Anuradha Sridharan

Since I emphasize a lot on eating local produce and stressing on the importance to stick to Indian cuisine (IF you are an Indian by birth AND live in India), a couple of readers have asked me why I’m against Western cuisines. First of all, let me clarify - I have no issues with any World cuisines. Food is an important part of a culture. Food narrates so many interesting stories about a region’s traditions, practices and values. Thanks to various media, programmes like MasterChef Australia and our abroad travel itinerary, most urban dwellers with a good disposable income are exposed to multiple cuisines and are more curious to try out non-Indian cuisines. People with exposure to global cuisines would love to have the “world on their plate”. I love Italian, Chinese and Thai cuisines but I just cannot eat them on a daily basis. I do make pasta, pizza and noodles at home but occasionally. Let’s take a look at a dish like “pasta”. Around 15 years back, not many of us would have even he...

One of the questions I'm often asked by mothers of young kids is " Why do you consider cheese as unhealthy? It is rich in protein and calcium. Growing kids need cheese every day. " Cheese cubes have become a must-feature item in a young kid’s mid-morning snack box these days. If you were born in the 70s or 80s, you wouldn’t even have heard of the term “cheese" while growing up. Kids were given milk, ghee and buttermilk and these were the ONLY dairy products that were available back then. When I was a kid, I vividly remember eating “buttermilk rice” (more saadham) and definitely not “thick curd rice” (thayir saadham) that we eat these days. Didn’t we all grow up fine? Didn’t we get enough protein and calcium? Why is this insane obsession with cheese, I wonder. My daughter loves cheese and I use Mozzarella cheese occasionally whenever I make pizza or pasta at home. Sometimes, she would insist on buying a pack of cheese slices when we go to the superm...

This has been in my to-blog list for quite some time. Many of you had asked me to write about this product. So here it goes! I owe a lot to this brand. If not for this “special” brand, my interest in child nutrition wouldn’t have reached this far. When D was around 6 months old, I started her off with plain rice porridge (kanji with no salt or sugar). She spitted and cried for 3 days. I felt helpless and clueless on what to do. A family elder had been after me since D turned 4 months to buy a pack of Cerelac. Though I was strong initially and said No to her, after those 3 days, I succumbed to her wish. I made a small portion of Cerelac and fed D. Guess what, she ate happily and was asking for more. My eyes welled up and the elder member gave me a proud look, “see what I told you!”. I tasted a spoon of it and it tasted EXACTLY like paal payasam (the delicious rice kheer) . Thankfully, it didn’t suit my daughter and she had an upset stomach. I stopped it immediately and threw awa...

A few days back, I came across this ad for Too Yumm multigrain chips on TV where cricketer Virat Kohli was promoting it as a “healthy snack” with “7 multigrains” and it is “Baked, not fried”. Then I stumbled upon this Economic Times article , that talks about how "Too Yumm" ads were continuously played throughout IPL. I stopped watching TV a few years back (and IPL too), so I had no clue about this new brand of chips. The article also talks about how Virat Kohli came on board after he ended his association with PepsiCo with a statement - “ If I myself won't consume such things, I won't urge others to consume it just because I'm getting money out of it .” Wow, I never knew about this incident and I had to find out more details about this healthy snack that a rare, socially-responsible celebrity like Virat Kohli is promoting. A quick search in Amazon got me what I wanted - yes, the ingredients list !! There are so many varieties of Too Yumm snacks and I...

If Quinoa and chia seeds are the super-foods of our current urban households, then Complan and Horlicks/Boost/Bournvita are considered as super-foods by the previous generation. In the days of few advertisements in TV, I'm so curious to understand how these brands had become household names in the 80s and 90s, more so on how they managed to create such strong beliefs in the minds of the previous generation that these are "must-have health drinks" for children.  This post is specifically on Complan. I used to hate the taste of it, it never got properly mixed with milk, always had lumps or gets settled in the bottom of the tumbler ;-) After a couple of attempts, my parents gave up on Complan, as it used to be more expensive than Boost/Bournvita back then. The most asked question from my readers is “Which health drink would you recommend to be mixed with milk?” My answer is “definitely not those packaged health drinks that are loaded with sugar, artificial flav...