As the world begins to, shall we dare say, recover from the covid pandemic, one thing that stands out as a common theme is the growing interest that people across the world have in the subject of everyday health.
During the countless hours of hordes of populations across the world being locked indoors, a lot of content was consumed around the topics of food, health, nutrition and well-being. Within this ecosystem of physical (and other forms of) well-being, the subject of food further stands out as an important aspect to be considered in the overall picture.
Someone once put it well - hunger never goes out of fashion. The fact that we feel hungry at least twice a day (not counting the millions of under privileged humans who sleep hungry every night) is reason enough for us to pay attention to the food we eat.
Over the years, various people have adopted various forms of understanding food, how it is prepared, how it is received and the role it plays in our overall well-being. Most families across the world follow their family recipes and styles of cooking food. Some deviate from the norm and try out various other cuisines. Still others look to ancient or out-dated (yet traditional) forms of cooking food. No matter the approach, the attention remains on the same one subject - food.
It is in our best interest then, that we should try to analyze the important factors that go into the making of this everyday reality, a reality for us all. Some of these are:
-> Geography: Where one lives determines the access to the kind of food one has. For example, someone living closer to the coast has more access to sea food. Someone living in arid regions has more access to crops such as legumes.
-> Economy: In addition to physical geography, the political geography, i.e. economics/currency/money determine the availability of the food one has in the region they live in. For example, a citizen of the EU typically has more access to and choice of the food they eat compared to say, a citizen of Somalia or Sudan in Africa.
-> Food Systems are Belief Systems: Food is not as simple as what is on one's plate. Food also has a place in one’s heart. What one eats, what one will eat, what one does not eat and what one will not eat - all have belief systems at their core. These could be traditional or religion based (my religion forbids me from eating such and so), or could also be anecdotal (my grandfather asked me never to touch that particular green leaf vegetable).
When these and other factors are taken and looked at from 9 billion pairs of eyes, one obviously is left wondering - is not this whole world simply trying to just get to the next meal with their loved ones? Is that not what life is really about?
From the forest of the world, if we are to now look at one tree in that forest, namely our country, we can begin to see how the macro factors mentioned above can start affecting the dinner plate on your dining table. And hopefully by the end of this article, we have convinced you to start including millets on that plate.
Shiny, Shiny things
A few days ago, I was reading a book about money and discovered that the concept of wealth indeed just came from people saying, “Look I have this and you don’t, therefore I am important”. We can look at this behavior from the kings of the olden days who possessed Rubies to the Tulip mania of Holland (Google it for a quick fun distraction but come back!)
On careful observation, it is quite easy to see that humanity has not veered too far away from looking at shiny things and hopelessly sabotaging itself like moths to a flame. The same patterns can be seen in how we make our food choices.
Our nutrition and food advice is reduced to sports and movie stars posting things on the internet to let us know about the next best thing to eat and drink. “Cheat days” are becoming popular with everyone who goes to a gym/diet and who does not. The rise of the fast food industry over the last few decades, the growing obesity in children and lifestyle diseases in people below the age of 30 - all of this, in a country where 20 Crore people sleep hungry every night. How does any of this make sense at all? Let us look closer.
To understand the method behind this madness, consider this one question: your favorite oily snack made from potatoes that you get from the tuck shop down the road from your house might cost you, say for example, 10 Rupees. If you go to the market and try to buy a potato, it might end up costing you 10 or even more than 10 Rupees. How can that be justified? Out of the many answers and reasons, the biggest one is: Scale.
When many people want the same thing at the same time, there is incentive for that thing to be made available in the market in large quantities. The harsh truth is that there are more people who want to eat an oily, fried version of potato than there are who wish to eat a potato with minimum to no processing (beyond boiling, perhaps). So it is cheaper to pool resources and make the oily snack than it is to put fresh potatoes in the market, hoping someone would buy them with as much excitement and relish as the oily snack.
Now consider the fact that potatoes do not grow everywhere. For example, they do not grow near the area you live in. But people who wish to eat the potato snack are everywhere. What does the market do? It creates distribution systems. Trucks to carry tons, autos for a few kilos and cycles for carry-bag sized portions to your neighborhood store where you can walk to and wow your tongue for some time. Hungry yet? Hope you grabbed your snack. Read on to understand why you have not seen the word “millets” until now for quite a while.
The potato example discussed above was one of the simplest forms of understanding market forces. Though many people would like to think of markets as cold, blood-sucking entities that simply exist to make profits, it does not take much to shatter that myth. The markets are your choices and my choices. Of course, political and economic factors determine what we can and cannot access to a large extent. But the power of choices is that it can actually turn the tide on the macro factors as well.
Predicting the Unpredictable
Technologies such as Facebook and WhatsApp did not exist a couple decades ago. Today billions of people behave as if they would stop breathing, were these things to be taken away from them. All it took was for one idea to make someone go “wow” and they told their friends, who told their friends and soon this “word of mouth” tool, a powerful one by the way, made them into the behemoths that they are today.
The humble, life-giving millets have been a part of the diets of millions in this country, before the “shiny shiny” types of food such as rice and wheat began showing up. Let us face it- people are a curious bunch. Everyone wants to explore and discover more. So they did that and as a result, we have supply chains that make no sense, such as getting seafood in landlocked areas and dryland crops in wetland towns.
Food has been reduced from being a life-giver to a commodity, accessible at will through money. But you and I can change that. We can turn our faces away from “shiny shiny” and go back home to common sense. One millet at a time, one morsel at a time.
Why did the United Nations have to dedicate a full year, 2023, and call it “International Year of Millets”? It is because hundreds, if not thousands, of scientists and other subject matter experts have done all the research and math to help us understand these simple yet powerful truths:
● Millets help improve soils across the world and can combat desertification.
● Millets can solve global hunger.
● Millets can be a powerful tool in combating climate change at scale. Close to half of the world’s agricultural land is classified as “dryland” or “rain-fed”. By drilling bore wells and forcefully extracting water to grow crops that water-dense areas grow naturally, we are creating climate crises. Guess the best rain-fed crops? Yup, Millets. Let us go back to growing dryland crops in dryland regions.
● Millets can solve malnutrition, especially in children. Although many food grains contain a lot of nutrition, none of them can quite pack a punch as millets.
● Millets can revive lost livelihoods of farmers across the world.
● Millets can increase iron in blood, thereby strengthening immune systems, producing healthier and healthier adults, and reducing diseases. This would remove a great load off the already burdened healthcare systems.
The list can go on and on. It might appear a little overwhelming, but the good news is that every small step taken in the right direction is a huge victory. By substituting one meal a day in your diet with millets, you are already becoming a part of the solution. If your family and friends follow suit, you have done your part in changing this world for the better. All this world is a forest. A forest is made of trees, sure, but every tree begins from a seed.
So, what’s for dinner tonight?