Too sweet to eat.

I had an unexpected experience, yesterday, in a Malaysian restaurant. It was called dessert.

I enquired as to one of my favourite deserts, from Singapore, with the waitress.

"Do you have Pulut Hitam?" I asked.

She shook her head. Then said something rapidly in Malay to my wife.

"It is a banana based dessert", my wife explained to me. "It should be nice."

I agreed to try it.

A few minutes later a yellow opaque soupy dish arrived. Floating in it, were some pieces of broken banana. I scooped one out and placed it in my mouth.

Ouch. It was almost so sweet, it hurt. The flavour was one of the most intense I had ever tasted. It really was trying too hard to call attention to itself. I decided to persevere, to see if it would get any better. However, three mouthfuls later, I had to give up. All that sweetness was making me feel queasy. It was simply too sweet to eat.

Yet, I understand, such excessively sweet desserts are normal in Malaysia. The country has the sweetest tooth, as a people, I have encountered. Everything seems to have sugar on it. It is both bizarre - and, in some ways, unpleasant. You see, the natural flavours of quite wholesome foods, tend to get lost in all the sugar that is thrown on them.

Interestingly, I have heard ads on the radio, recently, for an eat less sugar campaign. The ads claim that less sugar means better health. Now, of all the countries I have ever visited Malaysia certainly needs a less sugar campaign. They could start with the restaurant I ate at yesterday.

Anthropologically, I find this aspect of Malaysia interesting. For it shows that a nation can become accustomed to quite unpleasant degrees of excessive flavouring and not only see it as NORMAL - but seek it out, in preference to more normally (from the point of view of the rest of the world) made foods. Somewhere, along the line, Malysians fell in love with sugar. They have done so to such an extent, that some local foods could be construed as a hazard to foreigners...because they are shockingly sweet.

Anyway, I left three quarters of the dessert uneaten on my table, yesterday. This is not normal for me, since I usually eat whatever dessert I choose (since I rather like them!). Yesterday, however, the dessert was truly unbearable. However, it taught me a lesson: the only desserts I am going to eat, from now on, in Malaysia, are ones we make at home. It is a kind of culinary suicide to eat the desserts in Malaysian restaurants, if you are a foreigner and not used to such sweetness.

In a way, I suppose this situation is good: I might lose some weight, by avoiding the more sugary foods. It does occur to me, however, that no-one who had not experienced the dessert I ate yesterday, would know quite how sweet it was. It was the first time in my life, in which the sweetness could be described as noxious. It simply made me feel unwell to eat it. I suppose, unless you have experienced it, it might be difficult to imagine how sweetness can be like that...but it was. I wouldn't recommend it.

So, if you ever visit Malaysia...you have been warned about the desserts. The main courses, however, are a different matter and can be rather tasty. Happy eating!

(By the way, one reason why there might be so much sugar in Malaysian food, is that it is subsidized and very cheap. That should go for a start.)