have ever come across is the odd can of coke, so the amount of sugar consumed by drinking soda must be vast. Knowing Thailand as I do there must be graft involved in this problem some where, check out supermarkets in the West ref diet soft drinks avaiable to that of Thailand.

[krading]

The sugar shortage might be the reason there was no Mae Khong whiskey (rum) on the shelves at my local Tesco yesterday.

Made from 95% sugar just as our beloved Bundy is.

Nectar of the Gods

[asiawatcher]

There are enough sugar plantations and cane farmers in Thailand to meet local and international demand. To declare a shortage means export demand has risen, I would think the next move is price fixing. Which is what the Govt has done and as already stated, in most supermarkets, has been ignored.

But the populace in general has way too much sugar in their diets and with the introduction of fast foods (Kentucky Fried Cat, McDonalds - both weapons of mass destruction) - obesity and increased diabetes is certain in future generations from both sugars combined with fats!

So export more, supply less locally and find a way to charge the junk food people with terrorism!

Edited June 25, 2010 by asiawatcher

[Arkady]

Going off on a slight tangent with this subject, I wonder why the Thais seem to love to ruin so many food products with ridiculously high amounts of sugar, e.g. bread, pizza, 'natural' yoghurt, baked beans, and so many of their snacks etc? I can understand it's use in Thai cookery to counter balance the overuse of ingredients with such high salt content, e.g. soy, fish, oyster sauce etc., but I suspect there is a cultural/religious 'genetic' element too in the Thai psyche which was imported with the Indian religious beliefs of Hinduism and Buddhism (which of course, grew out of Hinduism). Hinduism classifies food and many other things in life as either sattvic, rajastic, or tamasic. which basically refer to whether what you eat accelerates your spiritual progress or slows it down. It teaches that eating sweet tasting food is sattvic, which means you are somehow imbibing good spiritual/moral qualities like vitimins or nutrients. Total bunkum I believe, as it has resulted in India having one of the highest rates of diabetes in the World!!!

Also my Thai lady, despite eating pork & chicken, seems to have an inbuilt revulsion to eating beef. A friend says his Thai wife is the same. This too could come from the Hindu reverence of the cow as sacred.

Please forgive my idle ramblings ................but interesting I think !

It is true. Natural unsweetened yoghurt is only available in places like Villa, as an expensive imported delicacy. Conversely unsweetened Thai rice milk is delicious and healthy but is unfortunately only available at a very expensive price in overseas markets. The only version available in Thailand is a highly sugared product sold in small cartons with a drinking straw attached etc & etc.

Looking back into history, refined sugar was a very expensive product in Thailand before the Second World War and the diets of ordinary Thais in those days certainly did not include the luxury of added sugar. In the 50s and 60s commercial farming and refining of sugar took off on a big scale in Thailand and the product became affordable to all. The wealthy Thai Chinese families behind it had a vested interest in pushing the masses to consume as much of this totally unnecessary product as possible. The government was behind them as it provided a new source of over and above board income and because there is a feel good factor in eating a lot of sugar for many years before the detrimental health effects kick in. People are happy with this low cost source of energy and temporary euphoria and less likely to complain. Today it is perfectly normal to hear of ordinary Thais undergoing leg amputations due to complications from Type 2 diabetes but only recently has the government had to start bearing some of the costs of medical care for those inflicted with sugar related diseases. The benefits from the sugar industry still far outway this and the sugar lobby remains extremely powerful. In the late 80s Thailand was one of the few countries in SE Asia that had not yet launched diet Coke and Pepsi because the sugar lobby had the influence to force the government to stall production for several years while Thailand's FDA undertook lengthy tests on the safety of the artificial sweeteners - pointless because both the artificial sweeteners and the natural sugar are clearly very damaging to health.

Today it is unfortunately impossible to imagine Thai food without ladels of sugar in every dish that utterly negates the Western myth of Asian cuisine being more healthy. It is just as hard to imagine what Thai food was like before the chilli pepper was introduced from India in the late 19th century. Take away their sugar, chillies and MSG and most Thai cooks would be hard pushed to produce a remotely tasty dish.

Edited June 25, 2010 by Arkady

[Honolulu]

That reminds me . I think I'll go down to my local pub and get a little" sugar" tonight.

[fiercesnake]

Going off on a slight tangent with this subject, I wonder why the Thais seem to love to ruin so many food products with ridiculously high amounts of sugar, e.g. bread, pizza, 'natural' yoghurt, baked beans, and so many of their snacks etc? I can understand it's use in Thai cookery to counter balance the overuse of ingredients with such high salt content, e.g. soy, fish, oyster sauce etc., but I suspect there is a cultural/religious 'genetic' element too in the Thai psyche which was imported with the Indian religious beliefs of Hinduism and Buddhism (which of course, grew out of Hinduism). Hinduism classifies food and many other things in life as either sattvic, rajastic, or tamasic. which basically refer to whether what you eat accelerates your spiritual progress or slows it down. It teaches that eating sweet tasting food is sattvic, which means you are somehow imbibing good spiritual/moral qualities like vitimins or nutrients. Total bunkum I believe, as it has resulted in India having one of the highest rates of diabetes in the World!!!

Also my Thai lady, despite eating pork & chicken, seems to have an inbuilt revulsion to eating beef. A friend says his Thai wife is the same. This too could come from the Hindu reverence of the cow as sacred.

Please forgive my idle ramblings ................but interesting I think !

Excellent thoughts. Certainly some good reasons to why sugar is in big demand here. Perhaps due to underlying religious reasons to why sugar is not really seen as a "bad", as it is seen in the developed world. I am also stunned at the levels of sugar in most foods and especially their soft drink sections:huh:. Clearly education from most developed countries aims to make the general public and particularly their youth populous acutely aware of the dangers of high salt, sugar and fat in foods, and to replace with improved choices. Now where education is at a generally higher standard luckily a tendency towards seeking out better choices tends to produce a huge variety of good choices. It is a pity that so many of these "good" people who follow some of these religious-cultural beliefs would also follow their convictions in business as clearly this problem of sugar hoarding or price jacking is simply greed, greed and more greed. It's about the equivalent of the mafia boss that orders terrible things done then goes to church to pray and recite the rosary:blink:; same ol' stuff in all societies!

[keith7777]

"Even now, some large retailers such as Tesco-Lotus have voiced their  complaints about the shortage. As a result, the Industry Ministry has  pledged to look into the matter."

This lady(from Burma)buys trolley loads of sugar every day to bring over the border

That photo reminds me of my neighbour back in Saudi, years ago, doing his shopping.  Nobody took any notice, even tho' it was obvious what he was up to.  Same when buying several cases of non alcoholic beer, bags of sugar & pack of yeast

Who uses that much sugar in Thailand, the lady I live with will buy a small bag and it lasts her for a year. He family does not use sugar at all so don't know about the shortage as when I go to the market to buy there is always a good supply on hand.

[TAWP]

The only reason there is *any* issue is because the sugar price is artificially forced to be low here.

It is the government involving itself in the open market that is ruining the balance.

[astral]

It will be Ramadan soon.

I know that makes for a sugar shortage in Muslim countries, but have never seen it happen in Thailand?