BENGALURU: What is Good Food? Pat comes Alka Nagthode’s answer, “Food that is local, seasonal and poison free, nutritionally balanced, cooked and served with care, respectful of the earth, the grower and the provider; shared with one’s own and others in an atmosphere of warmth and camaraderie; affordable, accessible and available to all.”
She should know, being a tireless practitioner and promoter since 2010, when she and many others in Madhani and neighbouring villages were first introduced to this nuanced worldview through vegetable gardening by Dr Priti Joshi of National Organisation for Community Welfare in Wardha, Maharashtra.
Dr Vijaya Venkat, founder of The Health Awareness Centre (THAC) in Worli, Mumbai, has been similarly inclined. Articulate and frank, she has resolutely translated her professional knowledge into action since the late 1980s. Keeping a kitchen that serves wholesome meals, running THAC, reaching out to the world through open house health and well-being sessions and creating thematic health calendars, she spreads her message.
When asked what constitutes good food, I am told not to intellectualise food. Patiently, the TEDx speaker elaborates, “We have become obsessed with our intellect, and believe we can have everything our way. Our wrong actions are dissipating the universal energy. Is health only an absence of disease? There is much to learn from our culture, handed down primarily through our food habits.”
This finds succinct articulation in THAC’s philosophy, ‘Health Care is Self Care is Earth Care’. The right food is what nature provides to meet our energy needs. This means keeping its source closest to the photosynthetic process; consuming over half the quantity raw, like fruit, nuts, berries, greens, sprouts, salads and juices; allowing a margin for ‘indulgence’, allocating about a quarter of the quantity to the pleasures of the palate; listening to the body for cues towards its care.
“Food is not the issue, its politics is. The politics of food touches everything – tradition, culture, economy, health, society, safety and community. Food growing and eating traditions were largely mindful of these. These were passed on from grandmother to mother-in-law to daughter-in-law. The jolt to our food, well-being, health and nutrition came with the introduction of the industrial model to agriculture, and the science and economic interests that went with it.”
She does not hesitate to question the science of nutrition. “It came to India in the mid-1900s, and told us what we were eating was not right. That every child is born malnourished; breast milk is inadequate to meet nutrition and immunity needs; children need supplements, immunisation shots, specialists... How does one counter this when governments, with the vast wherewithal at their disposal, adopt policies that support such a model? Demoting food to its calorific content is a bane of modernity, she says. “Most things boil down to intention, information and action. Wrong or right determines the course and consequence. There is more to food than just its calorific content. Is one calorie from refined flour the same as one calorie from wheat? We eat for hunger, for tradition, for expression, for memory, for fellowship and numerous other reasons.”
Gloomy as the situation is, it is reassuring to hear more and more such sane voices. Many are realising that what the market sells us through false publicity and media interventions by mega agribusiness and food corporations as good food is not so good. Will Allen’s recent book The War on Bugs uncovers how corporates took advantage of the fear of food shortage in the 1930s in America to launch a sophisticated media campaign to promote pesticides. Its catastrophic snowballing effects continue to unfold globally to this day.
Nagthode’s definition packages all that governments, international agencies and civil society organisations have been endeavouring to achieve for decades. It reiterates the necessity to keep life closely attuned to nature’s ways. If we do, then all the statistical analysis, the myriad carefully researched reports on agriculture, nutrition, food and environment, can be safely relegated to the archives.
While the numerous initiatives bringing in the change is heartening, will government (national and global) policy and action follow or will it continue to toe the line of the profit-motivated mega businesses?
This article has been written under the aegis of CSE Media Fellowship, 2015. The writer can be reached at nylasai@gmail.com