Official: huge shortage of sugar in Hungary
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It is well known that if a good has an official price, sooner or later there will be a high demand for it. When it is an essential foodstuff like sugar, the inevitable comes sooner than later. And it already happened. Empty shelves where sugar should be, clueless customers, helpless cashiers.
Empty shelves greet shoppers, and wherever the goods come, they are snapped up within minutes. This is the new reality for Hungarian people. Especially now that the festive season is coming, more and more people plan to bake home – but will they be able to?
Sugar hunt but without sugar
Telex staff went on a “sugar hunt” in the shops of several large supermarket chains. Generally, they only found the location of the sugar on the shelves, not the sugar itself. In addition, the staff interviewed could not say when new deliveries would arrive. They themselves did not know when they would receive another consignment.
“Grab two packets quickly, because we might not have them for days!” This is what the salesperson said in a Spar in Budapest when asked about the officially priced granulated sugar. However, of course, there was no shortage of market-priced sugar cubes and cane sugar. One could even choose between brands.
It is highly debatable whether sugar is an essencial (sic) foodstuff. As John Yudkin, a British nutritionist and scientist famously wrote in his 1972 book ‘Pure, white and deadly’ refined sugar is absolutely not essential. Quite the opposite, in fact.
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