Food is one thing that cannot be homogenized

 

There were three interesting magazines, which started even much before internet became accessible to the general public in 1995 in India and even after that almost ten years after that very few had access to internet, and those three magazines continue even today, more colorfully.

Of these two were from Europe which were [available for members of British Council Madras] and one from India.  All these three magazines I literally would memorize because they were packed with important and interesting information for general public and academicians alike, especially on non-political issues like environment, health, food and nutrition and important topics of great importance socially but were never the issues that were prioritized by politicians and often never even blinked in the radar of their politicians’ attention [a global phenomenon].

These magazine were:-

1. Resurgence [Wonderful monthly magazine from UK that was started by an Indian Satish Kumar -the founding editor, which ensured every issue had articles on topics like Onion, Garlic –starting from giving details of their etymology to tracing their history, indicating their biochemical properties, their nutritional value to their prevailing utility and benefits to human health. I never missed a single issue of that for almost 20 years in the 80s and 90s.

2. Down To Earth a magazine was started by Anil Agarwal from India which had lot of informative articles on environment, the importance of native items [ I remember one issue titled ‘Cow pathis-mentioning the importance of cow dung] but sometimes it had an excess of environmental activism [ I am not saying right or wrong].

3. The New Internationalist on various topics highly informative in the pre-internet era but predominantly [swinging between reasonable socialism to extreme left].

In spite of their ideological affinities they brought out lot of otherwise, hidden information on several topics and issues.

Why I mention these three magazines is, because they dealt mostly with food, environment, and sanitation and even while discussing issues on humanitarianism, economy, social justice etc., it was more about lack of access to food, the role nutrition and malnutrition played in the life of children and women, food habit, under-utilized native food items and so on.

While veering from these magazines for general public to domain specific books on nutrition, food ingredients, food processing, and food recipes, later on in recent years watching various Master Chef Programs and an inundation of Youtube videos on health foods, food supplements and so on repeatedly reveal these factors.

Irrespective of whatever food items that are offered to any society, the food items available in nature locally and food habits of a society will be the  inevitable preferential choice and major aspect of food consumed by human beings in different geographical locations and even within the same geographical location by different socio-cultural groups.

Therefore, food is one thing that cannot be homogenized however one may wish to do so.

The same ingredients used in different parts of the world will have varying degrees of intensity – saltiness in salts available, the sweetness of sugar available in different regions will vary, the variation that the same quantity of a particular ingredient will undergo when used for cooking in different items and different ways of cooking and so on.

Therefore, except for industrial grade and quantity of production neither the exact quantity and nor the method of food processing can be homogenized or even regulated beyond a certain extent. Any chef and every cook will vouch, that cooking any tasty menu is more instinctive that instructional and at best one acquires some expertise over a long period of time through sheer practice.

Besides, all these the food that is consumed tastes differently for everyone and is ingested and reacts differently for everyone.

Food habits, like mother –tongue is an important part of everyone’s nature and how much ever one may move around and migrate to different parts of the world, taste different food items and even if the taste buds put into forced metamorphosis due to inevitable life style changes, at the earliest opportunity one’s instincts crave for the food items one had as a child as one resorts to speaking in mother tongue when in the company of people who can understand and communicate in that language.

Having said, all these, as humanity has managed to predominantly adopt globally certain languages for convenient communication and easy understanding [this was, of course, achieved at different costs and for various reasons], similarly, can, majority of human beings be made to adopt a few major food items which can, [this being what goes onto take care of our health and habits] be satisfying different tastes, easily available, easily digestible and also help in one’s health.

If we consider these aspects, then among the 6 or 7 primary tastes that human tongue can decipher Sweet, Salty, Sour Spicy /pungent/hot, bitter, and astringent, umami etc.

Contrary to popular claims that food items get accepted through brand publicity ( which may be like temporary trend or passing cloud) what actually gets a food popular, if we choose to observe, keenly are factors like first taste, second availability, third affordability, fourth whether it fulfills the pangs of hunger, then whether it can be consumed raw and if not, whether it is ready to eat or easy to cook, all other factors like pleasant flavors, attractive colors, shapes and sizes, easy digestibility, health benefits, nutritional values and so on follow suite.

For example, let us take a globally known popular food Pizza. Though human being may want to taste new food items they prefer to consume food items that have some element familiarity and not totally new.  For example, anything that is wheat, corn or rice based with thousands of permutation combinations can be served be it raw bread or biscuits or pizzas or pastas or multiple flakes made out of them added with nuts and dry fruits. 

If we take pizza for example we will know how it originated and why it has become popular. 

 

It was just flat bread based, it emerged from the poor working class known as lazzaroni who needed to be fed with inexpensive food that would give them energy to work. It was just flatbreads with various toppings, eaten for any meal and sold mostly by street vendors. Now of course, it has taken many avatars with multiple toppings and seasonings, flavors etc.

 

Our knowledge of tastes and smells are extremely limited and often restricted by the prevailing vocabulary used in common parlance whereas, tastes and smell are senses which are around not waiting for our vocabulary to define and classify them. So, creative generation of tasty and healthy of food items is limitless.

A fast reading of Chapter 8 titled Twenty-one Senses of Chemistry, Mind and Spirit in the book The Seven Mysteries of Life by Guy Murchie [now available on the net free] will take us into a journey of smells and tastes of life in general through his information packed romantic and poetic prose.

More about smells when I get time reflect, recollect and render here.