We are all destined to have only one life and it is always better with health and happiness in it. Unfortunately, in these times of information overload, picking the right information source is difficult and we settle for an unsettled existence marked by inaction and FOMO.  This blog is meant to be a tool to address that issue thru something that we all know – or think we know! – food, in all its varied splendor. The starting objective of this blog is to reduce the imperfections in our understanding of the food-health-happiness-life linkage. This is meant to enable you to make smart choices in case of both the food cooked at home and the processed bought-outs. The focus will be unwaveringly on simplicity and lucidity with the bar being raised continuously so that this blog lifts your understanding of the immense potential of food to improve the quality of life.

The health-happiness linkage passes thru the mind and it works both ways. Though a bit exaggerated, ‘your health does not depend so much on what you are eating as on what is eating you’ is a loaded statement. In reality, ‘what you are eating’ is a powerful enough tool to work in several direct and indirect ways to lift your mind-body combination though, of course, concerns and worries can never go away completely.  A happy mind can reside only in a healthy body. The mind is believed to be a causative factor in disease conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, infertility, some diseases and disturbances of the digestive (GI) tract, headaches, eating disorders which trigger their own disease trains, etc. Because of this link between the mind (psyche) and the body (soma), these are known as psychosomatic diseases. We are promoting holistic ‘psychosomatic health’ here by helping set off virtuous health-happiness-health cycles.

A Gujarati adage declares that health is the first or primary happiness. A healthy body is the beginning of everything; indeed a Sanskrit saying goes: Our body is the real tool for the practice of our ‘dharma’ i.e. performance of our duties. As a corollary, a life interrupted by episodes of illness, a general lack of control and a feeling of despondency is a burden to the person concerned and to those around him. Serious pathogenic illnesses like typhoid and cholera, acute conditions like heart attack, cerebral stroke or diabetic coma and conditions that have become chronic thru neglect or lack of awareness (hypertension, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, constipation, etc.) demand medical treatment. In contrast, millions of people want to avoid disease thru resistance and get rid of irritating or embarrassing health issues like constipation, infertility and diffidence stemming from a feeling of being unhealthy. Ironically, well-defined ‘go to’ agencies do not seem to be available to this vast majority. The desire for health and happiness is thus widespread, their importance self-evident and access to them, iffy.

A delicate equilibrium between challenges and opportunities: We are unfortunately  living in an era of frequent, unpredictable and extended wars, a widening and unevenly distributed gap between the demand and supply of resources, epidemics and pandemics, continuously mutating pathogens with stubborn resistance to antibiotics, economic stresses like recession and inflation, mental stress because of many socio-economic factors, environmental pollution and climate disasters, persistence of crop-protection chemicals and other preservatives right up to our dinner plate, etc. These, combined with our inevitable aging cause a sense of insecurity, often without conscious realization, further compounding the problem. Worryingly, individuals, families and even societies have little control over these adversities.

The just-concluded disastrous battle with the Covid pandemic and the sudden Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Lebanon flare-ups, which will inevitably affect everyone, are recent examples. Compounding this further, we are genetically predisposed to some diseases. Our own sense of discipline is often challenged by the seductive persuasion of advertising. Though we know that regular physical exercise and a positive frame of mind are essential for health, our will-power often loses out to the demands of modern life. The current stressful scenario seems to justify falling prey to addictions. Simultaneous recognition of the need for health and happiness and the challenges to it would make life feel like a walk on thin ice. Compromised health and happiness and poor quality of life look inevitable.

Ironically, recent  advances in material technologies and medical sciences, expanding capabilities of Computer Science and its spinoffs like Artificial Intelligence, a largely forced but increasingly enthusing focus on renewable energy and its innovative uses and world’s renewed interest in ‘growth’ have made us hopeful about the future and whetted our appetite for a long and good life. In an all-pervasive  hostile and difficult-to-control scenario, becoming personally empowered is obviously the only real solution. And that needs to happen without the sharp jabs of injections or nauseating mouthfuls of tablets and capsules. They call for soft, modulated, simple, effective and economical non-medical regimens that can set off virtuous health-happiness-life cycles without leaving behind the side- and after-effects. And, yes, good health can also be strongly addictive.

Food as an under-appreciated empowering tool: Fortunately an amazing tool, probably ignored simply because it is too familiar, is right here – the food we eat and the food we should be eating. Let’s revisit some of its features vis-a-vis a healthy and happy life. We know that it supports life and growth. A ‘balanced diet’ was considered the panacea for all ills till a few decades back before complications set in but still continues to be a pre-requisite. We like to be particular about what and how much we eat to feel health-conscious but generally do not think much about our food indulgences, irrationally thinking: ‘they cannot harm me!’ The marketers call food a ‘high involvement’ category and are not averse to exploiting it in subtle ways that are not always wholesome. We do recognize that pregnant women, sportsmen, body-builders, the convalescent etc. require special diet regimens for limited periods. We engage with food repeatedly in a day, day after day, and generally can control what and how much we eat. Food as a potent non-medical tool to ward off disease and boost health is widely accepted without being fully understood.  Our involvement with and understanding of food is thus real, repetitive and flawed.

There is delicious exaggeration in ‘Let food be your medicine otherwise medicine will be your food’, but it does make a point. ‘Therapeutic foods’ and ‘nutraceuticals’ are two examples of terms bandied about to convey the medicinal properties of some foods; but no food can be pure curative medicine for deep rooted illnesses. Steer clear of adopting a ‘superfood’ that claims to cure or even prevent anything on its own, but more about that later. However, fundamental food science and technology, basic understanding of human anatomy and physiology, and, basic cooking and eating sense can be fused with the help of insightful innovation. This blog will eventually make a detailed case for specially formulated foods that have the following attributes:

• Relief and even freedom from chronic irritants and aiding prevention of serious acute conditions.
• Credible health claims with explanations for mechanisms.
• Affordable, adoptable and simple.
• Soft and modulated effect.
• Non-allopathic, non-ayurvedic but totally scientific.
• Smartly formulated and innovatively processed forms of popular ready-to-eats. Versatile when in the form of cooking aids and ingredients.
• Free from artificial preservatives and added salt and sugars.

We, the blog team, are materializing this concept slowly and the first product, developed in the lab called our kitchen, is already being tested on our family with very good results.

Where does this blog fit?:  Adopting food to add value to life can run into a mundane obstacle: our innate inertia or lack of willpower. Outcomes that are felt can be an effective antidote for inertia but that requires initiation and then, sustained compliance, with conviction. This blog aims to build credibility of the food as a tool for not just disease-free but meaningful life – not necessarily of the foods that we may eventually launch. Oft-repeated homilies on the food-health-happiness-life quartet will be avoided and misinformation and confusion about this quartet will be dispelled. Then a broad foundation of information about all the facets of industrially produced food and kitchen-made dishes will be built. Our digestive or GI tract is the first site of food’s interaction with our body, hence its structural and functional features that make food nutrients available to blood will be clarified in essential detail without making the presentation daunting. Equally importantly, the daily residue must leave the body smoothly and, in the process, also promote the very important health of the intestines which is a world unto itself.  You will be empowered to not only confidently adopt offered food innovations but come up with a few of your own as well. This blog endeavours to be the information resource attempting to make all that possible.

This blog as your information resource: This blog will take us on a fascinating journey with recurring themes like processed and unprocessed foods, food additives, preservatives and ingredients, kitchen as a wellness laboratory, improved food for routine consumption, specially formulated  ready-to-cook and  ready-to-eat food and food components, deeper understanding of cooking aids like water, salt, sugar, edible oils etc., introduction to smart cooking, some defogging about entrenched doubts, how industrial food processing is astonishingly close to cooking in the kitchen or vice versa, how food is related to health, happiness and life and a lot more. The health- and life-related issues will be embedded in the continuous narrative about food. Importantly, the narrative will resonate with the reader because of the lucidity that will be tailored to align with common sense. Complicated jargon and information downloaded from public sources, especially numbers seeming to authenticate the text, will be strictly avoided. Simplicity, after all, is the ultimate sophistication. It will be the authors talking to their friend – the visitor to the blog. This blog is an idea whose time has come. There is never a wrong time to do the right thing, right?

The following is a sample of the types of topics to be covered in the blog posts, not in any particular order:

• Health, happiness, life and food.
• Food and life: a fascinating material-abstraction connection.
• Industrial processed foods: history, pros, cons and some useful guidance.
• A case for minimally processed foods.
• How responsible is the consumer herself for her food problems?
• The way we use oils in the kitchen.
• Edible oils are not villains; they are essential for life.
• Our unsung home-makers: the ultimate food processors.
• Your kitchen can be your plant and your lab.
• Deep dives in various modes of cooking in the kitchen.

This is an enormous task.  As we embark on it, we are reminded of the epic poem (Mahakavya), ‘Raghuvansham’, by the great Sanskrit poet Kalidasa. The poem is an elaborate and detailed account of the ‘Raghu’ dynasty which is believed to have originated from the Sun itself and boasts of a long lineage of extremely powerful and capable kings of whom Lord Rama was just one. At the outset, the poet is daunted by the enormity of the task and, in a delightful word-picture, modestly describes himself as a dumb publicity-seeker who wants to cross an ocean in a tiny wooden boat. Having thus established the supposed task-person mismatch, he is in his element just a few shlokas down the poem, declaring that he will go ahead anyway because, ‘the purity or blemish of gold is tested only by subjecting it to fire!’ 

Food deserves a chance to make life better.

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