Growing up overweight, I had always blamed my weight problems on hormonal imbalances. It was only when I was no longer a child that I began to take accountability for my habits and question what I was doing wrong.

The answer, at least in part, was my diet. I was consuming food without considering its nutritional value, reaching for whatever was readily available, convenient and satisfying, even when it did little for my health. It took me years of eating rice and sweet treats first thing in the morning, eating my feelings until it hurt and snacking simply because I was bored to look at food differently.

I had to realise that what we eat can shape how we feel, how we live and, eventually, how we understand our own health.

That realisation made me wonder how many of us are beginning to look at our food differently, especially when it comes to sugar. In Bangladesh, where sweetened tea, biscuits, desserts and sugary drinks are part of everyday life, sugar has rarely been something we think twice about consuming. Yet sugar-free drinks, alternative sweeteners and reduced-sugar products are becoming more visible in the food market. Whether this signals a genuine shift in consumer behaviour or simply a new trend in how food is marketed is worth examining.

The science behind our changing relationship with sugar has been developing for decades. In 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended that free sugars account for less than 10% of daily energy intake, with a further reduction to below 5% offering additional health benefits. For someone consuming 2,000 calories a day, that lower threshold is approximately 25 grams, or six teaspoons of sugar. Free sugars include those added to food and drinks, as well as sugars naturally present in honey, syrups and fruit juice. They do not include the sugars naturally found in whole fruits and vegetables.

The concern is not simply about weight. Research has linked excessive free-sugar intake to unhealthy weight gain and dental decay. Sugary drinks are a particular concern because they can deliver substantial amounts of sugar without making us feel as full as solid foods might. Meanwhile, growing evidence about diet-related diseases has made nutrition a more prominent public-health issue.

According to the International Diabetes Federation’s 2025 Diabetes Atlas, an estimated 13.9 million adults aged 20 to 79 in Bangladesh were living with diabetes in 2024. This figure does not prove that sugar consumption alone causes diabetes, but it highlights why understanding our dietary habits matters.

These concerns have helped create a market for alternatives. Sugar-free sweeteners, reduced-sugar drinks and products marketed as healthier offer consumers ways to reconsider familiar indulgences without necessarily giving them up. Social media and the wider availability of nutritional information may also make it easier for people to encounter conversations about sugar, calories and food choices.

However, while these factors offer plausible explanations for the growing visibility of sugar-free options, reliable nationwide sales data would be needed to establish whether their popularity is actually increasing in Bangladesh.

There is some evidence that Bangladeshi consumers are paying attention to what goes into their food. A 2024 study published in Food Science & Nutrition surveyed 1,238 respondents across all eight administrative divisions.

It found that 52.5% actively read food labels when purchasing a product for the first time, while 56.2% considered food labels very important and another 35.7% considered them important. Yet the study also identified gaps in consumers’ practical understanding of nutritional information. In other words, people may be interested in making healthier choices without always knowing how to interpret the information available to them. The study used convenience sampling, so its findings should not be treated as a nationally representative picture of Bangladesh.

This gap matters when it comes to sugar-free products. A label can influence how we perceive a food before we even examine its nutritional composition. But sugar-free does not automatically mean healthy, just as reduced-sugar does not mean sugar-free. Some products contain alternative sweeteners, while others may still be high in calories, fat or sodium. Even the phrase “no added sugar” does not necessarily mean a product contains no sugar at all.

Nor is replacing sugar with artificial or non-sugar sweeteners a straightforward solution. In 2023, the WHO recommended against relying on non-sugar sweeteners for long-term weight control or the prevention of noncommunicable diseases. This was a conditional recommendation based on the available evidence, not a declaration that all approved sweeteners are unsafe. The WHO instead emphasised reducing overall sweetness and choosing unsweetened foods and drinks more often.

For me, this brings the conversation back to something more personal than a label on a package. Changing my relationship with food meant questioning not only what I was eating but also why I was eating it. Was I hungry, bored, stressed or simply reaching for whatever was easiest? I had spent years focusing on my weight without paying enough attention to the habits that shaped it. Learning about nutrition helped me understand that eating well is not about treating every sweet as a failure or finding a substitute for every craving. It is about becoming more deliberate about what I consume.

Perhaps that is where the real shift in sugar awareness should begin. Bangladesh may be seeing greater visibility of sugar-free alternatives, but visibility alone cannot tell us whether people are making more informed choices. The more meaningful change would be consumers learning to read labels, recognising hidden sources of sugar and understanding the difference between a product marketed as healthy and one that genuinely fits into a balanced diet.

I cannot say that I have perfected my eating habits, and I doubt many people change theirs overnight. But I have learned that understanding food is a process of questioning routines we once considered normal. If sugar-free options are encouraging more Bangladeshis to start that conversation, they may serve a useful purpose. The ultimate goal, however, should not be to make everything sugar-free. It should be to make our relationship with food more conscious, informed and sustainable.