Anuradha Sridharan

A few days back, my husband and I had this conversation: Me: My next post is on brown bread. Husband: WHAT? Isn’t brown bread healthy? Me: Wait for my post. You’ll know. *laughs* Husband: Because of your posts, I’m not able to buy anything from the supermarket. Please don’t write about Pringles, I beg you! A friend remarked, “ Why do you keep writing “don’t eat this, don’t eat that” always? What should we eat then? " Someone who had read my post posted a comment - " At this rate we'll have to stop eating food altogether”. In the last 20 years, our understanding of food is completely taken over by packaged stuff - the so-called edible material manufactured in a factory using numerous synthetic chemicals and eaten out of plastic packets.  I’m sorry I cannot place such products under the category of “foods”.  Food is supposed to nourish us, give us energy, make us stronger and enable us to execute our life purpose. All that packaged foods have ever ...

While researching about store-bought bread and the preservatives/additives/improvers added to it, I came across this 2016 report by “Centre for Science and Environment” that talks about potassium bromate and iodate being added to bakery products. Please do take a look. There are many brands that do not mention the use of these 2 toxic chemicals as flour treatment agent in their packaging. That brings us to an important lesson.  NOT ALL ingredients that are used are listed in the Ingredients list in packaging.  So far, I’ve only been sharing about the ingredients mentioned in packaging, which in itself is quite scary. Imagine what else goes behind the scenes in the factories! By bread, I don’t mean only the loaf we buy from supermarkets. It also includes the pav buns, burger buns, pizza base etc. It also includes the burgers and pizzas we order from Subway, KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Dominos etc. The report on potassium bromate and iodate includes samples from ...

 One of the items I stopped buying this year was the loaf of bread. Over the past 3-4 years, it was featuring regularly in my weekly grocery shopping. Though I’m not a fan of bread toast and sandwiches, my husband and daughter loved to eat a slice or two with jam or peanut butter. We would invariably waste nearly half the pack every week since it would have gone past the expiry date. We stopped buying it primarily because of the wastage. There are so many variants of bread available in the market. Milk bread and sandwich bread are made of 100% maida. Many of us buy whole wheat bread or brown bread on a regular basis, thinking that we are making a healthier choice for ourselves. But is brown bread actually healthy?  The best way to check is to look at its ingredients. Here’s a brown bread pack from “Daily Bread”, one of the popular brands in Bangalore.     Ingredients: Whole wheat flour (32%) Refined Wheat flour Yeast Sugar Edible commo...

Couple of weeks back, I watched this much-acclaimed movie “Lipstick under my burkha”. To be honest, I didn’t like it at all. I don’t want to ponder over the reasons of why it didn’t strike a chord with me as compared to the many who liked it. But this movie is ONE among the many recent movies that made me think about “ women-empowerment” / “feminism ” and how it is wrongly portrayed by movies and media these days. This post is not meant to offend anyone but purely my opinions and reflections on this topic. Off late, there has been a surge of movies with women-focused themes covering various issues women face in a patriarchal society like India. Among the various women who are shown to portray strong characters, there is one common element that disturbs me. Strong women are portrayed as drinking alcohol and smoking. I’m totally against these 2 habits that are detrimental to health, irrespective of the gender you belong to. I have written about this topic ea...

Over the past few years, I have shared with you my journey towards building healthy eating habits. My pantry is now free of processed, ready-to-eat foods. We eat fresh and simple home-cooked meals almost all the time. Now that this effort has reached to a level where only marginal improvements are required, I want to get started with the next big project of mine - “ Minimalistic waste-free lifestyle ”. There’s a long way for me to go in this journey. I had written a few ideas/initiatives related to reducing dry and wet waste , buying clothes with intent , using groceries and fresh produce without wastage etc. I have been following them diligently but my lifestyle is nowhere close to “minimalistic” and “waste-free”. Is my home clutter-free?  Do I purge unwanted things on a frequent basis?  Do I buy things that have a clear purpose?  Have I sorted out the “absolute essential” things?  Do I have an assigned place for everything at home? The answer ...

Over the past few years, there has been a tremendous increase in interest around habit forming products from a technology perspective. Loads of literature are available on this topic - be it books, blogposts, podcasts, courses etc. Given that it is one of my favourite subjects, I keep track of literature around the same. Two of my favourite books on this topic are Nir Eyal’s Hooked and Charles Duhigg’s The power of Habit. Now, why I’m talking of “habits” in the context of biscuits? Having a cup of chai (or coffee) every morning and evening is a habit for most of us. We also like to have a couple of biscuits to go with the chai. Parle-G biscuits used to be our default choice for many years, before the health-conscious behaviour took over and made us shift to Marie biscuits. Over the past decade, the digestive biscuits have successfully created a “ perception ” of healthier option over regular Marie biscuits. Let’s take the case of McVities Digestive biscuits. With a tag...