Let Food Lift Life

A case for any processing becomes ‘compelling’ when its advantages far outweigh its disadvantages. In fact, processing of all kinds has expanded simply by picking such cases of large value-addition, enhancing it further and mitigating the negatives. Improving the standard of living of millions of farmers spread all over India thru increased milk production by them and availability of a variety of nutritious products to consumers, is one such compelling general case. In this arena, concentrating milk, partly to condensed…

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Milk has always had the image of a near-complete food which obviously rubs off on its products – plain, fermented, fractionated, sweet. Hence its processing – whether to make products from it or simply to preserve it for future convenient use – has inherent merit. Here we talk about dried dairy wheys – also called whey powder – as the first among three dried industrial milk products which have all the attributes of milk and more. But to see why…

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For a case for any processing to become ‘compelling’, the advantages have to far outweigh the disadvantages. The processing has to be qualitatively so overwhelmingly beneficial that the quantification – always difficult and dicey – becomes redundant. In the next three posts, we talk about three India-specific compelling cases. Improving ‘net advantage’ of processing thru green energy: Food processing, like all processing, causes depletion of non-renewable fuels, pollutes the immediate environment (land, water and air), aids climate disasters thru release…

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Preamble: Food processing aims to make food more shelf-stable, tastier, safer, digestible and nutritionally more available. It also helps plug demand-supply gaps across geographies thru transportability. Beyond population increase, these real positives are making it expand continuously. Additionally, it provides employment on a large scale (as all manufacturing tends to do) and earns revenue for the government that enables spends on infrastructure, security, health and education. On the flip side, all processing directly or indirectly consumes fossil fuels (whose stocks…

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Food processing would not have been a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide (and growing) if its products did not serve largely real consumer needs. Obviously, all food processing is not essential and some of it is actually undesirable. A lot of it has nevertheless become a part of our lives. The entrenched role of processed foods in our lives: We cook at home using nature’s gifts like fruits, vegetables, green spices, milk, water, lentils or pulses (daals), legumes and beans (kathols),…

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We use the following types of cooking inputs: Nature’s gifts like fruits, vegetables, green spices and lemon, oilseeds etc. – unprocessed when bought. Minimally processed inputs like cereals (e.g. wheat) and millets (e.g. pearl millet or bajra), lentils or pulses (daals), legumes and beans (kathol), dry whole spices etc. Processed inputs like salt, sugar, cooking oils, milk and its products, pure and compounded spice powders etc. Thus our home-cooked dishes have processing footprints of both domestic and industrial origins –…

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(Continued from Post #2). Obviously, dietary fiber, probiotic bacteria and most part of prebiotics  helping them grow selectively do not enter the blood stream and hence do not support life and growth thru consumption by body tissues. But they still constitute essential constituents of food as they support crucial life functions including immunity. The stand taken by this blog is that they should be considered part of ‘food’. A large part of the dietary anti-oxidants do enter the blood stream…

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Have you noticed that many things that we are totally familiar with and experience all the time are abstract and difficult to define? Life, health, happiness, beauty, imagination and technology are some examples, and several definitions – all valid, but imperfect – are possible. A lot like √2 as a number. Sanskrit literature has a thought-provoking take on ‘beauty’:  whatever gains newness continuously or every moment (i.e. keeps changing or avoids remaining the same) is a form of beauty. Einstein…

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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…

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