Sugar

 Malaysia's Sweet Tooth

Some sugar, in case you weren't sure...

So we've been enjoying most of the food we've encountered, occasional 'loose' interpretations of vegetarian aside. However something that keeps cropping up is just how sweet Malaysian food seems to be. Now there are not huge numbers of vast girthed people wobbling up and down the streets pouring with sweat, so the impact isn't creating a tidal wave of obesity. It can't, therefore be adding a huge amount to the calorific intake of the local diet, but I still can't get away from the fact that there appears to be more sugar than you'd imagine in the food.

The strange flip side and possible explanation for this is the almost savoury nature of Malaysian deserts, so maybe that's why, but again, this is guesswork.

Take this for example:

Thomas wanted some nice cheese topped bread for a lunchtime snack so we picked this up at a local supermarket. We thought nothing of it - a cheese roll is hardly a difficult thing to do, it should be fine. 

But I invite you to look closely, something none of us did before trying this seemingly innocuous comestible. It is covered with cheese, yes, but also liberally sprinkled with sugar!

What kind of a maniac covers a cheese roll with sugar! 

This is not the first time we have encountered this. I submit this as further evidence of the dysfunctional relationship with sugar and sweet things in general...

It's got Werther's Originals in it for pity's sake! Actually, probably not, as they tend to be sugar free these days...

This is genuinely something you can buy! A cheese roll filled with butterscotch. What in the world would possess someone to do this? There must be a market for this kind of bread based lunacy, but I can't for the life of me figure out why.

We recently went for breakfast at a newly opened food court not far from where we live. We ordered some normal(ish) breakfast food - eggs, toast, coconut egg jam (Kaya), mushroom soup and garlic bread (I did say 'normalish'). It was very nice. It came with a dressed salad.

Thomas's 'breakfast'?

We ordered some drinks. Thomas wanted apple juice, I asked for coffee, Nicola was fine with water. I was stared at with incredulity when I asked for black coffee, hot, without sugar - I appeared to have ordered the most unusual drink imaginable. Thomas was asked if he would like sugar added to his fruit juice... we said no thank you. They had to double check the order with us just to be sure.

What is going on?

I have a theory. The line between food types and what is eaten when is much less clear and far less comparmentalised here. In the UK we have toast and cereal and a limited number of cooked items that can be presented in an equally limited number of proscribed ways. Some breakfast items make their way into other meals and we even have the 'all day breakfast', but mostly the food knows its place.

This is not the case here. The food that is eaten at lunch or dinner is just as likely to appear on the breakfast menu - we experienced this in quarantine.

Take Roti Cani - the amazing fresh griddled flatbread and dhal soup combo that is sold for 1-2 Ringits each (that's about 20-40 pence at current exchange rates). This is a traditional breakfast food, but is also regularly consumed in the evening. The line between 'when' is blurred.

I think the line between sweet and savoury, desert and main is equally blurred.

I'm not entirely on board with it and I don't think I ever will be, but it is - as is so often the case here - interesting.

I just won't be making habit of it.