No sugar, please
According to Noel Farrugia, the opposition spokesman for agriculture, fisheries and rural development, in his piece Political Integrity and Credibility, the Nationalist government is guilty of half truths and non-information about the cost of sugar...
According to Noel Farrugia, the opposition spokesman for agriculture, fisheries and rural development, in his piece Political Integrity and Credibility, the Nationalist government is guilty of half truths and non-information about the cost of sugar when Malta joins the EU (September 15).
That is not correct. When the ongoing debate about joining the EU was in full swing in all the media, government spokesmen made it quite clear that Malta may not be able to enjoy world prices on some commodities and would be restricted to the terms of the Common Agricultural Policy as he points out.
Mr Farrugia considers sugar to be a vital commodity to our economy and of great importance to the tourism industry and to the processed food industry.
Speaking of half truths, Mr Farrugia forgot to mention that sugar in anybody's diet is totally unnecessary for one's health since even if one bites on a piece of bread which does not have any sugar content, the body will convert that into sugar. Why does a tin of baked beans or a bottle of tomato ketchup or tin of tomato paste, all processed here in Malta, have to have sugar added to them? Does he not know that a non-diet 0.33 centilitre bottle of a popular soft drink contains eight teaspoons of sugar?
Mr Farrugia does not make a case for the importation of so much sugar into Malta. He should inform the public as the opposition spokesman on these matters that Malta has 10 per cent of its population diagnosed as diabetics of both types of that condition, compared to the EU average of three per cent. Rather than scoring political points he should applaud the government if the higher price of sugar results in a downward curve in the consumption of needless quantities of sugar.
Even if he manages to convince some people of how naughty the Nationalists were with their half truths, if any, he himself has not stated the whole truth about sugar imports into Malta. He might do well to read Pure, White And Deadly by John Yudkin on the effects of sugar consumption on the human body.