Anuradha Sridharan

Please note - I’m talking about “staying healthy”. If you are looking for weight loss or managing lifestyle ailments like diabetes, these pointers are still relevant but might have to be customized depending on your health condition. A few days back, I wasn’t feeling very hungry around lunchtime and was also feeling too lazy to cook for myself. I made a salad (bell peppers, cucumbers, carrots) with a lemon-extra virgin olive oil dressing and also boiled one medium-sized sweet potato. After eating a small bowl of salad and the boiled sweet potato, I felt hungry in an hour’s time. I have seen many pics of such salads being shared on Instagram. Frankly, this salad-as-a-meal thing doesn’t work for me. I’m sure many of you who love Indian cuisine would feel the same.  I have also tried a few times eating 2-3 tbsp of rice along with a big bowl each of dal and veggies for lunch. I didn’t feel satisfied and also ended up feeling a little acidic due to more dal intake than usua...

Image Source: http://www.chivukulas.com/2017/04/Indian-traditional-way-of-eating-food.html Yesterday morning around 10AM, I noticed someone carrying a heavy laptop bag on her shoulder, biting a sandwich, taking quick strides and talking to someone who’s walking right beside her. On-the-go / grab-and-go kind of breakfast while also talking or taking a call. In my honest opinion, it is a form of signalling to herself, her family and the world - "I’m a busy person, I play an important role”. Why have we become so busy in our lives that we can’t even sit down for 10 minutes to eat a sandwich? When I was a child, both my parents were working. They would leave home around 8:30AM. My mother would return around 5:30PM while my father would return around 9PM. Their workdays were long, but not once I had seen them run to work without eating breakfast or walking and munching breakfast on the go.  We ate our breakfast together as a family, sitting down on the floor with folded...

Pasta is one of the favourite dishes of my family. Both my husband and daughter D love it so much that I end up making it atleast once in 15 days. Pasta is a favourite among many urban kids (and adults too). We(mothers) try to increase the nutritive quotient by adding more vegetables. D loves bell peppers and pasta is one of the easiest ways to include bell peppers, tomatoes, pumpkin, olives etc on her plate. Of course, who doesn’t love the cheese? I’m an exception though, not a big fan of cheese! :-) Just because most of us love pasta and we add veggies to it, it doesn’t mean that pasta is a healthy dish. My personal take is that it is okay to include it 1-2 times a month to satiate our taste buds. But if it becomes part of our daily dinner menu, then it is imperative that we understand the nutritive facts and make an informed decision. Let’s first talk about the pasta - the different types (penne, macaroni, spaghetti, fusillini etc).  First, there are these fully ...

 Now that I have stopped following food bloggers who promote junk foods, my Instagram feed is clean with some yummy and healthy homemade food-related posts. I heaved a sigh of relief for a few weeks, but junk food promotion in the form of “sponsored posts” have started showing up more often. Is it that more sponsored posts are appearing on Instagram these days? Anyway, instead of whining, let me see this as an opportunity for new blog post ideas.  Most of us who grew up in the 80s/90s are aware of Bournvita, “the malted health drink” targeted towards growing kids. The biscuits variant of Bournvita is the one that caught my attention through an Instagram sponsored post. A child is shown holding a whole jackfruit and the voice-over says, “this is healthy but cannot be carried to school”. Then the child is shown holding a Bournvita biscuit and the voice-over goes, “this is healthy and can be taken to school” (Watch the ad here if you haven’t yet seen it) Another...

Come Women’s day, packaged food brands promote their products using different variants of this message to women - “you deserve it”, “take control of your health”, “put your health first” etc. It is a pity that we (women) need such reminders from these food brands to take care of our health. One such brand that caught my attention yesterday was Kelloggs Special K, the breakfast cereal that promises weight loss and a slim waist like that of Deepika Padukone.  The ad conveys the following messages with a hashtag #IAmOnPriority Is this the breakfast that smart women who work hard and have multiple responsibilities would like to eat? I hope not. I wanted to look at the ingredients of this cereal in detail. Both Amazon and Big Basket don’t list the ingredients. With online grocery shopping on the rise, there is no way consumers can get to see the nutrition profile available in packaging before placing an order. It is high time that regulations are in place and...

   “Old habits die hard”. When I used to work as a product manager in the software industry, the first thing I used to check at work is the product metrics dashboard. Now, when I sit in front of my computer, the first thing I check is my blog statistics. I love to see the metrics on overall page visits and the list of blogposts that are being viewed the most.  Among the many articles I wrote on processed foods last year, can you guess the top 2 products (based on number of views)? The two product reviews that have brought in the maximum views so far are Nestle Ceregrow and Pediasure / Horlicks Growth Plus . The irony is that both of these products are targeting growing children. And parents are desperate to seek solutions that will make their children grow taller, faster, heavier and what not. Obsession towards growth is not just observed in the startup world but even in parenting. I will not be surprised if a new term called " growth hacking your chi...