A RECENT discussion about the feasibility of Jamie Oliver’s campaign for a sugar tax on fizzy drinks prompted me to think about Scotland’s notoriety as a sweet-toothed nation. Is this reputation fair? I’m not convinced we’re worse than any other country in this respect. In a previous column I mentioned that the DFMB (I refuse to spell it out) is nothing but a joke, and that one cafe in the east end of Glasgow which hawks them at £1 a shot says only tourists express interest in it; locals know better.

A chippie in Glasgow’s west end currently has a sign in its window advertising takeaway DFMBs at £2 each, or £2.30 if you have it with ice-cream in the restaurant. When I asked a lunchtime queue of schoolgirls if they were waiting to buy one, they laughed and said they’d never dream of it. It’s an urban myth that refuses to disappear and die; the only way to deal with it is to mock it. Those who persist in equating the Scottish diet with this rubbish must surely have an ulterior motive: keep on dissing Scots food and the people will eventually accept they’re stuck in a culinary timewarp they can never escape.

It’s true that diabetes is on the march. Statistics for 2014 show that 5.2 per cent of the Scottish population have it (up from 5 per cent the previous year) and that over 88 per cent of the 276,000 people living with it have Type 2, which is caused by a sugar-heavy diet.

Across all age groups, Ayrshire and Arran and Dumfries and Galloway are the worst offenders at 6 per cent of the population; Fife, the Borders and Greater Glasgow are next; and the Western Isles remains lowest at 4.2 per cent, slightly up from the previous year.

In 2001 just over 100,000 people in Scotland had diabetes. Ten years ago, it was 160,000. It’s growing at around 4 per cent a year. Bad news, of course, but it’s not as bad as the rest of the UK: diabetes affects 6 per cent of those living in England, 6.7 per cent of those in Wales and 5.3 per cent of those in Northern Ireland.

The condition is most prevalent in the older generation, and the majority (16.4 per cent) of the over-65s with Type 2 live in Greater Glasgow, followed by Fife, the Forth Valley and Lanarkshire.

However, it appears that it’s growing in the 30-49 age group too, and the possibility that Type 2 is developing in people at a younger age is being investigated. This could be explained by that fact that Type 2 is much more common in South Asian than white ethnic groups, and tends to present at an earlier age.

Meanwhile, the vogue for retro Scottish sweeties continues unabated. According to Irene Birkett, who makes a range of old-fashioned boilings by hand in the original copper pans at Glickman’s, the shop founded in 1903 by her grandfather in the east end of Glasgow, barley sugar and tablet are most popular with her clientele, a mix of locals and a growing number of curious tourists.

It’s interesting that these two sweets are the oldest recorded and were first concocted as treats for children in the 1770s when the sugar trade between the Clyde and the West Indies was just beginning. By 1872 the large sugar refineries of Greenock, according to a fascinating 1921 report by one RM Smith, numbered 14 or 15, were producing around 250,000 tons annually and were the largest depot for raw material in the UK. Sugar duty was abolished two years later and that continued for 27 years – meaning lower prices and even greater consumption by ordinary people. It was around this time that Robert Coultart, a millworker in Galashiels, made aniseed toffee in his house and sold it around the Borders, singing his song, Ally Bally, Ally Bally Bee (Selling Coulter’s Candy), to attract the attention of children to get their parents to buy it. Ordinary folk would make their own sweeties by boiling sugar and flavourings (ginger, cinnamon and cloves from the West Indies), pouring it out on to trays to set, then pulling it into strings which they’d fling over their pulleys and snip with scissors into triangle shapes. The food writer F Marian McNeill remembers “sweeties that glittered like rubies, emeralds, topazes and all the jewels of the Orient”.

Rose Confectionery of Kirkcaldy has recently relaunched modern versions under the Maw Broon's Kitchen brand. The new Broons Sweetie Shop pack containing plastic jars of soor plooms, cinnamon balls, pepperies, Edinburgh rock and others has been flying off the shelves of Watt Bros, Co-op and Scotmid branches throughout the country. MD Steve Watt says they have sold a staggering 26 tonnes of them since their launch in May – mostly to the older generation – and acknowledges that “retro sells by the bucketload”. In a neat twist, they are made by Golden Casket in Greenock.

A new range of Oor Wullie sweeties will be launched to attract those in their 30s and 40s who will remember Flying Saucers, Kola Kubes, Love Hearts and Refreshers. They’re likely to go on sale on Abellio trains.

It’s good to buy local and I reckon Scottish sweeties have the edge over global brands like Mars any day. But for goodness’ sake, let’s keep it real.