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February 2009 Edition

 

The Annam festival in Kerala shows how

Shree Padre
Thiruvananthapuram

IT was a little past midnight, but Lilly Bai was up and about. For the next few hours she was busy making 15 dishes using yam. By noon she had taken her preparations to Thriuvananthapuram to present them in a traditional cookery competition at the Annam festival.

Lilly is a housewife at Parassala, a small town in Kerala. Like her, thousands of middle-aged housewives are waking up to the merits of wholesome traditional cooking. They are rediscovering the variety that used to exist but has been all but forgotten because of the pressures of modern living.

Lilly's yam offering was a special effort. She has the enthusiasm that it takes. "If I had enough time, I could have made another 10 dishes using yam," says Lilly. But for most people putting an old-style meal together is just too laborious. It is a difficult choice to make when quicker, easier alternatives are available.

The Annam festival held in the last week of December, is the first event of its kind. It is a brave attempt to bring focus to the growing concern over the present food habits in Kerala and the deleterious effects they are having on public health.

Among Indian states, Kerala has outstanding social indicators, but changes in diet and lifestyle have saddled it with diabetes and hypertension cases several times the national average.

Everyone seems to agree that Malayalis are eating wrong. They have gone from fibre-rich freshly cooked home meals to processed foods. There is too much sugar and fat in what they consume these days. Most families have no inclination for the good old nutritious morning meal that was intended to keep one going through the day.

The bread and eggs gobbled down in the morning or the buttery biscuits and chips in the tiffin boxes given to school-going children together with the urban weakness for colas, burgers and pizzas are adding up to just far too many calories.

It is not much different in rural areas, where the shifts in cultivation and the emphasis on rubber because of the money it brings in, have seen traditional crops like paddy being replaced.

In a rural area in years gone by, a morning meal would have been made out ofrice, tapioca and vegetables. There would be the idli, dosa, puttu, vellappam, idi appam or nool puttu and so on. Lunch was similarly non-greasy and full of vegetables.

But now the deeply fried parantha, made out of white flour, reigns. Not only does it weigh heavily on the southern constitution, but it is a corrupted version of the original parantha that belongs in the north. The parantha, as it is eaten in the north of India, is made from whole wheat and not white flour. It also isn't fried so extensively.

Ironically, Kerala is the home of Ayurveda which regards food as medicine. It is in Kerala that the kitchen garden used to flourish with all the herbs and vegetables that a family needs for a healthy and balanced diet.

However, to cater to middle and upper class Malayalis who have travelled and lived elsewhere outside Kerala, eating joints have now mushroomed all over the state. The consumption of processed and fast food has considerably increased in the recent decades.

In homes where the women also go to office, there is less time for the kitchen. Traditional cooking can be slow and elaborate. Lilly may be ready to get up early to make her dishes with yam, but the modern woman is not so inclined – even if she is not dashing off to an office.

It is against this backdrop of changing preferences that the Annam festival was conceived by the Centre for Innovation in Science and Social Action (CISSA).

"Compared to the diet that fuelled human evolution, today's so-called affluent diet has double the amount of saturated fat, a third of former fibre intake, much more sugar and salt, flour carbohydrates and a reduced intake of nutrients," points out Dr C Suresh Kumar, general secretary, CISSA.

"Annam aims to create an awakening among communities of the devastating effects of fast and processed food. It also wants to highlight the loss of agrobiodiversity and its impact on food security," he says.

This probably is first time that an effort on such a large scale has been made to bring together NGOs, government departments and working groups on the question of diet and public health.

"The Kerala backyard garden is a model for the whole country. It is biologically intensive. To grow the same quantity of nutrients through less nutritious crops, you need many acres of land," says Dr Vandana Shiva, redoubtable environmentalist and chairperson of Annam's organizing committee.

The cookery competition was a fun way of providing a reminder of past food habits. Boiled tapioca chips with oven roasted fish and chama chor (boiled foxtail millet) were the diet of the poor in yesteryears. Also served up was puttu made from hand-pounded rice and tapioca and moringa toran, which is a dry side-dish for cooked rice.

Tubers exhibited by the Central Tuber Crops Research Institute (CTCRI) and the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation gave some idea of the tuber varieties the state has. About 50 traditional varieties of paddy including the medicinal Navara, scented Gandhakasala, Chennellu, Ponnari, Vellari, Medapuncha, Arikkurai, and Varinellu were on display.

Families visited the food festival and parents were overheard telling their children about paddy ---- "after removing the husk from this, we get the rice that we eat regularly." Such is the urban-rural divide that the festival has sought to bridge.

A RALLYING POINT: The concern over eating habits has been steadily building in Kerala. There is a growing market for organic food and traditional preparations. Restaurants cater to this demand and at least one rural bazaar helps farmers market their organic produce.

The government has done its bit as well. It promoted a terrace garden programme so that urban people would take to growing and eating vegetables.

Similarly, The Kutumbashree movement sponsored by the Kerala government consists of families who make quick meals the traditional way and sell them. It is healthy fast food.

The festival brought several of these efforts --- commercial and voluntary---- together in a useful way.

Pathayam, a natural food restaurant, which had a stall at the festival offered ragi appam, scented terali appam, edana appam, ela
ada and kozhukkatta.

There was a lot of interest in examples of food as medicine: the original Kerala way of eating. Four such preparations made by a Kutumbashree unit had many takers. "We got these four recipes from an old lady", Bindu, a member of the Kutumbashree unit, told us. Adalodakam koottu , a mixture made from Malabar Nut leaves and other herbs helps to purify blood and get rids of lung related health problems like coughing, phlegm etc. Brahmi kurukk, from the leaves of the Indian pennywort is an energizer, good for memory and mind development. Malathangi kukrukk from Cissampelos pareira leaves etc relieves against tastelessness, weakness and chest pain. Poovarash kurukk ( mainly made from Thespesia populnea leaves) is a general tonic.

Puluk, a mixture of boiled tubers, has yam, dioscorea, arrowroot and cassava in it. Kappa, cooked tapioca, once the main breakfast item, has vanished from the cities. It is still there in villages but tuber consumption as a whole has decreased considerably even in rural areas.

SEASON SPECIFIC: Earlier, certain herbal food preparations were season specific. Consumption of karkadaka kanji during July- August is now being revived. Kanji is rice gruel.

Bindu's stall offered marinnu kanji, or medicinal gruel, every day. It also served Navara, a medicinal rice cooked with various herbs. Different regions have different herbal combinations.

Says Anil Kumar C.B. who runs Altermedia, an ecoshop at Thrissur: "Consuming marinnu kanji is like getting a vehicle serviced. It removes toxic deposits from your body and puts back deficient nutrients, if any. In and around Thrissur alone there are about a hundred variations of this kanji."

These food practices are both medicinal as well as nutritional. Eating ettangadi --- eight kinds of tubers like yams, dioscorea, cassava etc --- in winter is another custom.

Similarly, in the Thiruvananthapuram area it was common to consume pathila ---- 10 varieties of leaves (Neyyurni, Thalu, Thakara, Kumbalam, Matha, Vellari, Aanakkodithuva, Cheera, Chena and Chembila) ---- in the monsoon. Says L Radhakrishnan, Secretary to Government of Kerala and working chairman of the Annam festival, "Every year, NRIs send Rs 30,000 crores back to Kerala. The unofficial figure could be much higher. A good chunk of this gets spent on food habits that are mostly an imitation of the West. Then, the lower middle class goes and imitates what the rich do."

The younger generation's food mainly consists of fat and carbohydrates. One school in Thiruvananthapuram provides only hamburgers to its students. A study conducted by a local hospital among people in the below 20 age group, found lifestyle diseases like hypertension and obesity to be as high as 20 per cent.

Radhakrishnan feels that the Kutambashree anti-poverty programme is a local example worth following. "It is a great success," he points out, "Several small families are producing clean homemade food. It is fast food, but done in the traditional way from inputs from home gardens. For example, in chicken preparations it's not the broiler chicken, but local chicken that is used."

"Eighty-five per cent of our food comes from outside the state. Although we are literate, we aren't quality conscious about food," says S Usha, director, Thanal. "Very few people in society are aware of environmental degradation. Similarly most people do not realize that what they get from super markets and expensive restaurants need not be healthy."

Thanal has been popularizing organic practices among small farmers. It started an organic bazaar in Thiruvanathapuram five years ago. Originally it was held once a month and now it is held twice a week. Hundreds of farmers directly sell their produce to consumers who come from 10 and 20 km away.

Prices at the organic bazaar are generally at par with the general market. The odd items are costlier by Rs 3 or Rs 4. But the important thing is the prices are steady --- they don't go up and down with the rest of the market.

GOOD DEMAND: Usha says that there is a demand for organic produce in the state. "There are enough buyers. One great advantage is that villages are located very near to towns and cities in Kerala. There is good scope for marketing. Local vegetables fetch a better price and are seen by people as being healthier."

She adds, "The only leafy vegetables we eat are amaranthus and occasionally moringa. We have scope for cultivating many more. Like cowpea, pumpkin, etc. Our upper classes consume a lot of meat. In Europe and US though a lot of meat is eaten it is balanced with vegetables." "We have to include more cereals in our diet. Food made from ragi (finger millet) is almost unknown in the state except for ragi gruel taken by diabetics," says Usha. "We need A good amount of fiber. We can learn to use ragi from our neighbouring state of Karnataka."

RESTAURANTS: There are several restaurants that serve only natural food. CV Gangadharan, a pioneer in this sphere, runs Pathayam in Thiruvanathapuram. Pathayam doesn't serve the regular restaurant menu. It excludes tea, coffee, white sugar, milk, maida, chillies and many spices. For breakfast, it serves different types of puttu ---- vegetable puttu, ragi puttu and jowar puttu. These are steam cooked in the traditional way in the shell of the coconut. Dosas are made minus fenugreek because then they are easier to digest.

Instead of coffee and tea, coriander coffee, that is now locally popular as Jappi, is served. Though milder in taste and stimulation, it is refreshing. Instead of cow's milk, coconut milk is added. Demand for readymade Jappi powder is increasing.

Gangadharan says that he does not believe in using chillies and tamarind. "We rely only on turmeric and coriander," he says. Pickles and papad are also not served. If a sour flavour is required, tomato or lime juice is used.

His restaurant does not serve water during a meal either. "It is not good for the digestion. Neither do we provide water nor do our customers ask for it," he says. For dinner, kanji is provided with chutney and thoran. A meal of green gram sprouts is another option.

A main meal at Pathayam costs Rs 50. A breakfast is for Rs 20 or Rs 25. "If it is nutritious food you need to eat very little," says Gangadharan.

"All our customers are very health conscious," he says. "We try to be as natural as possible in all that we do but it hasn't yet been possible to ensure that every input is organically grown."

Soon Gangadharan plans another restaurant in Thiruvananthapuram. He plans to serve uncooked food only on one day of the week. "If it catches on we will add more days," he says.

The story of a company called Lumiere is interesting. It owns a restaurant called Sea Grill at Ernakulam. Manjunath, an IT professional who has returned from the US, has been growing organic vegetables on his farm for the past six years. He has not able to sell them at a viable price. Then the idea of starting an organic restaurant occurred. A regular visitor to Grasshopper, a natural food restaurant also at Ernakulam, he knew Ambrose who was running it. Grasshopper is closed now. But they joined hands to launch Lumiere.

Lumiere, apart from using its own vegetables, sources organic inputs from different parts of the country. Vegetables from Tamil Nadu, cereals and pulses from Rajasthan and wheat flour from Himachal Pradesh and so on. Sea food and vegetarian meals are its specialties. Despite good demand, the popular parantha has been kept out of its menu. Reason: "First because organic maida is not available. Second, it has no nutritional value. It has no fibre and is full of oil."

Manjunath says: "We source most of the products directly from farmers and we pay a higher price. Our objective is to show that organic is sustainable and financially viable. Once it is profitable, more people will come into this."

All the nature food restaurants have not been a success. Some, like the Prakruthi Bhojanashala at Thiruvananhapuram have closed down. Others, despite serving good food at normal rates aren't doing very well. Manjunath clarifies: "Only when a person is ill does he start thinking about healthy food. He may go there daily too. But the majority of the people don't take link diet to health."

Manjunath believes that nature food restaurants have to make themselves attractive. "I love the food served in nature food joints. But I am not able to take my children along. They want a good place to eat in, music, a bunch of choices etc," he explains. "As they say, you have to serve the food in the new generation's format. It is just not enough to provide healthy food. Ambience and variety are also important. If it was 20 years ago, just serving the good food would have been sufficient."

Though Lumiere seems to be very successful, Manjunath observes that "very few people know what is organic. Others are used to whatever they are getting now. They aren't interested in knowing more. A serious awareness campaign by the government and media is required."

ROOFTOP VEGGIES: One such effort was the Kerala government's incentive to grow vegetables on rooftops. It was called Village in a City. It was started in 2004 but unfortunately petered out.

But in two years it succeeded in developing an interest in rooftop farming among several thousand people resident in urban areas.

The Sisuvihar LP School is one place where it is still running. Though the school has limited space, the students grow half a dozen vegetables. It is used in curries for their midday meal. "Whenever related lessons come, we tell students about the poisons in food and the need to grow our own vegetables without chemical inputs", says Sindhu, the teacher in charge. "The result is that all of them know at least something about these issues."

R Sridhar, the president of the parent teacher association, says: "The pride of eating vegetables they have grown themselves inspires them to discuss organic food at home and with friends."

The Neyyattinkara Integral Development Society (NIDS) reconstructed an impressive model of the Kerala kitchen garden at the Annam festival. All the local vegetables were also exhibited. For the last one decade, NIDs has been popularizing backyard gardening integrated with poultry, animal husbandry etc. It has influenced thousands of families. An indication of NIDS' success was tangible in at the Onam feast this year. About 3,000 families had the pleasure of having at least three homegrown vegetables in their feast. "Society and the government aren't recognizing the pains farmers take to produce food. Our goal is that consumers of food should also be its producers," says Fr. D.Shaj Kumar, director, NIDS.

" The food sector is being encroached by big business. What worries us most is that we are losing our precious diversity. Once food diversity dies, agriculture diversity also has to go that way", cautions Dr.G.Gangadharan, president, CISSA. "If India stands out as a biodiversity rich nation, Kerala has a special distinction in the country. Our aim is to lend respectability to local traditional food. One of the strategies is to get celebrities to speak in defence of this kind of food so as to influence the masses."

"This is a beginning of a bigger awakening", says Radhakrishnan putting things into perspective, "This sort of re-thinking about our food hasn't surfaced anywhere else in India in an organized way. More and more people should join hands."

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