Indian Diet Pattern Is Under Transformation

I recently met Prof Ruth Defries from  Columbia University in USA. She has studied changing crop pattern and eating habits of Indian over the last many years. She compared nutritional and environmental outcomes access Indian cereals.

India's  transition from a rice importing to an exporting country over the last fifty years is a remarkable achievement. The green revolution's success relied heavily on increased production of rice and wheat at the expense of lower-yielding traditional coarse cereals such as pearl millet (bajra), sorghum (jwar), finger millet (ragi).

The Indian diet has consequently shifted away from coarse cereals. Our inter-disciplinary research combines long term agricultural and climate data sets with models to compare water demand, climate resilience, green house gas emissions and supply micro nutrients across the cereals. Results points towards beneficial environmental and nutritional outcome fro coarse cereals could help to alleviate India's substantial  prevalence of micro nutrient deficiencies reduce water demand, and enhance farmer's resilience to an uncertain climate.

Some of the observations of Prof Defries are very importants, for example :

•  Rice is  more sensitive to climate
•  Rice as well as wheat are adding to carbon di-oxide level to alarming level
• In India millet is  declared 'Nutri-Cereals' as it holds greatpotential in contributing substantially to food and nutritional security of country.
• Maize is the best in terms of all the parameters.
• As far as sorghum, Pearl millet, finger millet and maize in term of yield but fulfill all other peasants.
• But rice is best in terms of yields but lacks in micro nutrient content, nutrient stability with atmospheric CO2, water efficiency , climate resilience and  Green House Gas(GHG)emissions.
• Processing Technology has been under-invested.

However, this doesn’t mean that you give up wheat and rice and start eating only the millets. Switching completely to millets is not a good idea. We don’t recommend eating a single grain. You need to mix it up depending on your health. If you are diabetic, for instance, you can have more of ragi instead of rice or wheat. Also, since many urban dwellers are not used to eating millets, suddenly shifting to them is not the best idea.

Introduce any kind of millet in your diet slowly to give some adjusting time to your digestive system.Have it three-four times a week. You can have it as porridge, in roti or as whole grains in the form of rice or upma. Many people believe that millets shouldn’t be eaten in summer, which is not quite true. As with everything else, eating in moderation is the key ,too much of millets can cause stomach ache, bloating and constipation, you should buy unpolished millets.

One reason people don’t like millets is because they are not used to the taste. My next door kannada friend shares that her mother used to force her to eat ragi mude (balls of steamed ragi) almost every day, she says that she was not a fan, but eventually developed a taste for it. Now, she even makes ragi dosa every day at home and her kids love it. 

The right cooking technique and a good recipe is the key to shifting pattern.It is easy to include millets in the diet as they are very versatile. We can have millet pancakes for breakfast, millets can be prepared like rice, substituted for potatoes when cooked with gravy, and even make a great addition to bread. Millets also make a great bed for roasted vegetables and stews.

The fact remains that India had never been a two-grain nation,. Our grandparents ate all sorts of grains. We should eat everything in the right quantity, be it rice, wheat, ragi, jowar, bajra, even quinoa (if you want to spend big money)—because each one brings its share of goodness. The key to eating right lies in food diversity, not becoming a victim of a food fad.