ERNAKULAM : With adulterated food posing a serious hazard, staying healthy now depends as much on trustworthy sources as on a balanced diet. Worried parents face a difficult time trying to get their children to eat nutritious food. Doctor-turned-entrepreneur Shamila Shahabaz, 30, is aiming to make life easier for such parents. ‘Mama Papa Zay’, Shamila’s venture, aims to provide a variety of fully homemade and preservative-free products for children, right from eight months old. By procuring ingredients like wheat, ragi, millets and almonds directly from the farmers, the venture is earning profits for them as well.
“The idea struck me when I became a mother,” said Shamila, who is also a certified child nutritionist.
“People, generally, don’t have the habit of reading labels and ingredients before buying a product. This should change. You will stop buying so many products just by reading the ingredients list such as added sugar, artificial flavours and preservatives. It shocked me too and I wondered what to feed my baby. When I started sharing my recipes on social media after my pregnancy, people asked me whether I could make the products myself on a larger scale. Now we are getting orders from all over the world.”
Local farmers are benefiting greatly from Shamila’s initiative. “Kannankaya is the key ingredient used to make banana powder. We have a few local farmers cultivating it, and we directly deal with them. Shops charge Rs 35-40 per kg for the fruit. We pay Rs 20-25 directly to the farmers, who thus get a better deal than selling their produce in the market. Millets, ragi, nuts and other ingredients are similarly sourced from farmers in Salem and Mysuru,” said Mohammed Shahabaz, Shamila’s husband.
“We are playing a small part in trying to transform our society’s health as a whole, by cultivating healthy food habits. This is just a small step, we hope to be known as a trustworthy source of nutritional food for children. Young mothers should never find themselves in the quandary I was in, to identify unadulterated baby food,” said Shamila.