B Swaminathan (publisherchefbharath@gmail.com)
Nagpur: One of the key highlights of the Orange City Literature Festival, was the fire-chat session between P Soundarajan, Gen Secretary of Indian Federation of Culinary Associations and Chef Ravishankar Mishra, Dean, GH Raisoni School of Hotel Management.
In his session, P Soundarajan on the initiatives taken by Government bringing the Chefs into their initiatives to make the citizens eat right. Addressing the participants, majorly from the C-Schools, he said, “You [the culinary students] are going to implement eating right habits to others. In close to 40 years of my experience, we [chefs] have not learned what is not eating right. While we had reached the moon, constructed rockets, we failed to give importance of taking care of our very body”, he said, further added that the central government is planning to incorporate right eating habits in the education curriculum of school goers.
Sharing the awareness on eating right, he said, 40% of school goers are obese. “Kids today are having all kinds of disease. The government and health ministry are taking initiatives like green building, there are also institutions that can apply for becoming ‘eat-right’ campus. The future is going to be eating right and nutrition.”, he concluded. Soundarajan also explained that eating the right food has three components- Safe, Healthy and Sustainable food. “The country, in the coming days, will be taking this seriously. You have to bring safe, healthy and sustainable food.”, he said adding that transfat free food is another key topic discussed around.
“By 2021 India will be transfat free. We should look at the importance of organic meals, healthy food concepts, and what the body needs actually.”, he added telling that Indians should look at the ancient food practices by our ancestors who had a healthy life.
