FRUITS AND VEGETABLES-GOING OUT OF THE DIET?

It may be a global phenomenon that the market prices of fresh protective foods are always higher than durable foods with predominant starch content like cereals. For example in many western countries fruits and vegetables costs an average consumer almost two to three times more for getting the recommended minimum quantity in the daily diet compared to cereal based foods. Glaringly food industry manufactures more high calorie foods at low costs attracting more and more poor income group consumers than those based on fruits and vegetables. Naturally high calories foods with high sugar, starch, fat and salt flood the market with palate tingling quality and the result is there for all to see with people bloated bodies swelling the ranks of the population day by day, the obesity epidemic showing no sign of being contained. If this is the case of rich nations what could be the situation in a poor country like India? According recent studies, the syndrome of excluding fruits and vegetables from every day diet is spreading fast in India with very serious future implications on the health of the already nutrition compromised population. Here is a take on this new disturbing trend.  

"The fear of bad monsoon has suddenly hiked the vegetables and fruits prices by 300% from the farm to your dining table," Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) said in a survey on "Rising prices of fruits and vegetables" in which over 5,000 people took part. Over 88% of middle income group (MIG) and lower income group (LIG) find difficult to manage the household budget and squeezing families' finances to the lowest level due to uncertainty of rains, according to a country-wide survey conducted by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) under the aegis of ASSOCHAM Social Development Foundation (ASDF). The survey was conducted in major places like Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Pune, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Bangalore and so on.  During the last three years, the salary of average common man has gone up by 10-15% but on the other side the prices of vegetables have also gone up by 250-300%,adds the ASSOCHAM paper. The maximum impact was felt in major cities like Delhi (1st), Mumbai (2nd), Ahmedabad (3rd), Kolkata (4th), Chennai (5th), Hyderabad (6th) and Pune (7th). Around 82% of lower middle class families have been forced to skip or squeezed their budgets for vegetables because of skyrocketing prices.
The prices of most of the widely consumed vegetables have shot up during the last two weeks in most parts of the country with the early onset of monsoon rains. The sudden increases of vegetables prices have seriously hit the common men mainly in the metro cities, adds D S Rawat, Secretary General, ASSOCHAM"

Is it not tragic that the so called democratically elected government is indulging in petty politics by bringing an ordinance on food security (old wine in new bottle!) that is supposed to legally 'guarantee" two thirds of the population with some hypothetical quantity of rotten cereals? Assuming that the guaranteed quantity is delivered without any operational hiccups and imagining the grain is edible, does the government feel that its duty is just to keep the "body and soul" of its citizens together without providing any means of nourishment through protective foods? The spooky statistics from the government may say that there is less than 5% inflation in the country but the prices of essentials like fruits and vegetables have gone through the roof recently! The traders are now quoting the rate of these foods "per quarter kilo" to make it appear reasonable, a gimmick that may not go well with the consumers. Probably if the government further shirks its responsibility for ensuring "nutrition security" to its citizens, traders may start selling such foods "per 100 grams" basis by next year!   

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

      

BRANDING OF VEGETABLES-A TOUGH MARKETING CHALLENGE

Fresh vegetable consumption on a regular basis as part of one's diet can be a game changer when it comes to maintaining good health and protection from many diseases. World over it is recommended that half the dinner plate should be made up of vegetables and fruits though due to many factors people are not able to access so much fresh produce for their regular consumption. Even among vegetables greens and colored ones are preferred because of their better health conferring credentials. Carrot is one vegetable, generally liked by young as well as the old, which provides high levels of vitamin A and carotene having properties to protect eyes and good vision while its other vital nutrients are of immense value to humans. Though India is one of the top fruit and vegetables producing countries in the world, due to highly perishable nature of these horticultural crops substantial damage and waste are caused denying millions of consumers affordable access to their benefits. Probably low intensity technology, improper agricultural practices, sub-optimal inputs, unscientific post harvest handling and storage and lack of infrastructure for delivering them in prime condition to the consumer are all to be blamed for this sorry situation. Against such a background the emergence of an organization taking up the cause of the much loved Ooty carrot is a welcome news and here is a take on this important development in this sector. 

"Ooty and its neighbouring areas are ideal for growing carrots. This region accounts for supplies of about 100 tonne a day to various states and for export. Farmers from Ooty take their harvest to the Mettupalayam mandi, pay the broker a fee and sell the produce at the prevailing rate. However, brokers discount the price for bad produce, sometimes as high as 30 per cent. Thus, many farmers are at the mercy of brokers. Amid these goings-on, P Vijayaraghavan, a resident of Ooty, was keen to improve the lot of farmers and, at the same time, structure a business around this. After working closely with R Manoharan, an established carrot farmer, Vijayaraghavan came up with a plan to collect harvested carrots from farmers, pay for the produce on the spot, clean and segregate the produce according to size, pack these in clean bags and transport it in refrigerated trucks to retail stores in cities and towns. And, Lawrencedale Estates & Farms (LEAF) was formed".

It is not that LEAF is the first organization attempting to achieve what is impossible in a country like India where fresh produce and garbage are treated equally and consumers are denied access to to good quality produce. One of the earlier efforts came from National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), Anand, as early as 1984, to organize fruit and vegetable growers into village cooperatives which could feed a centralized processing facility for cleaning, sorting, grading, packing and marketing through air conditioned kiosks in Delhi. Even to day NDDB is continuing this job but failed to make any significant impact nationally during the last three decades of its operation. This is understandable because there are umpteen number of problems in organizing the farmers in this country and unless there is absolute cooperation and  coordination of various players including the government concerned with this sector, precious little of any substance can be achieved.  New attempts by players like LEAF in the private sector may yet succeed because of the dramatic growth of retail sector anticipated as a result of the new policy of investment in retailing where foreign investment is cleared only if 30% of the products are accessed locally and 50% of the gross investment is made for creating back end infrastructure facilities. 

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

   

VEGETABLES "FROM" GARBAGE!-AN INNOVATIVE CIVIC INITIATIVE

One of the serious problems being faced by towns and cities world over is to make the living environment clean, safe and livable for their citizens by efficient collection and disposal of household waste. This does not mean that the individual citizen has no role to play in this task as most of the refuse comes from thousands of households and the problem of disposal of waste can be considerably reduced by minimizing the quantity of garbage generated for the civic body to handle. The urban refuse can have both organic materials which are biodegradable and recyclable materials having some economic value. While most organic waste can be composted in-house, recyclable materials are to be collected for bulking before delivery to the processing centers. Segregation of waste into biodegradable and recyclable is a prerequisite for efficient removal of unsafe and unhygienic liter from the vicinity of living areas within a town or a city. Many big cities do have working systems to collect the garbage and the portion not recyclable is used for land fill but involvement of the citizens is not as much as one would like to have. It is here that the innovative program of one of the urban entities in Brazil is breath taking in its concept and practice. As an incentive families are offered fresh vegetables for trading in garbage, the program serving the dual purpose of improving the health of the citizens as well as improving the environment of the city! Here are more details about this exciting story worthy of emulation by every town and city in this world.   

"In many urban centers throughout the world, vibrant waste recycling programs aren't just eco-minded niceties, they serve an essential role in keeping communities clean and clutter-free. But thanks to one forward-thinking initiative in the Brazilian city of Jundiaí, trading in trash has never been tastier. Ten years ago, the city's Municipal Utilities department launched "Delicious Recycling", a program aimed at encouraging residents to get into the habit of collecting recyclable waste in exchange for fresh vegetables, grown locally in a public-run garden -- and boy did it take off. Today, the garden boasts more than 30 thousand plants to meet the demand of thousands of veggie-loving recyclers, turning aluminum cans and plastic bottles into edible greens. Ultimately, the program has done wonders for the health of the environment as well, by ridding the city of improperly disposed waste. "What once cluttered and even choked the flow of water from storm drains is today used as currency for healthy food," local mayor Miguel Haddad tellsJundiaí Online. "Everybody wins with this."

Taking the case of India, it is beyond the comprehension of many right thinking people as to why such simple schemes cannot be thought of with thousands of acres of cultivable land owned by the civic bodies available for raising vegetable gardens. These are the days when urban dwellers are clamoring for good quality fruits and vegetables at affordable price, preferably grown locally without using too much of fertilizers and pesticides and there are reports that in many cities in countries like the US, Canada etc, urban gardens are being raised on roof tops, abandoned sites, city lands, balconies etc by the urban families to get their daily needs of vegetables. There are even suggestions that instead of landscaping, people must go for foodscaping where lawns are replaced with food plants capable of yielding a variety of vegetables without disturbing the image of the house. Involving the civic bodies in programs similar to the one reported from Brazil can go a long way in cleaning up the dirty environment which is a feature of to day's urban settlements in India. Such schemes must be encouraged through the much touted JNURM program or the job guarantee schemes of Government of India.  

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

VEGETABLES FROM "HEAVEN"-EVER EXPANDING ROOF GARDENING

Urban agriculture is a hot topic in some countries because of the supposed advantages for vegetables from such endeavors in the form of lesser carbon emission, freedom from pesticides, relatively lesser from pathogens. Though it started in a very small way twenty years ago, recent developments in this sector is raising the possibility that urban gardens may play a critical role in meeting the requirements of vegetables for a significant segment of the city population without depending on arrival from far away places or from other continents. There is even a more friendly version of urban gardening where fresh produce retail shops are installing such gardens in the same building for the customers to pluck their need directly from the plants. It is amazing that a city like New York with a mega population and sky rocketing real estate prices is leading in establishing urban gardens on roof tops which is considered a far sighted development initiative. Here is a report on this interesting phenomenon.

"Today, she could have had both. New York City (the stores!) is suddenly a farming kind of town (the chores!). Almost a decade after the last family farm within the city's boundaries closed, basil and bok choy are growing in Brooklyn, and tomatoes, leeks and cucumbers in Queens. Commercial agriculture is bound for the South Bronx, where the city recently solicited proposals for what would be the largest rooftop farm in the United States, and possibly the world. Fed by the interest in locally grown produce, the new farm operations in New York are selling greens and other vegetables by the boxful to organically inclined residents, and by the bushel to supermarket chains like Whole Foods. The main difference between this century and previous ones is location: whether soil-based or hydroponic, in which vegetables are grown in water rather than soil, the new farms are spreading on rooftops, perhaps the last slice of untapped real estate in the city. "In terms of rooftop commercial agriculture, New York is definitely a leader at this moment," said Joe Nasr, co-author of "Carrot City: Creating Places for Urban Agriculture" and a researcher at the Centre for Studies in Food Security at Ryerson University in Toronto. "I expect it will continue to expand, and much more rapidly, in the near future." For city officials, the rise of commercial agriculture has ancillary benefits, as well. Rooftop farms have the potential to capture millions of gallons of storm water and divert it from the sewer system, which can overflow when it rains. And harvesting produce in the boroughs means fewer trucks on local roadways and lower greenhouse gas emissions, a goal of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's administration. Community gardeners and educators have tended plots and grown food for years. But they have only recently been joined by for-profit companies intent on getting back to the urban land. Gotham Greens began harvesting from its hydroponic greenhouse on a rooftop in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn last year; it plans to open three more next year in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. The existing operation, with 20 employees, grows bok choy, basil and oak leaf lettuce, and sells to retailers like Whole Foods and FreshDirect. Brooklyn Grange, another farming operation, incorporated with the intention of finding a site in Brooklyn. But two years ago, a one-acre rooftop became available instead in Long Island City, Queens. The partners, led by Ben Flanner, the president and head farmer, spread out 1.2 million pounds of soil and started planting. This spring, Brooklyn Grange finally made good on its name, starting a second farm on a 65,000-square-foot roof at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where more than 100 rows feature pattypan squash, scallions and beefsteak tomatoes. Mr. Flanner pointed out two benefits to an agricultural aerie — plentiful sun and an absence of pests. "There are a number of parallels with regular agriculture," he said. "What we don't have are deer or foxes or rodents".

A garden friendly policy like that is in place in New York goes out of the way to help potential "gardeners" to establish such productive system and added to this the city itself is offering the roof tops of its own buildings for gardening at reasonable contract fees. The changing attitude of established and reputed retailers towards produce grown in urban gardens is encouraging many citizens to enter this area. These retailers are tying up with those growing salad vegetables for marketing locally and thus create a win-win situation for both. Though all urban structures are not suitable for raising roof top gardens, there are still millions of such apartments and building complexes which may eventually get into this loop. Probably future designs of urban dwellings may incorporate gardening features, suitable for raising small gardens either as a part of the individual units or as a collective roof top facilitiy.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

ANOTHER "FRUITY" CLAIM-PANACEA FOR MANY DISEASES!

Health experts world over are unanimous in their opinion that regular consumption of fruits and vegetables can be best insurance against developing life crippling diseases which are so abundant to day affecting the lives of millions of people. The American "Food Pyramid" dietary guidelines of yesteryears as well as the current "Food Plate" version recommend that fruits and vegetables must form a substantial part of the every day diet to avoid health related problems. It is another matter that cost of these protective foods rules high compared to those foods which are calorie dense because of high sugar and fat components.  While dietary fiber, vitamins and minerals are available in plenty in most fruits and vegetables, they are also rich sources of a variety of phytochemicals with  varying healthy attributes. Many colored fruits are supposed to contain many chemicals like anthocyanins with high antioxidant properties capable of neutralizing oxyradicals generated at the cellular level and protect from dreaded diseases like cancer. According to a very recent study, phenolic substances present in stone fruits like peaches can protect human beings from diseases including diabetes. Here is a take on this new findings.    

"What is unique to these fruits, he said, is that their mixture of the bioactive compounds work simultaneously within the different components of the disease. "Our work shows that the four major phenolic groups – anthocyanins, clorogenic acids, quercetin derivatives and catechins – work on different cells – fat cells, macrophages and vascular endothelial cells," he explained. "They modulate different expressions of genes and proteins depending on the type of compound. "However, at the same time, all of them are working simultaneously in different fronts against the components of the disease, including obesity, inflammation, diabetes and cardiovascular disease," he explained. Cisneros-Zevallos said this is believed to be the first time that "bioactive compounds of a fruit have been shown to potentially work in different fronts against a disease."

It is notable that these fruits contain all the four major phenolic compounds which were found to act simultaneously on different cells to prevent the diseases posing much danger but if this finding is true the natural question that follows is whether other colored fruits do not have the same make up of phenolic compounds as in stone fruits? The phenolic chemical make up in most fruits is well known but what is not clear is their bio-availability to the body after the fruits are consumed. If consuming fruits like peaches can be a panacea for good health, there is a case for promoting their production through incentives and making the same available at low prices affordable to people, especially to vulnerable groups who over eat cheap junk foods leading to body over weight. One is reminded of the "famed" space juice evolved by the NASA for astronauts to protect them from UV radiation during space travel. This is a concoction of juices derived from 10 plant sources rich in anti-oxidants and found effective in counter acting the aging process and skin deterioration. Unless more clarity emerges in this field it is difficult to take at face value claims like the one made above and blindly start eating stone fruits. Of course no harm will be done even if these fruits become a regular part of the diet.    

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

A SLICING DEVICE-USE OF WATER MEDIUM FOR CLEAN CUTTING

One of the unit operations in food processing is cutting to reduce the size of raw materials to the desired size range. Slicing, dicing and cutting into different shapes, all need knives and other sharp gadgets. Time has changed since man used knives made of steel, copper and other metals to make knives and other cutting tools by a variety of domestic chores as well as for food processing as more and more mechanical and electric devices are being introduced to increase productivity and reduce manual intervention as far as possible. Special metal alloys have emerged which are robust and precise working for long time without losing their sharpness. In food industry, use of stainless steel knives and cutting blades have become standard because of the ease with which they can be cleaned up to avoid cross contamination of food in manufacturing facilities. Still contamination can still be a problem due to negligence and oversight. It is in this context that high pressure water jet cutting system is considered super efficient for food industry. High pressure water jets using Ultra High  Pressure (UHP) has been in use for some time for a variety of cutting operations in products like pizza, cakes, meat, fish, candy bars, french fries, many frozen foods etc but it gained added importance with food safety concerns due to pathogen contamination increasing day by day, especially in the US and the EU. Here is a peep into this marvelous cutting tool of immaculate efficiency.  

There are many wonders of engineering, confined to the labs and warehouses of industry, that we laypeople never get to see. That's the case with the water jet cutter, which fires out a thin stream of water through a diamond nozzle at nearly the speed of sound and can slice through everything from peaches to linoleum with the greatest of ease. It's been around in some form since the 1950s, but if you're not in the business of cutting things into ever-smaller pieces, you may not have come across it. Here is a cutter made by Paprima going through beets like a knife through butter: If you've never chopped a beet, let me enlighten you: beets are like spheres of wood. You may be tempted to pull out a hatchet to make any kind of serious progress—or, you could reach for a tiny stream of pressurized water. That stream of water has a delicate touch, too. It can slice through food items as fragile as canned peaches and leave not a scratch on them, except for a thin line of empty space. It also, as long as the water is clean, does not leave bacteria on them, which is a downside of using a metal knife to process sliced foods.

According to experts familiar with water jet cutting technology, pure water cutting has several advantages which include good sanitary protection, prevention of cross contamination, steady pressure of water ensuring uniform cutting and versatility to manage precise cutting, slitting, portioning etc using a pump generating 90000 psi pressure. Because of the high pressure water gets evaporated instantly without ever wetting the product subjected to cutting. The technology requires use of specific cutting nozzles for each application and food industry can manage the floor level processing without the need to remove the conventional cutting blades, cleaning them regularly and drying before using for the next operation. Since the high pressure jet nozzle does not come in contact with the food, contamination is never a serious issue. More over under such high pressures no microbe can survive for causing any future problem.


V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com