Today, Kings Day, those who eat a slice of tortell for dessert will surely notice it less sweet. If so, it will not be a simple personal impression, but the result that the quantities of sugar have been reduced in pastry shops.
Àlex Lera, from the Sant Llehí pastry shop in Sant Antoni de Vilamajor and a member of the board of directors of the Barcelona Pastry Guild, acknowledges that over the last few years there has been a tendency to reduce the amount of sugar: "What is wanted is enhance the ingredients. By lowering the sugar, you can make the taste of the other ingredients stand out more and the product is not so sweet." In the case of the tortell de Reis, it is also less sweet than it was years ago: "If we put more or less sugar in it, it is very noticeable. As for the tortell, the intention is to make the brioche or marzipan taste more noticeable, on the other hand, if you put a lot of sugar on top of the candied fruit, you end up harming the taste you are looking for in the beginning", explains Lera.
At the Sant Llehí patisserie, Lera is part of the second generation of pastry chefs and gives another example of a product present in many patisserie desserts, such as whipped cream, in which the amounts of sugar have been practically halved : "30 years ago, my father added between 150 and 200 grams of sugar per litre, on the other hand, nowadays, we add 100 grams to a liter of whipped cream".
Reducing the amount of sugar in pastry products is becoming more and more common. Lera explains that among the people in the guild many confirm this reduction and cites some examples that are carried out in pastry renewal courses: "Sugars are reduced, they try to find a better texture or do without sweetness to achieve better preservation". And he adds that all the new preparations are also "lower in sugar".
What happens with the tortell and pastries is the reflection of a more general phenomenon. In Spain, sugar consumption is decreasing. According to the Statista platform, sugar intake ten years ago was 50 million kilograms higher than today. The trend is clearly decreasing, since since 2013, every year the demand has been lower than the previous one, and 2020 has been the only one in which the phenomenon was not fulfilled and consumption went up . This trend, however, is completely contrary to what is experienced on a global scale, where intake does not stop growing.
One of the reasons to understand, in the case of Spain, the downward trend in sugar consumption is the increased awareness of most of the population about the harms of added sugars. According to Diana Díaz Rizzolo, professor of Health Sciences studies at the UOC, advances in science have been a very important factor: "Having more information about how harmful sugar consumption can be helps to be able to give a very clear message more accurate to the population". Toni Massanés, director of the Alicia Foundation, agrees and states that the increase in this awareness is due to the fact that "scientific evidence shows that there is a relationship between excess sugar and how it affects us negatively, with diseases caused by bad eating habits".
Díaz Rizzolo adds two more factors that have helped the population to be more aware of the dangers of sugar. On the one hand, the improvement in scientific dissemination, since "a few years ago the message was published exclusively in medical and scientific journals, while nowadays it has been able to cross these barriers and reach a more understanding population". In this sense, he also values the work of the media, which he considers "have given truth to the messages and have helped to disprove false rumors that have been perpetuated over time for many years".
Becoming aware of this has been key to curbing sugar consumption which, according to Massanés, "is still much higher than what many nutritionists recommend". Understanding the success of this food is simple. Elena Roura, PhD in Nutrition and scientific manager of the Alícia Foundation, explains what are the properties that make it so appetizing: "The moment you eat it, the sugar passes directly into the blood and when the latter goes to the brain it causes a feeling of energy and euphoria”. Massanés remembers that centuries ago sugar had been like "a medicine and a great gift, a food quite prized by many", largely because of its ability to give us this dose of energy. This reason is what makes the director of the Alicia Foundation respond to the fact that sugar consumption continues to increase on a global scale: "In many parts of the world, access to foods with more calories and more sugars is relatively recent, and in these cases the desire overcomes the awareness of the harms, which in Spain we have had for only a few years".
In addition to raising awareness, in Spain, in recent years, several measures have also been applied with the aim of improving eating habits, reducing sugar consumption and warning of the harms of certain industrial and processed products, promoted by the Ministry of Consum, at that time led by Alberto Garzón.
In January 2021, an increase in VAT on sugary drinks came into force, going from 10% to 21%. A year later, any advertising of sweets and sugary drinks aimed at minors was banned. Also in 2021, the Nutri-Score was implemented, a nutritional traffic light for all packaged processed products with the aim of guiding consumers towards healthier food choices and encouraging the food industry to improve the nutritional quality of their food .
Despite this, Díaz Rizzolo points out that "there is still a long way to go in terms of nutritional policies" and considers that "increasing the labeling of product ingredients" is an example of a necessary measure.
