Demand for ‘mithai’ dips as health awareness on the rise

Avneet Kaur

Jalandhar, October 13

With adulteration of sweets being reported in different parts of the country, the residents have decided to opt for healthy and low-fat items as gifts on Diwali this year. Those with a sedentary lifestyle are in the grip of diseases like diabetes and hypertension and awareness to become fitness freak is growing.

Sweets and chocolates as well as chocolate-made “mithais” are likely to be consumed less during this Diwali festival. Instead of bakery products, dark chocolates and low-fat chocolates are among the preferred Diwali gifts. This season, people are also choosing organic products as gifts.

Organic tea, almond sweets made with unsweetened chocolates, fruit-based sweets and low-fat brownies are being greatly preferred. “People are also going for dry fruits over sweets as the prices of almonds, cashews, raisins and pistachios are almost similar to that of sweets after the implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST). Almost all the sweets have become more expensive and attract as much as 12 per cent tax, so people are going more for the gift hampers,” said a sweets shop owner.

Owing to the rising demand, eminent stores and grocery shop owners have already stocked a huge quantity of dry fruits for their customers.

Om Prakash, owner of one of the bakeries here said, “This season, there is a huge demand for gift packs of low-calorie biscuits, cakes and other similar items. We have gift hampers that contain special low calorie biscuits, chips, nachos, low-calorie cake along with a pack of herbal green tea.”

“People have become health conscious these days and seeing this, we have stocked low calorie sugar-free biscuits as gift packs and 100 per cent real juices, as people usually prefer gift pack of juices,” said another bakery owner.

Interestingly, the owners of sweet shop too had arranged for various gift hampers of low calorie sweets along with special chocolates and diet drinks that are reportedly in demand.

The staff member of a popular sweet shop here said that many people in the city want a break from traditional Indian sweets and therefore, desserts were a good alternative. This is the reason why assorted brownies, cupcakes and cookies have become attractive gift options this year, he added.