Happy World Chocolate Day, hello diabetes
Ever wondered what happened to that 13.5 metre tall Burj Khalifa tower made entirely of Belgian chocolate?
It made the headlines — and the Guinness World Records book — back in 2014 after being dubbed the world’s tallest chocolate structure. But after two weeks on display at Dubai International Airport, it was whisked away, never to be seen again.
Some recent news has prompted me to question what happened to it though. And I have my suspicions.
This week, the Ministry of Health and Prevention released some fairly sobering statistics about sugar consumption in the UAE. More than just a sweet tooth, we (UAE residents) are the biggest consumers of sugar worldwide (per capita), with each person devouring a staggering 214kg of the sweet stuff per year, according to new data.
To put that into perspective, that’s the same weight in sugar as three average-sized women; the weight equivalent of 107 Chihuahuas; or more literally — as the Ministry of Health data says, every year in the UAE, we’re each eating 53,591 teaspoons of the stuff! (Sugary drinks, all those treats, they really add up!)
Scarily, these figures have put the reality of health into perspective. When you do the math, we’re consuming about 586grams of sugar a day; the recommended allowance is just 30 grams. That’s nearly 20 times higher than what we should be eating.
So as for that record-breaking structure, which itself was made up of 4,200kg of chocolate, I’m betting we scoffed it. My evidence may be non-existent, but I’m going with logic here.
As far as the other offenders go, Djibouti was a close second to the UAE when it came to flexing those sugarcoated muscles, at 193kg per person, per year. Third was Belize, gobbling on 106kg of sugar-heavy produce; and our close neighbour, Bahrain, came in fourth at 93kg per person, per year; hardly impressive, but still less than half of
World Chocolate Day is one thing. But when you do the math, we’re consuming about 586grams of sugar a day; the recommended allowance is just 30 grams. That’s nearly 20 times higher than what we should be eating
what us guys here are taking in.
Among that top 10 list, there was no mention of the United States. That was a shocker. Given the country’s obesity epidemic, I was sure it was going to be a close contender for top spot. But I guess they’re more into their saturated fats than sugary fads. Remember that stomach-churning 2004 Morgan Spurlock documentary, Super
Size Me? It was all about savoury, not sweet. Ironically, the UAE ministry’s damning stats came just days ahead of what is essentially one of the sweetest days of the year; World Chocolate Day. Yep, it’s a forrealsies thing. Today, July 7, is when the world pays homage to life’s most popular guilty pleasure, the iconic choc.
Who cares if you’ll be adding billions to the pockets of fat cat confectionary giants. And as for the extra calories, what’s a wee bit more to that already astounding figure of 53,591 spoonfuls of sugar that we’re already consuming each year?
The fact that chocolate has a day dedicated to it means it’s only right we honour that. And as the nation topping the sugar craze list, quite frankly, it’s expected of us.
Whether you snap off a piece to dunk into your tea, throw a whole heap of it into a brownie mix, or like me, prefer the fruit fondue approach (only to skip the fruit part and inhale the melted part), make a little time in your day to have a one-on-one with some chocolate today. After all, we need something to comfort us following the ministry’s not-so-sweet findings.
There’s no harm in dipping into the sweetie jar every now and then. That’s what weekends are for, right? It’s apt then that World Chocolate Day just so happens to be falling on a Saturday this year. If that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is.
What I will say is this. Why not practice a bit of conscious consuming. Bypass the milk chocolate bar and go for some dark instead. The 70 per cent cocoa stuff isn’t so bad. I was dead against it before, but after dipping into it little and often, I actually find the milk variety far too sweet now. It’s all about adjusting the palate.
The right thing to do here would have been a written warning on why we need to cut down on sugar. But the facts tell us that; you don’t need me throwing my two cents in.
Instead of a rant, I thought I’d end with a little pop quiz. Something lighthearted to take the weight off — lord knows we need too.
We may be pros when it comes to getting our sugar fix, but let’s find out how much we really know about the history of chocolate.
I’ll start with a ‘true or false’. Chocolate was a beverage before it became a solid food.
True. And I actually knew that one myself. When most of us hear the word chocolate, we usually picture our favourite bar (Cadbury’s Twirl for me). But the earliest evidence noted it first as a beverage made from the seeds of the cacao tree. Only later did it become a solid, and the earliest consumers of it were Mesoamerican peoples.
Number two; who turned it from liquid to solid milk chocolate? Two Swiss confectioners; Daniel Peter and Henri Nestlé. It was back in 1875 and they used condensed milk to create that thing we’ve grown to love today. Well done that man (or men, in this case!)
My final titbit is more of a guessing game than history lesson. How many M&Ms are made each day? 400 million. Yep, 400 million of those tasty little balls are made each day; that’s 146 billion each year! My immediate thought; an M&M ball pit. Just picture it.
Despite all the bad it can do us, chocolate has a history, so don’t reject it. A little bit won’t hurt, so eat up and enjoy.
And for those of you left wondering what country scored top marks as far as their sugar consumption goes, this one may surprise you. It was North Korea, with just 0.11kg per person, per year.