How India can reinvent food for the world!
For climate, cruelty or other reason, the world is turning vegetarian. India can not just help but we can reinvent food for the world. I explain how.
The world is turning vegetarian!
A few realisations are making the world turn vegetarian or even vegan.
There is a distinct push towards reducing its impact on the environment. And part of that equation is food. Our industrial food practices are resulting in increased greenhouse gas emissions. Livestock is primarily responsible for methane emissions.
Another distinct driver is the health aspect of food. People are becoming aware of the negative impact processed and industrial food has on weight gain, chronic illnesses, auto-immune disorders, and lower quality of life.
India MUST take this opportunity.
India, with its diverse and unending vegetarian cuisine, can make it tastier to go vegetarian. India’s rich tradition in food craft relies on sustainability and being closer to nature. The traditional food structure was meant to focus on better digestion and maintaining a healthy gut microbiome and chemical balance. It also focussed on palatability and satiety through diverse sensory engagement. With such a background, we may assume this would be a potential world-dominating Industry for India. India would have a competitive advantage, experience and recall to its advantage.
But will India and Indians will take this opportunity? Will it turn out like “Turmeric Latte”, allowing the rich traditional knowledge to be used, patented and trademarked by others? (Turmeric Latte Effect) Or will it suffer the fate of Yoga” where traditional ideas are separated from their core concepts leading to part understanding? (Yoga Effect).
India and Indians do not have an option. We MUST take this opportunity to improve the way the world eats – vegetarian, vegan and non-vegetarian cuisines.
The Scope of the Opportunity.
The food industry is not a single vertical. Rather, it is the assimilation of various segments, each with a variety of successful business models. For the sake of the food opportunity argument, I would classify them as below:
Restaurant and food delivery
Master prep Model – High-end restaurant with a known chef
Custom Prep Model – Normal Restaurant Model
Centralized Kitchen Model (cake, sandwich shops, Starbucks eatables, etc.)
Standard prep Model - McDonald’s
Prep and Deliver - Dominos model
Customised prep and deliver Weight Loss home delivery, model
Food Staples (grain, oil, milk, eggs, fruits, vegetables etc.)
Quality Staples
Organic Staples
Free Range Staples (including Fisheries etc.)
Food Intermediates (yoghurt, masala, pickles etc.)
Industrial food processing (Nestle, etc.)
Cooperative food processing (Farm and non-farm coops)
Ready to eat / Heat and eat business
Frozen foods business
Heat and eat business
Daily Food
Equipment / Implements
Ingredients
Cooking Guides/instructions etc
When it comes to addressing opportunities outside India, Indians are doing well in normal Restaurant models. Indian food channels and blogs are also watched/ read globally. Many in the West have started making their own ghee (and uploading videos of the process). We need to do better in almost all areas. We need Indian enterprises in each and every segment above.
Within India, we have a lot of companies in different segments. These companies need to scale up and start dominating global markets. There is no reason Amul, Britannia (yes, it is an Indian company), Parle Agrotech, Dabur, ITC foods, MTR Foods, Haldirams, Marico, Mother Dairy, Tatas and others cannot access and dominate global markets.
We need to go global in three categories of food opportunities.
The Indian Food for global diners category is exporting Indian cuisine and food products globally. This is easier for most to understand. It is about taking Indian cuisine to the world. Indian food already has a reputation, and we need to leverage it.
The Indian enhanced local foods category refers to using Indic knowledge and food craft to augment or enhance traditional cuisines across the world. This does not imply exporting “Indian Chinese” to China but creating special spice mixes or pickles that can enhance Chinese cuisine for the Chinese.
Finally, Indian-created global foods category refers to inventing new foods that are convenient, healthy, and nutritious and applying the Indic knowledge of food craft. If we create new versions of wraps, salads, and sandwiches that are Indian-flavoured but globally suited.
There is one local food opportunity as well.
Indian food habits have evolved over the past two centuries to address the calorie deficiency created by British-engineered famines. At this time, we focused on being calorie-dense and did not focus much on nutrition. Thus, some ill habits have crept into our diets and cuisines.
We need to restore our diets to more healthy traditional options that are lighter on carbs and more nutritionally balanced. This is a huge opportunity from an education and learning side rather than a product and food processing side.
The question is HOW
All this is easier said than done. To do this, we need some food industry infrastructure.
We need research institutions to study traditional cuisines and Indic knowledge bases, including those mentioned in various Indic texts, including all Vedas, Ayurveda and cookbooks such as King Nal’s cookbook that dates back 7000 years to the modern ones.
Indian traditional cuisines align with the biological energies of your body – also called Doshas – Vaata, Pitta and Kapha. We need exhaustive research on how traditional dishes and side servings combine to aid digestion by prompting salivation, enhancing gastric acid-alkaline balance, improving gut microbiome, ensuring hydration, and affecting metabolism rates. We also need to study how these traditional cuisines balanced the nutritional demands and taste and ensured people felt sated after the meals.
We need to augment this knowledge with modern knowledge of calorific intakes, nutrition pyramids, palatability, satiety, packaging, storage and transportation etc.
We also need these food research institutions to study global cuisines in their current and traditional forms and augment our understanding of food itself.
All the research has to be translated into applications. This means training Chefs and food engineers and coaching them in the business and economics of the food industry.
There are many Hotel Management Institutes that can take this opportunity to kickstart a food revolution.
In sum
India can become the kitchen of the world. But more importantly, India can help reinvent food for the world, make it more sustainable, reduce the ecological impact of food and improve nutrition and health. Are we ready?
