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Mind Your Bite
DEHRADUN Rakesh Agrawal : This plate of ours is adorned with seven plus colours ( What ’ s On Our Plate ? July 9 ), a reflection of our composite , plural and all-accepting culture , as people celebrate culinary delights from various religions , castes and regions . The availability of food largely determines the food choices of a region — Brahmins from the hill and coastal regions are non-vegetarians and you can find vegetarian Christians and Muslims from grain-producing plains .
Food , like music , art , language and literature , cannot be uniformly imposed and like the ongoing attempts to iron out our diversity , is bound to fall flat in our country .
PERTH , AUSTRALIA Sanjiv Gupta : Our current busy and stressful lifestyles have aided the rise of the massive fast foods industry . We pick up junk food for ease and palatability , making it a regular part of our diet unw ittingly . Calories , fat , cholesterol aren ’ t innocuous things anymore , the kind of diseases they can give you over the years makes them modern-day food monsters , haunting the bodies of people consuming them . The popular ‘ happy meals ’ at big fast-food joints are the opposite of healthy , no wonder they come up with attractive toys to lure the kids in almost a devilish plan . Among the so-called ‘ modern ’ foods , we need to remind ourselves repeatedly to grab only the nutritious food . To curb burgeoning waistlines and reduce the nation ’ s medical expenditure , many countries like France , Norway , Japan , Mexico etc have introduced higher taxes on foods with high sugars and saturated fats . Australia too is considering to reduce sugar by 20 per cent in foods loaded with this ‘ poison ’. Can India follow suit on such foods uniformly at the national level ? Moreover , as we saw in
July 9 , 2018
the case of cold drinks , standards of the same multinational junk-food companies is different in India than the West . Here , the stuff is supposed to be even more sinister . I appreciate Outlook for running a cover story on nutrition and I wish to coin a cautionary slogan conscientiously : ‘ Mind Your Bite ’!
LUCKNOW M . C . Joshi : I remember heart attack being an old-age thing . You were considered to be in the danger zone post-60 only in the past . Terrifyingly , the fatal stroke in less discriminatory now , with increasing cases of youngsters , between ages 20 and 40 , getting heart attacks . One of the main reasons cited for it by medical experts is unhealthy food habits . Food charts of some families shown in your report reveal that fruits , vegetables , milk , and milk products are either too little in quantity or absent in the daily diet of most of families in India . Consuming fast food and street food is also common . Very few have the sense of a balanced diet and the vital role of the food we take in order to keep our body healthy and fit . I don ’ t think that nutritionist Ishi Khosla ’ s 12-item prescription for everyday is followed in any family . ‘ Health is Wealth ’ is the evergreen adage . Where does that health come from ? From what we have on our plate .
The Specialists ON E-MAIL P L Singh : Refer to Babus Versus Idiot Savants ( July 9 ). The lateral entry of babus into the senior levels of bureaucracy may prove to be a good idea . Most bure aucrats are generalists , but now policy-making and implementation increasingly need specialists . Although it is an initial offering for only 10 posts in areas such as finances , agricultural , revenue , environment and renewable energy , the move could be a significant step towards fulfilling the longstanding need for domain specialists in positions crucial to policy-making and the implementation of government schemes . The generalist bureaucrat was suited to the times when the state was the nerve centre of economy . But as the state started yielding to the market , it became quite apparent , that a senior bureaucrat must not only shepherd a complicated government apparatus , he / she must also regulate the private sector . In the past , the UPA government had also appointed non-bureaucrats specialists like Nandan Nilekani to head the UIDAI and the economist Montek Singh Ahluwalia as Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission .
Lovely Hearts DHEMAJI , ASSAM Jayanta Topadar : This is apropos the touching story about real-life heroes ( Bonds Beyond the Red Tape , Jul 9 ) making a difference to far-flung lives . I need to one-liner ON E-MAIL Shashwat Deb
The cuisines of India are as rich as its languages , let ’ s learn to eat each other ’ s food too .
4 OUTLOOK 23 July 2018