Anuradha Sridharan

Corn flakes, chocos, muesli and now the latest entrant, granola. Kelloggs continues to make strides into the growing breakfast cereal market in India. I had earlier written about how the breakfast cereal market growth in India can be attributed to changing consumer preferences, exposure, convenience and availability. Such breakfast cereal brands might be taking a good share from the urban consumer's wallet every week/month, but definitely not from my household. I don't have any kind of breakfast cereal stocked up in my pantry. It is such a waste of money and it does no good to our health, though the brands continue to scream otherwise. I just wrapped up my breakfast with ragi dosas (with homemade batter) and tomato thokku. With the batter and thokku prepared ahead, all it took me was less than 5 minutes to make the 2 dosas. Let's look at this new product - Kelloggs granola with almonds and cranberries. The front side of the pack says "Wholesome crunc...

An alarming trend I'm observing these days -  Person A completes a basic nutrition course in Coursera and calls herself a certified nutritionist from Stanford.  Person B goes for a one-month Ayurveda course in Kerala and claims as an Ayurveda expert, giving talks and workshops on Ayurveda.  Person C loses weight by following Keto diet and then calls herself a Keto expert and offers weight loss packages for a hefty fee (35K-50K for 3 months).  Nutrition and fitness are the hot topics in the past 5-6 years, given the prevalence of many lifestyle diseases. Many people are desperate to lose weight and fall for such bogus experts. There's no regulation whatsoever. I'm perfectly okay with sharing knowledge and perspectives, but I'm concerned when people turn their half-baked knowledge into a business. I have been posting pictures of my simple, healthy meals on Instagram over the past couple of years. A few of my followers have asked me if I can help them w...

    I stumbled upon yet another "healthy" variation of Maggi nutri-licious noodles in the supermarket a few days back. I had earlier written about atta noodles and oats noodles and why they aren't healthy as the brand claims. Do check it out if you haven't. This new variation is called Maggi nutri-licious baked noodles with sweet corn . The target audience is clearly children looking at the image and the nutrition values are based on the RDA of a 8-year old child. This is the first time I'm seeing the nutrition facts based on a child's requirement. Though I'm happy about this change, the sodium % makes me question if the RDA values are correct. (1) High Sodium In a serving size of 60gm of baked noodles, the sodium quantity is 599.6mg . Do you see the Bata pricing tactic being employed here - 599.6mg? Why not call it out as 600mg? The guideline daily amount % shown is 30%. If 600mg of sodium is 30%, then it implies that an average 8...

Mental Health Awareness Day is observed every year on Oct 10th. I had earlier posted an article related to mental health around this time of the year, as it is such an important topic that needs to be discussed. Many times, we wonder why life throws so many challenges to us, while the rest of the world (friends, relatives, social circle etc) seems to be having so much fun and enjoying their life.  Firstly, we cannot and should not judge someone's life based on what they share on social media. We like to share our life's best moments, while we sulk alone or with close family members during our worst moments. So let's consciously put an effort not to be affected by social media. I'm active on social media mainly for inspiration, to get ideas and to learn about interesting stuff. Lately I have been quite active on Instagram. I get inspiration from many foodies who share similar passion towards healthy eating and cooking like me. There are also a lot of peo...

Image Source: https://fssai.gov.in/EatRightMovement/back.jsp    Recently, I came across this FSSAI page that talks about decoding back of the pack. The explanation is at a very high level and doesn't include any useful details whatsoever, that will help the consumer understand the ingredients and make a purchase decision. My guess is that they don't want consumers to dive into any further details.   This post below is a summary of how to read and interpret food labels. This post is intended for those who have never read food labels before and would like some pointers to get started. Readers who have read my previous posts can skim through or treat this post as a revision :-) Whenever you pick a packaged food from a shop/supermarket, the first thing you do is ignore all the attractive images and taglines in the front of the pack. Simply flip over and turn to the back of the pack.     Firstly, check the manufacturing date and expiry date...

Last week, we celebrated D's birthday and hosted a small party for a group of her friends (aged 3-8 years). As always, I stuck to my no-junk-food rule. I had taken the help of a friend who cooks amazing North Indian food to prepare snacks for the birthday party.  She gave me a wide variety of options and I selected Pooris and aloo gravy Veg cutlet Dahi bhalla Ofcourse, birthday cake was also there! What's the one food that unites all urban kids? The answer is pizza. It is the default item in all birthday parties. I so wanted to change that. Why can't it be pooris or dahi vadas? Or for that matter any other Indian food? Why are our kids crazy about pizza, noodles and pasta? I tried to see if an Indian snack menu like the above would appeal to young kids of this generation. Although the food was yummy and tasty (adults devoured it), the kids hardly ate anything. Except for the cake and lemonade, they just nibbled a few bites of poori. Wrong judgment...

When a packaged food brand says quinoa on the front label, I get excited. Not because I want to buy it but I know I'll definitely have something to write about. All buzz words on the front side - quinoa, chia seeds, flaxseeds, himalayan pink salt, high protein, high fibre etc. But turn to the back side of the pack and the truth unveils itself.  Only 10% is quinoa. Yes, it is printed in the ingredients list, just that not many of us care to read it. Chia seeds and flaxseeds follow quinoa, which means they are less than 10%. 60% is corn. The oil used is refined corn oil. How different is this from regular nachos?  What about high protein, high fibre? Well, the answer is there in the nutrition facts table. One serving contains ONLY 3 gm of fibre and 2 gm of protein. This shows the pathetic state of regulations in our country. Brands can claim anything. We as consumers need to be vigilant about these tall health claims. Let's not fall blindly for quinoa...