Anuradha Sridharan

 The synopsis of “ What Kitty did ” reminded me of the movie “ Noor ”. Portrayed beautifully by Sonakshi Sinha, Noor is a clumsy girl, struggling with weight issues and writing useless pieces at her day job as a journalist until she faces a certain issue that turns her life upside down. I was hoping Kitty would be of a similar character. 120 pages into the book, I was struggling with the story of Kitty. Neither I could empathize with her nor I could relate to her life. There were many references from English literature, which frankly I didn’t have a clue about. So that made it difficult to appreciate their relevance in a specific context. The story has too many drinking sessions followed by vomit and hangovers. Just too many. I wanted to give up reading it any further but I had to persist, given that there was a book review deadline. The key plot - the murder mystery of Roxy Merchant’s death is well etched, with Kitty unraveling the jigsaw puzzle beautifully. This all h...

This is part II of Why your child doesn't need the high growth promising packaged drinks.(Part I here ) In my previous post , I tried to answer a few questions that push us into buying high-growth promising packaged drinks for our children. One such drink that has gained immense popularity in India is Pediasure . The brand promise is that it has 37 nutrients to help support height and weight gain, immunity and brain development.  Given the increasing demand for Pediasure, how can an established brand like Horlicks stay far behind? Along with their Junior Horlicks variants targeted towards kids <4 years old, a new brand named Horlicks Growth+ has been recently launched for 3-9 year old kids. I’m sure in a few years, they will come up with a new variant for teenagers too, thus covering all age brackets.  Let’s first dive into the ingredients list of Pediasure: Ingredients: Skim milk powder Sucrose Edible vegetable oil (soy oil, high oleic sunflower o...

Image Source: BigBasket During conversations with friends, a topic that we inevitably discuss is child nutrition and role of health drinks. I also got messages from a couple of friends in social media to suggest healthy packaged drinks available in the market. “ Healthy packaged ” drink is an oxymoron. When we were kids (growing up in 80s and early 90s), our mornings began with a glass of milk mixed with either Horlicks, Boost or Bournvita. And Complan for those who can afford it, since it was positioned as a premium drink. Now that we have all grown up, we try to follow the same routine for our children. I remember drinking such drinks on a daily basis 1-2 times a day for many years. It didn’t have any positive effect on my growth parameters. When I entered my teens and adulthood, I was underweight, anemic and ended up with PCOD. So I have absolutely NO TRUST in these so-called “health” drinks. A few questions to ponder: 1) What’s the motiva...

Disclaimer - I’m neither a doctor nor a nutritionist. Please read this article below with an open mind and do your research before making any change.  If you are born in the 80s, you would have come across this ad in Doordarshan - a woman with shabby hair would crib about how messy it is to fill lumpy salt in the bottle and then a woman wearing a crisp, white saree and neatly combed hair would cut open a pack of iodised salt and pour it effortlessly into a bottle. The salt would come out in a smooth flow without spilling. That’s how I remember iodised table salt entering our lives in the 80s.  Fast forward to 2012. I was facing a few health issues - my blood pressure was going low, I was feeling giddy and nauseous especially in the evenings and I was drop dead tired all the time. Little did I know that all these issues was due to the wrong salt usage in my kitchen. My in-laws were staying with me around that time. Since both of them have diabetes and high BP,...

A few days back, I felt quite irritated to see a popular food blogger promoting an olive oil brand for daily Indian style of cooking with the hashtag #rozkakhana. She has more than a million followers on FB. As I visited a supermarket nearby, I noticed the most accessible shelf in the “Oils” section was lined up with different olive oil brands. The oils that we Indians typically use in our day-to-day cooking were lying in the bottom most shelf.  I checked out BigBasket’s edible oils section and I wasn’t surprised to see the number of brands in each category. As you can see, there are 54 different olive oil brands available, whereas there are only 5 brands of groundnut oil, 7 brands of gingelly oil and 8 brands of mustard oil.  Why is this craze towards olive oil? Are doctors and dieticians recommending it? Are we blinded by the media and food influencers?  This widespread availability of olive oils is only possible when atleast one of the two ...