Food diversity is crucial to human and environmental health Premium
What we eat and what we cook is being decided by large conglomerates. How do we take back control?
Amid all the reams of data, there was a presentation by a chef, Thomas Zacharias, who worked at the popular Bombay Canteen before leaving to launch the Locavore, a platform committed to creating impact through food. Thomas explained that their initiatives are designed to champion local and seasonal food, archive culinary knowledge, and build awareness around where food comes from. They also focus on spotlighting diverse food practices that are climate-resilient, and learn from communities responsible for preserving them. All to encourage more nutritious diversity on your plate.
At the conference, speakers brought up climate change and sustainability, underlining the fact that health and nutrition are irrevocably linked to the state of the earth. Speakers from Bangladesh spoke of the nutritional impact of alternative cropping systems, like adding leafy vegetables to regular crops to improve nutritional levels. A Nepali researcher talked of the impact of pollinator declines in a country where 84% of all farms are small holdings and three-fourths of the crop species depend on pollination. From Vietnam came data about how household nutritional choices matter to the environment. And from Sri Lanka, the host country, an app called FRANI was launched, in an attempt to nudge people to eat more fruits and vegetables.
One thing everyone agreed on was the fact that for much of South Asia’s population, the intake of fruits and vegetables is far below recommended levels, with ultra processed foods quickly gaining ground.
Chef Thomas Zacharias was one of the presenters at the conference held in Sri Lanka. File photograph
After travelling through 25 states over ten years, and learning from tribal communities, local experts and anthropologists, Zacharias said modern diets can be improved by diversity, specifically by restoring local and indigenous food to daily menus. He talked of cooking with rural communities, who tend to each much healthier because they shop at local markets, and eat what they grow. “Diversity is nature’s way of ensuring resilience.”
“In our era of ten minute food delivery apps, our markets are fading away,” said Zacharias. This in turn means customers tend to eat increasingly limited diets, relying increasingly on packaged food.
However things are changing, as people rediscover how delicious local fruits, vegetables and tubers can be. Young chefs across the country are tying up with local farms, exploring traditional markets, foraging for edible plants and weeds from their neighbourhoods and putting all this produce on their menus to prove how tasty eating local can be. For example, Naar, a 16-seater restaurant near village Darwa in Himachal Pradesh, run by Chef Prateek Sadhu, highlights Himalayan food, plating up ingredients sourced from within 50 kilometres of the restaurant, from mushk budiji rice to Himalayan trout. Chef Rahul Rana who runs the award-winning Avatara in Dubai serves up horse gram curry with ragi bhatura, and potatoes tempered with jakia, or wild mustard as part of his menu, all inspired by his home in Uttarakhand.
At the Rooting for Tubers festival hosted Spudnik farms in Bengaluru participants enjoyed expanding their palates with monkey jackfruit pickle, lesser yam curry and ube payasam. Zacharias talked about the Mei Ramew cafe in Meghalaya, run by the local community serving seasonal food: stewed greens, crab foraged from the paddy fields, and rice made with wild mushrooms.
Zacharias explains how he cooked at a millet meetup in Bhubaneswar , where farmers met people from the city over a community potluck which featured little millet enduri pithas, jowar wadas, and ragi podapithas. He adds, “Local is becoming cool again.” It is also a far easier solution: instead of looking towards imported fruits to improve your diet, just open your grandmother’s recipe book.
Published - December 18, 2024 11:37 am IST
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