Can we go back to having golden lattes, now that it is endorsed?

If any of you watch this show called, “Kuch Rang Pyaar ke Aise Bhi” on Sony TV, you will know how “Haldi Dhoodh” or Turmeric milk is not exactly considered of great value. The show is definitely one of the better ones in terms of drama content, but when I saw that part where the nutritionist looks down on it, I was frankly a little taken aback. Somehow “Modern diet” and allopathic system hasn’t endorsed it yet!

Here’s an article on the golden, turmeric latte.Read here.

This also forces me to bring in Rujuta Diwekar, perhaps the only dietitian today telling us to get back to our roots and follow a diet that is geographically supported. I am bringing in all this in the context of the “Golden Latte” that is now becoming a rage in the west and we no longer have it as often as we should. We really do abandon all our age-old wisdom to fads, don’t we?

Perhaps 1991 shouldn’t have happened the way it did, where we suddenly opened the economy without any checks in place. Or may be it was the right thing for us because at least we know now that we don’t value anything we have! Can you believe that India, an agrarian economy is importing food???!!! Why do we think that we have to gain something at the cost of something else?

We needed to develop technologically, but not at the cost of what was naturally, abundantly ours – agriculture. We just need to find ways of bringing that back before we have almost no food production for our own people. You know the irony of turmeric roots – it isn’t available in Hyderabad in any of the “big” grocery stores like Nature’s Basket or Reliance stores or Ratnadeep! If you ask Nature’s Basket for local vegetables and fruits, they don’t have any! They have Australian/American/Italian foods and they have a name called Nature’s Basket! One would assume that turmeric, grown in our country would be amply available, but of course not, although it is available in a lot of grocery stores in Toronto!

Are buying patterns of Indians in India changing? If so, this is a matter of great concern and I hope we look at it that way. In Indonesia too turmeric is widely available and cherished. I hope we learn to cherish what we have and protect what we have, so that we don’t end up importing turmeric some day! And now that the west has endorsed it, let’s continue with turmeric milk or golden lattes at night, before one sleeps, because that’s when it is effective as an antiseptic – just like grand moms would give it to us.

Desiness personified!