Of Rotis and Risottos: India's Changing Diet

Is there anyone out there who does not love food? A Big NO from my side! Being Indians, we know how much we love and savour our food. The land of culture and heritage has its own distinguished line of food habits that still rides strong. In South, we love our sambhars and in North we love Rajama Chawal! While in west we have varied options from a Gujarati house hold, in East we cannot resist a plate of mustard fish curry. That vast is our land that we literally never had to peep onto others.

Well, having said that, human nature is to be influenced; we get influenced from those whom we feel are better off. From past two decades or so, after the country got liberalized, there has been a significant change in Indian social standing and understanding. The eating and consumption pattern of Indian mass have been evolving through the outside influences. Out of several factors, the countable reasons can be- western influence through globalization, economic growth, changing priorities on social stand and extensive travel trend.

United at food, urban Indians even cannot imagine a life without magi noodles, ready to make Ching's soups. A leisure break and a fun outing without pizza bites and French fries- how is it even be possible! Check out the freezers in homes and we will find packaged food products ranging from south Indian utthapam and idli, Gujarati dhokla, different flavoured paranthas, Chinese noodles along with range of cold drinks. I put the specific urban mass in example here because this trend of consuming ready to eat foods, junk foods and convenience food is highly concentrated in urban population. In a first forward environment, women of the nuclear family also have to earn for life. With little time to spare, having ready to mix kind of convenience cannot be missed. Rural India is slowly catching up with the trend.

Coming back to food habit, here are some insights on the issue-

• India has experienced two distinct stages of diet transition in association with its economic growth
• during the first stage of diet transition, which was witnessed in India in the early 1980s and is known as income-induced diet diversification, consumers moved away from inferior goods to superior foods and substitute some traditional staples, especially rice
• in the second stage identified, known as diet globalisation, the influences of globalisation were much more marked with increased consumption of proteins, sugars and fats.

While we may think that with all these options and embracing new habits, overall intake of nutrients for Indians must be increasing, the facts do not say so! We are experimenting more and we are eating less healthy. People are eating cereals, replacing them with more fat and snacks, beverages and other processed foods. Protein consumption has declined in rural areas and remained the same in urban areas.

Putting specifically, above kind of foods are generally refined, rich in fat, salt, sugar and are calorie dense. So when our calorie intake may be same, the other nutrients, micro nutrients and fibers in our plate are missing. On the other hand, our traditional food items provide a holistic picture to our consumption.

Some Facts: The average calorific value of food consumed was 2,099 kilocalories (Kcal) per person per day in rural areas and 2,058 Kcal in urban areas in 2011, according to the survey report of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO). This is less than the nutritional value in 1993-94, when a similar survey had found the levels at 2,153 in rural areas and 2,099 in urban area

A Question: Yes we are changing our pallet; but where exactly are we heading? Are we getting enough in any way either?

Experimenting with food is always welcome. But killing your intake will not help. Still the new generation seems obsessed with the idea of fast/junk food, ready to eat and convenience food. What we forget here is, our Indian body is not attuned to those kinds of food habits still. Sit for a while, give it a thought and then deicide- "After all human body is a complex machine and it needs its input Right."

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