Anuradha Sridharan

Thank you for your support and encouragement for my earlier posts on packaged foods. Some of you had suggested me to do the ingredients analysis for a few more products. One such product is the most commonly used Ketchup. It has become a staple ingredient in many urban kitchens. Having established the product category in the past decade or so, the profit-chasing packaged food manufacturers now want consumers to consume more of ketchup. If you are buying say one bottle of Ketchup every 3 months, the brands want you to buy a bottle every month. Towards this goal, there have been rigorous promotions happening with the support of prominent chefs and food bloggers. One such initiative that made me furious is “ Kissan tiffin timetable - 200 tiffin recipes for 200 school days”.  For parents who are reading this, you can easily pack healthy and yummy tiffin for your kids WITHOUT any ketchup . Please don’t get caught into this mess, just because a model-turned-chef cooks pretty l...

    Saved the “worst” for the last. In my not-so-humble opinion, Kelloggs Chocos is the WORST junk food of all. You want to know why? - Because of the simple fact that kids eat this on a DAILY basis - It is not a once-in-a-while treat but an everyday staple - It is given the special privilege of being a kid's “ meal ”  Ask any urban school going kid what he/she had for breakfast. Most likely, you’ll hear “ I ate chocos ”. Once, I got a reply that stunned me - " I ate moon&stars ”. It took me a while to figure out that it is one of the variants of Chocos. I had earlier written about the rise of ready-to-eat breakfast cereals in India, more on the lines of how they are being marketed/promoted. In this post, let’s look at the ingredients of regular Kelloggs Chocos and nutritive facts breakdown. Before we do that, if you have Chocos at home and a weighing scale, please measure the usual quantity you’d normally give your child. Does it come to ...

I’m nearing the end of my analysis of a few popular packaged, junk foods. I sincerely hope that these posts helped you familiarize a little bit on the ingredients and additives used in such foods. One more post coming up later this week, after which I’m done with this project. In my earlier post, I mentioned that there are a few junk foods that are on top of my “hate” list. One such kids’ favourite treat is this egg shaped Kinder Joy. From a nutrition perspective, it is loaded with sugar and fat, like most other junk foods. But I hate this particular product for two other reasons: 1. The sheer amount of waste that this product generates. The two outer shells with individual wraps, a plastic spoon, couple of instruction papers/stickers and plastic toys/knick-knacks. The child is excited about the toy for a few seconds, after which it ends up in the garbage bin. How ridiculous this concept is! How much of plastic waste is thrown! Atrocious is the word. 2. The ge...