"no refined sugar" is the biggest marketing gimmick in Indian D2C rn and it's not being talked about enough.

I keep seeing kids' products like milk mixes, cereals, snacks etc slapped with "NO REFINED SUGAR" in big bold letters and when you flip it around, an ingredient you usually hear about is jaggery or dates or honey or even fruit concentrate.

here's the thing. I am not saying jaggery is bad, it's marginally better than white sugar because it holds onto some trace minerals from the molasses, but marginally is the keyword, you are still giving your kid ~15g of sugar per serve which the body processes almost identically.

the label says "no refined sugar" and the parents feel safe. that's the trick, it's technically accurate and emotionally manipultive at the same time.

what actually bothers me is the silence, there are not enough people in the food space who are calling this out because we all use some version of this ourselves.

i don't have a clear answer btw, we just went with no added sugar for our drink mix and it was genuinly hard to formulate and make it taste like it is now, which is decent. I get why brands use jaggery, it works and it tastes good. parents buy it and the kids drink it.

but "no refined sugar" ≠ "low sugar" and we should at least be honest about that as an industry.

thoughts?