JOIN USThe whiff of the sweets in the air is enough to entice you in their direction. Not just wrong, but sinful it is to ask anybody to take caution while indulging in sweets that too around the festive season.
As truckload of happiness pours in your life with stacks of desserts brought in by your friends and family this Diwali, take caution and choose these delicacies while you are on a bingeing spree.
“Even the so called low-calorie sweets are loaded with fats and fatty calories. There is a slight difference in sugary calories or calories gained through refined carbohydrates. Most of the Indian sweets are made of khoya,cream and ghee. However, sugars are replaced with sugar free sweeteners, which do not have a large impact in reducing the calorie count,” says Kiran Dalal, chief dietician, Fortis Escorts hospital, Faridabad. With the sugar content soaring high in our diets, Kiran confirms that in such seasons, patients with longstanding diabetes and uncontrolled sugar levels rush for medical help, invariably.
She further adds, “Usually, moderation is the word for the usage of artificial sweeteners. One must not grossly indulge in excess consumption of the same. Few studies have shown some side effects such as memory loss with prolonged and excess use of these
sweeteners.”
Suggesting an alternative, the doctor recommends that there could be low-calorie homemade substitutes for these sweets such as phirnis, rasgullas using low fat milk, cottage cheese and fruits in custard.
Keeping the zest for festivities alive with her range of sweets, food critic Bharti Sanghi infuses new life into rare and traditional delicacies. Sanghi’s range of customised Indian sweets, such as rabri, kalakand, pista barfi and chandrakala come under the price range of Rs 500- 2200. Sharing her opinion, she says, “In the festive season, people are buying these low-calorific mithais, but the sales haven’t really gone up in this range.”
For the one’s who want to avoid artificial sweeteners while trying out low-calorific sweets this season, Bharti suggests, “ Mithais can be turned into their low-calorie versions without using any sugar free products by making chhena mithai using jaggery ; dates for jaggery rasgulla and sitaphal for some other sweets.”