Nature’s gifts to us like fruits, vegetables, spices, grains and cereals, legumes and lentils etc are taken for granted both as inherently safe, barring unwanted crop protection chemicals on them.  We have to accept them as they come and make them safe thru our homely precautions. Processed foods can be classified in many ways; their utility or essentialness in our life is a useful one.

Processed cooking ingredients and ready-to-eat bought-outs: Domestic cooking is inevitable, represents the bulk of our food intake and has more pronounced impact on our health and happiness. The complete control that we have over it must obviously be exploited – one of the fulcrums of this blog. How to exercise that control is a separate, complex but very important issue.

1. Milk, salt, sugar, spices and their plain and compounded powders and edible oils are industrially processed and unavoidable cooking aids or ingredients at home.
2. Salt and sugar have a much larger and direct impact on our health and happiness. Refer Post 3: Health, happiness, life and food: Part II – Defining food and using it smartly.
3. Milk has been dealt with in great detail earlier. Curd is a loaded category deserving an entire post. Adopt it.
4. Edible oils are probably the most-maligned essentials and they get bad press because we don’t understand and hence can’t exploit them.

The bought-outs like bread, fried snacks, biscuits and crackers, chyavanprash and moulded bar chocolates are the real ready-to-eats in whose case discretion is advisable as well as possible. Tomato ketchup, classified as a ‘condiment’ (a meal perk up), has become too mainstream to be ignored. Noodles have graduated from being ‘two minute’ to emotional props for family relationships; those looking for advertising smarts in pushing feeble food categories need look no further. If brown beverage powders and aerated bottled beverages have somewhat receded form the ‘front pages’ of late, the Indian consumer deserves credit.

Preservatives in processed foods: Authorities have taken elaborate precautions and laid out detailed guidelines for use of synthetic or artificial preservatives. Their utility stems from their ability to extend the time gap between production and consumption and make the product somewhat ‘tolerant’ of processing and packing slip-ups. Read the package for preservative details; try to steer clear of products that provide confusing code names for preservatives. They are alien to our physiology and that is one of the mechanisms of onset of cancers – reason enough to avoid consistently heavy consumption of processed foods. Making delicious and healthy products without them is both an art and science which we, the promoters of this blog, plan to practice. Now the focus on specific mainstream processed candidates:

Processed food ingredients and cooking aids

1. Table salt: Maddeningly mundane but insanely insidious. Nothing is less avoidable but more worth-avoiding. It contributes the basic ‘salty’ taste. Three less known facets: it enhances the natural flavor of most dishes, is a preservative and it helps ‘osmotic drying’ by drawing out water by osmosis which evaporates easily, as in pickles and aamchur. Its extreme inorganic simplicity – it is simply Sodium Chloride – has been difficult to imitate; no proven and effective salt substitutes seem to exist, though claims of partial success have been made in some cases. It is the Sodium (Chemical symbol: Na – derived from Latin Natrium) part of salt that is the main culprit in causing a condition called hypernatraemia which has serious implications including for the heart. Importantly, tomato ketchup, soy sauce, papads, chutneys and pickles are popular and innocuous-looking meal accompaniments which contain significant enough amounts of ‘hidden salt’ to matter even at low product consumption levels because they ‘fly under the radar’. Note that almost every natural product always contains traces of salt. Note the Sodium level on every product package. It would be difficult but smart to avoid processed bought-outs containing salt.

In some baked crackers, fine particles of salt are sprayed onto the surface and on potato wafers salt is made to crystallize on the surface for that immediate burst of salty taste in the mouth. Among processed foods, salt-containing products should have the same ‘avoidability quotient’ as preservatives. Salt is perhaps the only serious deterrent to dairy butter consumption; not surprisingly, unsalted packaged butter is available. ‘Amul’ should launch a low-Na butter variant.

Home-cooked meals are not possible without it and hence some ‘leeway’ has to be maintained for them. And yes, the baking powder or baking soda in all chemically leavened foods (biscuits, cookies, cakes, muffins, some pastries, etc.)  contain Na that does not even contribute saltiness! Gujarati’s, beware: your favourite Ganthia and Fafda contain both salt and soda; so go slow. Gujarat has more than its share of arterial and heart disease and diabetes. I love both the snacks but I love health and happiness more and hence they are very occasional luxuries to be earned thru exercise, lower salt in other dishes for the day and larger water intake. To paraphrase a Gujarati adage: why test poison by tasting it?!

Stubborn minimization is a simple and effective strategy. Three simple and obvious but effective tips: (i) Eat your non-sweet liquid dishes (daal, kadhi, gravy subji’s) thick or with less water. All water in the dish has to be salted so less water, less salt. (ii) Condition your family’s palate for less salt in home-cooked food by firmly but gradually reducing salt usage till you settle at about 30 % less usage than before. (iii) Minimise bought-out snacks. We never add salt to any dish unless salt is missing altogether. Dr. Surender Neravetla, a distinguished USA-based Cardiac Surgeon – one of the senior-most still in practice – has authored a series titled ‘Salt kills’. Need I say more?

2. Sugar (and its cousin, Jaggery): Again a subject of a dedicated future post. Only a shade less insidious than salt and in a different way. Diabetics should be careful about adopting its many non-caloric substitutes; the principle of ‘alien chemicals as potential threats’ is always valid. Saccharin, once popular in India has been banned because of implication in urinary bladder cancer. Sweet tooth is fine (for non-diabetics) but avoid large bursts of sugar in a meal as Gujarati’s are accustomed to do; spread out your sugar in time. And, exercise.

Minimize on ‘empty calories’ coming in thru aerated beverages, sherbets, toffees. Adopt chikkies, moderate quantities of vegetable and fruit halwas, energy bars, fruit juices (ideally pulpy i.e. not clarified to become thin and watery), lightly sweetened fruit crushes like strawberry and mango etc. which also bring in dietary fibre-vitamins-minerals-antioxidants and/or protein. Remember that your daily quota of tea and coffee uses up a lot of your ‘sugar budget’. This issue is too delicate for a general discourse but ask your physician about your safe sugar consumption level. Within limits, don’t deprive yourself of the joy of the vast world of sweet foods. Minimise, as a general rule.

3. Edible oils: (Also refer to the following posts:

Post 3. Health, happiness, life and food: Part II – Defining food and using it smartly.

Post 4. https://letfoodliftlife.com/industrial-food-processing-part-i-their-evolution-and-present-status/.

Undeservingly more maligned than sugar and salt. In reality, they play so many roles in our diet – nutritive as well as non-nutritive – that seriously avoiding them can be harmful, unless it is recommended by a physician. A series of posts on them ‘coming soon’.

4. Milk: Discussed before.
5. Whole (‘khade’) spices and compounded powders: We are planning two dedicated posts on this but for the present note that: 1. Whole spices can be loaded with crop-protective chemicals. Cleaning them of these is both an art and a science. Do develop your own cleaning protocol. 2. Obviously, compounded spice powders (garam masala, pao bhaji masala, chhole masala, even khichadi masala!….) can be seriously harmful because of the total destruction of spices into powders masking a lot of things. As product/dish-defining ingredients, they can be game-changers. We will talk about a single versatile ‘garam masala’ some day that can spice samosa, chhole, bhaji, rajama, ‘punjabi’ subji’s, daal tadka, daal makhani….. and how to develop your own version of it. 3. Spices play some important less known roles in our food and a robust spice program for your family is a good idea.

Processed food products

1. Ice creams: Frozen desserts are not ice creams and contain vegetable oils or fats (like refined palm kernel, coconut and palm oils) in place of milk fat and hence should be cheaper but often are not! Ice creams derive their appeal from the gooey mouth feel imparted by high content of solidified milk fat (melting slowly in the mouth because of cooled buccal cavity) and high sugar content. This is an ironic category; loaded with nutrition but also with calories, so unless deserved by an active lifestyle and as a part of a particularly light meal (e.g. with a small serving of pao bhaji or a bowl of fibrous soup), minimize. Industrial ice creams have large volumes of air trapped in them for lightness and texture; now you know why marketers love them!

We have trained ourselves to love them less and try to ‘spread’ their goodness by combining them with seasonal fruits: mango, strawberry, pineapple, deseeded orange segments and blue grapes work best! Prefer ice cream over the same volume of high fat sweetened milk, a lot of it is just air! Prefer home-made kulfi made with milk, milk powder, custard powder, sugar, cream, fruits/nuts and natural colours like beet juice, spinach juice or turmeric and sweetened partly with stevia. It doesn’t need much air incorporation and, weight to weight, will cost much less than ice cream. Diabetics, beware!

2. Biscuits and cookies: As enticingly priced, convenient, fashionable and diverse fun-foods, they are difficult to beat. Remember that they carry baking soda and either sugar or salt. Some varieties claiming superiority because of fiber and non-wheat flour content cannot justify the high price on any well-defined grounds and the eating quality is ordinary. Baking some at home cannot be justified on cost grounds because the economy of scale works for industrial marketer; unless the creative satisfaction derived from a batch of almond/rose/chocolate/orange/vanilla-flavoured cookies is a driver. For serious value-addition, try kahwa flavoured cookies made with refined flour and semolina and sweetened with jaggery and dates. By the way, industrial products contain hydrogenated fats or, increasingly, palm oil. DO find out what and at what level from the label. Do stick with reputed brands.

Coming up with biscuit-like fried snacks at home cannot be difficult.

3. Fried snacks: Industrial frying is an astonishingly wide-spread processing operation which is not surprising given that most potato chips and French fries (apart from all your favourite dry snacks) are fried. Repeat uses of frying oil for subsequent batches is as common as it is harmful. Road-side snack-makers are known to adulterate their frying oil with ‘mineral’ oil (sourced from petroleum) to lower the price, minimize off-flavours and improve crispiness. Khari sing (salted groundnut kernels), spiced sing, spiced roasted dehulled chana, fried hydrated mung and chana dal, home-made sev (many versions; the city of Surat specializes in lovely ‘limbu-mari ni sev or lemon-black pepper sev), home made chivdas from rice and corn poha etc. are great substitutes.

Fried-for-immediate consumption snacks like bhajiya or pakoda, samosa and kachaudi usually start with batters containing higher water-content. As home-cooked foods, they will appear in the post devoted to frying.

A confession: personally, I love these bought-out snacks and only threats to my marriage act as a real deterrent!

4. Tomato ketchup: Hides salt, sugar and preservatives and does not hide high cost! This can be one of the products suggested to be made at home in delightful preservative-free versions for larger families but the cost advantage would be nominal. Some day, ketchup is going to be seriously challenged by an Indian catch-up without preservatives and added sugar but with terrific compatible micro-nutrients. By us. Sauces (like tomato sauce) are meant to be parts of cooked dishes like pasta and are not a part of Indian culture. Imaginative alternatives are possible. Soy sauce is essential in ‘Chinese cuisine’ and is close to tomato ketchup in attributes except colour and consistency.
5. Moulded bar chocolates: Pure indulgence and potential for tooth decay! Don’t we have our conventional sweets and chikkies? If you do fall prey, do use it to rustle up a trendy dessert with strawberries (and the like), milk custard, cake pieces and bits of chocolates. Elegant, economical and nutritive! This category needs to be challenged by a ‘similar but different’ category. Maybe, some day!
6. Bread: Its western appeal, moderate price and inherent versatility is difficult to beat. Makes sense as accompaniment to omelette, as French fried toast, as croutons on a nutritious soup, as accompaniment to proteinaceous gravies and as open and closed, toasted and untoasted sandwiches. Contains preservatives. Making it at home is a delight, but it can be demanding.
7. Noodles: Nothing to recommend them except its compelling convenience.
8. Condensed milk, milk powder, whey powders: Discussed earlier.
9. Aerated watery bottled drinks: You gotta be kidding!

Next post: Water, food and life

‘Jeevan’ in Sanskrit, water has a dark side too!

(Visit ‘disclaimer’)