Iced Tea and aspartame

Today my friend Leena and I decided to meet for lunch. The choice of restaurant was a Low Cal food bar run by one of Delhi’s most famous beauty therapists, Vandana Luthra. We had both been deluged with fliers and pamphlets proclaiming the healthiness of the food served here and decided we ought to check it out.

We ordered iced tea and then grilled vegetables and grilled tofu. Since iced tea in most Delhi restaurants comes out of a Nestle packet, I decided to check the antecedents of this one. The girl behind the counter assured me this was freshly brewed, and had fresh lemon juice in it. As the glasses came up (in plastic disposable form – but we’ll overlook that) we asked whether it had been pre-sweetened. “Yes, m’am with aspartame,” came the cheerful reply. Leena and my jaws fell and we sputtered, “But this is a health food bar – do you know aspartame can cause cancer?”

“No it’s perfectly safe – it’s a USFDA certified ingredient,” came the confident reply – and as if to bolster her statement she said “I’m a trained food and nutrition person.” Leena weakly tried by saying: “Don’t you know all ingredients certified by the USFDA are not 100 per cent safe for the health?” But we kind of gave up and moved to our seats. Oh no, I tried my bit by saying “Just do a google search on aspartame and you’ll learn a lot of new things.” (I’m recently obsessed with Google searches, after starting on the wiki articles!)

This is about the only low cal/healthy food outlet in the whole of Gurgaon (the enormous and fast-growing satellite city of Delhi). And this is what was being served and had by hundreds of people who have never thought any differently. My grilled vegetables too were floating in a sea of oil – with not a whiff of olive oil anywhere on the plate – so it must’ve been sunflower or corn oil. I wonder if they were deep fried in a pan, or actually grilled? I’m sure they wouldn’t allow me into the kitchen to snoop…