The golden era of junk food might soon be coming to an end.

The government is planning on introducing a sin tax on sugary fizzy drinks, pizzas and hamburgers. 
This is being done to counter high rates of lifestyle diseases like obesity and diabetes. 
In 2015, the total number of diabetes cases in India stood at 5.8 million. 





The samosa now attracts a 13.5 per cent luxury tax, as well as sweets priced at over Rs 500 a kg.

(Picture for representation)

When the first American-style outlet opened in Allahabad in the 1980s, it was packed with teenagers. Hotstuff was a copy of a copy - of Delhi's Nirulas, which itself was a copy of McDonald's. 
Young boys and girls went to Hotstuff not so much for the food as for the ambiance: colourful balloons, loud pop music and a touch of glitz and glamour, if one can call it that. 
Fast food has always been expensive in India.

The thing to do was to buy one milk shake and sit over it for two hours. 
You'd saved for it for a whole month. Most of the boys didn't have any money, so they did the next best thing, which was to sit outside Hotstuff on their motorcycles and ogle at the girls (who always seemed to have money). 
Every half an hour or so, they'd go inside, no, not to buy a pizza and get fat (too expensive) but to take a leak. 
When you stepped inside Nirulas or Hotstuff, you stepped into the world of your favourite comics - Archies. 
It was a world of dates, cola and cuteness. 
When McDonald's opened its first outlet in Delhi's Priya Cinema complex in Vasant Vihar, people came from far and wide to get a taste of America. 
Queues snaked outside.

I was in college in North Campus, a long hop away from Priya, and yet every evening groups would bus their way to south Delhi to eat a Maharaja Mac and drink Pepsi cola. 
The crowds never ceased to irritate Carlos, a Mexican exchange student in my college.




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We need to make fundamental changes in our diet, a diet we've taken for granted for decades.
Similarly, instead of banning alcohol, state governments need to make beer and зетфликс wine cheaper. 
At present, hard liquor costs far less than anything else, rather than the other way round, as it is in other parts of the world. 
You fix this illogical pricing and the health benefits will follow automatically. 
Finally, the government has to take the issue of hygiene in local eateries more seriously. 
As a nation we pop far too much Norflox and Zenflox OZ.

If anything, McDonald's never gave you a stomach upset. 
The writer is the editor of 'House Spirit: Drinking in India