‘Junk food like 'chaat' is healthy’

Breaking the fast
Is the attitude towards breakfast changing?
Singh: Breakfast is the meal most open to experimentation. There is no time and getting to office is the only thing on your mind. That’s where breakfast cereals or a quick jam on toast is preferred over the classic Indian breakfast.

Malik: People just gulp down cornflakes or shakes while driving to work. Lunches or dinners are more of the eat-out kinds and so it’s easier to be healthy with breakfast.

Akerkar: We do not have a breakfast culture. We started our outlets at 7 am, offering breakfasts and people didn’t walk in before 9 am.

Malik: In smaller towns, people have the time on hand to go for a leisurely breakfast.

Dalal: In Mumbai too, there are people who offer clean and wholesome breakfast like upma or sheera at decent prices. People enjoy it! I’ve seen them queuing up to pick their packets.

Singh: The fastest growing consumption of sugar is in India and it is very scary. Next year, India would be the diabetes and cardio vascular capital of the world. You have the largest set of people sitting with this problem with the lowest levels of equipment to handle it.

Setalvad: It’s instinctive to eat more sugar… mother’s milk is sweet, first food of the child is sweet, so automatically you end up getting addicted to it. Diabetes is no more a disease of the upper class. My watchman and liftman has it too. The junk food consumption is very high and we need to do something about it.

Singh: Consumers are completely incompetent to decide if packaged food is healthy. How do you make out if 1,500 g is good or bad? Is 5 g of sodium over or under the limit? We need standardisation and to educate people on what’s good and what’s not.

Dalal: Many women suffer from diabetes and osteoporosis. Hence we desperately need special foods for diabetics and calcium fortified foods.

Setalvad: Someone asked my opinion on a study that said Indian breakfast was anaemic but there are so many ways in which you can introduce iron into our foods. Even my vegetable vendor asks me if he should give his child cornflakes. Cornflakes sell and people are having it thinking that it is healthy.

Start a change!
At home, who starts a change in the food habits?
Malik: Kids for sure.

Setalvad: Kids, yes, but it is the woman who implements it.

Singh: For non-formal meal occasions like juices, soft drinks, noodles or soups, kids mostly drive the change and hence cartoon channels are full of food advertising. But the formal lunch and dinner is still driven by adults, especially women.

It’s a meaty thing!
People moved towards non-vegetarianism because it was considered global… does this trend continue or is there a move back to vegetarianism?
Akerkar: I don’t see any development or trends in that respect.

Dalal: I see a huge trend, especially in the US and the UK with people turning vegetarian on the grounds of health. In the next 10 years, I see a sea of change happening.

Singh: It’s known that as the GDP of any country grows, protein consumption in the form of chicken and egg increases… hence over the next 10 to 15 years, non-vegetarianism will grow at an aggregate level. In India, every trend has a counter-trend. There is malnutrition wherein we have worse figures and there is obesity too.

Bhatia: In sectors like Mumbai, non-vegetarianism is getting slightly diluted and there is more liking towards seafood. Many veggies are jumping into becoming non-veggies preferring seafood, probably due to the highly advertised omega-3 content.

Setalvad: Many, including Muslims, are avoiding red meat because they know that it is not healthy. Hence our changes will also have a lot to do with how the media contributes.

Malik: A lot also depends on how are you eating your food… even fried paneer or veggies aren’t healthy.

Gastronomical balance!
Aren’t all our cuisines well balanced?
Akerkar: Even our junk food, like chaat, is healthy.

Malik: Healthier than some of our regular food.

Singh: Cuisine is something that evolves socially and people with high metabolic lifestyles need diets to support that. Over time, lifestyles have changed but the food habits are still the same.

Akerkar: Thus you have a calorie surplus happening there.

Bake this!

Malik: What about baked meals?

Setalvad: It appeals to the urban crowd since there is a movement towards healthy food. Therefore, if you have ready-to-eat baked meals at decent prices, you will have a lot of people picking it up.

Malik: In US, there are various cooking instructions including baking, frying and micro instruction.

Setalvad: Yes, but that will take time to come to India.

Dalal: Every woman wants to look younger, smarter and prettier. She wants good hair and skin and only good food can give her that. After all, you are what you eat. I am 73 but I can walk for miles.

Slurp!
Have soups caught on?

Singh: The soup market is growing at 50% a year. Soups are mildly seasonal and traditionally curative thus people opt for it when it is raining or it’s cold. Soups still need to find a role in one’s diet. Many have figured it out themselves by replacing dinners with soup or an hour before dinner as a bridge meal.

Akerkar: One may not sell that many appetizers but soups definitely do.

Singh: When you are dining on a budget, you may or may not order soups but, at home, soup is a big thing.

Dalal: But many soups in the market contain a lot of corn flour and salt… which goes against the basic concept of soups being healthy.

Singh: Although not many know that the US FDA has given MSG a clean chit, both Knorr and Nestle have done away with it due to its bad repute.

High spirits

How difficult has it been to bring champagnes and wines into daily life?

Bhatia: India has seen an amazing change. It has grown from being a market of whiskey and rum to wines and champagnes. Today’s Indian believes that what you drink is who you are. They are no longer drinking a pink cocktail without knowing what’s inside it. Champagnes are not just for birthdays and anniversaries, restaurants sell them by the glass to make it less expensive since the taxation is still very high.

Singh: Wines have broken barriers.

Akerkar: The older generation is drinking more carefully, the younger ones, I feel, drink to get hammered. My father’s mother drank sherry and so it wasn’t wrong to drink because ajji had it… It was accepted.

Dalal: It’s been told that red wine is good for your health and so suddenly the consumption has gone up.

Setalvad: But they don’t realise the amount of calories they are consuming. Just because it is good, people consume it in any amounts. That’s not right.

Bhatia: But drinking wines and champagnes is still like a ceremony. It is about passionate lifestyle and people enjoy the whole association of it - the uncorking, the beautiful glasses, etc… it makes you feel good.