Though not as big

I can forego lunch in place of a fabulously rich sweet treat. Sweets have a special place in my stomach that it can tolerate skipping any of the three main meals of the day if the sweet is right! I think mostly of chocolate cakes and brownies and revel bars and cheesecakes and donuts and any of the bitbit goodies of Goldilocks whenever my sweet tooth goes crazy telling my system to indulge into something sugary.

Donuts are surefire sweet craving suppresors. These treats appeal to consumers mostly due to both its affordability and availability . Just go to your neighboring convenience store and I'm thinking seven-eleven for a couple or three mister donuts(they carry the mister donut brand name) to satiate your sugar pangs. Mister donut and Dunkin donuts, these two pioneers of the donut business in the Philippines have been here for how long I can't remember. Used to be their donuts were big but stiff competition brought about by the fad that was Gonuts Donuts plus the increase in prices of basic commodities: sugar and flour, made these donut pioneers rethink their marketing strategy and voila; they came up with the smaller donut and lowered their price to a rock steady and consumer friendly 10pesos. Not too long ago, a Peso was the measure of the expendable amount for the Pinoy consumer. You would hear commercials saying " ano pa ba ang mabibili sa piso?" Somehow, you can't help but shake your head in disappointment that 10 pesos has now become the new 1 peso and it didn't take tenfold of a lifetime for the changing of the guard.

Gonuts Donuts took the country by storm a few years back and curiously, it isn't a fancy foreign brand-franchised as most people initially thought it was. It is proudly Pinoy, though its idea was borne out of the desire to bring Krispy Kreme like donuts to the Philippines. Gonuts is clearly a poor man's Krispy Kreme. When it first came into business only those who have gone to America could testify how similar they were in taste but to most Pinoys who had only heard but not tasted a Krispy Kreme, Gonuts was a class on its own. To them, including I, no donut had tasted like it. Suddenly the condemning eyes and pointing fingers were channeled rather disappointingly to Dunkin and Mister for not having measured up to something so different in taste but which was already there prior(Krispy Kreme). Major broadsheets chucked up ads upon ads of these supposedly original tasting donuts which were sold only, at that time, in Fort Bonifacio.

Krispy Kreme soon followed suit. The same people who gave us Max's fried Chicken are the ones who made possible Krispy Kreme in the Philippines. A month prior to Krispy Kreme setting its foot on Pinoy Soil I was able to grab myself a dozen when I went to Hong Kong. Guided by my gut feel and an innate sense of direction, like a human compass or sextant, I was able to locate the the small and cramped Krispy Kreme store in SOHO. GPS uses triangulation to zero in on its target location. The way I found Krispy Kreme I guess I'd be more of a modern day GPS than the antiquated compass and sextant. Gut feel plus innate sense plus sense of smell, yes sense of smell complements the triangulation process. I actually passed by a few meters from the exact location and if not for the pervasive caramel smell I would have gone home telling only stories to the folks at home how close I was to buying them Krispy Kremes.

Despite me being a sweet tooth, I can only have so much. The first time I bought Gonuts Donuts, a dozen, I gobbled 6 pieces in one sitting. I was trying to figure out what the fuss was about, why the lines were so long, and why it was reaping heaps of praises on newspapers that before I knew it, I had consumed half a dozen already. While my tolerance is seemingly higher I can't forever soak my teeth into them goodies cause they're way too sugary not just for donuts but for desserts in general. The price of these newcomers also racks high up there in the prohibitively expensive bracket. A piece of these high end donuts is thrice the cost of the now cheaper albeit smaller dunkin and mister donuts.

Like the proverbial prodigal son, I, at the end of the day, find myself back in the arms of what I have come to know as the TRUE DONUT. I fall back to the original to what I as a child knew as heavenly sweets and for the right reasons since they are shaped like Halos, not Hula Hoops but Halos. Krispy Kremes and Gonuts will always be there when I need to jack up my sugar intake but the standards, the trailblazers to which succeeding donuts will be measured upon: Dunkin and Mister have already etched a niche in my quick browse menu which is always there residing at the top of my head. True the latter has scrimped not just on the price but on the ingredients as well but