Food is not about calories

For years, I have told anyone who would listen to me to eat fruits and not merely drink fruit juice.  For multiple reasons: Juices typically have added sugar; fruits supply fibers too; and eating fruits make the jaw and teeth work.

Of course, rare is a person who listens to me.

Food (and ill health) is not merely about calories.  It is about a whole lot more.  It is about sugars. It is about timeliness.  It is about fiber intake.  It is about, ... well, you get the point.

However, people seem to want some kind of an easy bottom-line, and "calories" meet that want.  I have  even reminded students, a lot, that all calories are not created equal.  The calories from a soda are not the same as calories from an apple.  Yet, the focus is increasingly on calories.

It is well past the time to kill the idea of food calories! Consider, for instance, how the calorie calculation messes things up:

Calorie counts are based on how much heat a foodstuff gives off when it burns in an oven. But the human body is far more complex than an oven. When food is burned in a laboratory it surrenders its calories within seconds. By contrast, the real-life journey from dinner plate to toilet bowl takes on average about a day, but can range from eight to 80 hours depending on the person. A calorie of carbohydrate and a calorie of protein both have the same amount of stored energy, so they perform identically in an oven. But put those calories into real bodies and they behave quite differently. And we are still learning new insights: American researchers discovered last year that, for more than a century, we’ve been exaggerating by about 20% the number of calories we absorb from almonds.

If people listened to me, then they would systematically think about what they eat, and also think about the cultural culinary traditions that sustained people.  Like the green jackfruit, for instance.

Food researchers are trumpeting the potential for jackfruit to become a staple crop on a warming planet. “The thing about jackfruit is that it’s huge – one of the biggest tree fruits in the world,” said Danielle Nierenberg, president of the Food Tank, a Washington DC-based food study institute. “It’s large enough that families can eat one fruit for a long time. It takes relatively little care, doesn’t need a lot of irrigation and is resilient to pests and disease. So if we’re thinking of foods for the future, jackfruit is what we should be thinking about.”

In the global existence of ours, imagine incorporating into our lives the food traditions that have sustained cultures throughout the world.  We could easily have healthy foods that are also tasty, and we could at the same time have a remarkable variety of foods.  Instead of adopting such good things from around the world, we seem to be hell bent on getting hooked on to the bad habits that the modern food industry brainwashes us about. What is the point of being "educated" when we cannot seem to take care of our own selves?

You don't know jack about Booker

As Democrats step forward stating their interest in the presidency, we are beginning to know more about them.  Like how Cory Booker is a vegan.  A vegan; not a vegetarian. I had no idea!

Booker, who became a vegetarian in the 1990s and a vegan in 2014, has said his last nonvegan meal was on Election Day that year.

How about that!

Perhaps because I read that news, or who knows why, Pocket recommended a news story about my favorite fruit/vegetable from the old county--Jackfruit.

A post about this fruit is one of the oldest in my blog, in its second version.  As I wrote then:

Back in India, my mother cooks the young, unripe jack fruit--before it develops into its huge size--in a couple of different ways.  One of my favorite dishes.  Am drooling when I think of it.
I think it is one of those dishes that is fast disappearing from the urban kitchens.  Unfortunately.

Which brings me back to the news story that Pocket recommended. It is about jackfruit.  Thousands of miles away from the home of the fruit--Kerala--"in food trucks in Los Angeles, vegan eateries in London – and now even at Pizza Hut– jackfruit consumption is surging among diners looking for an ethical alternative to meat."

Who woulda thunk that!

As kids, we learnt from others--who perhaps had tasted beef and pork--that the green jack dish tastes like meat.  Like shredded or pulled beef or pork.  But, to think that now this is going global, far, far away from the "god's own country" from where the name "chakka" became "jack."  It is a fascinating world in which we live.

From a starting point of virtually zero, jackfruit exports, including to the US, Europe and Britain, grew to 500 tonnes last year, and could reach 800 tonnes by the end of 2019, according to Kerala’s agriculture minister, VS Sunil Kumar.
“The vegan trend in western countries will help [jackfruit farmers] tap a booming global market,” he said.

I wonder if Cory Booker has tasted the traditional idichakka thuvaran.  Maybe Malayali Indian-Americans ought to serve him that at a fundraiser. 

I am already looking forward to a lunch with idichakka thuvaran ;)

There is a place for jack halva in the refrigerated American landscape

By now, my Facebook friends, and regular readers of this blog, surely know about my fascination for jack fruit and the halva made by mother.  Right, friend?

The last couple of times I was in India, mother wanted to make jack fruit halva for me to take to the US.  I told her I didn't want any because I still have old stock in the freezer.  I wish I had put a date stamp on them--I think the oldest packet I have is from four years ago, or perhaps even five!  It amuses, and amazes, people in India that I have a stock of halva here.  A surprise that I have not eaten them all, and an amazement that four years and the halva is frozen in time.

Even normally, a well made jack halva stays fresh for months--without a refrigerator--as long as the fruit was handled hygienically throughout the process, and later with a hygienic handling of the halva too. Which is why we kids with messy hands were banned from touching the halva--there was no fridge at home in Neyveli nor at Sengottai.  A typical kid with messy fingers could introduce micro-organisms that would then turn the halva rancid in a mater of days.

So, yes, I have years-old home-made jack fruit halva here, which I take out every once in a while and have it with coffee after thawing and warming it up.  As I warm it up in the microwave, the clarified butter (ghee) shines up the halva and it tastes like it was made only yesterday.  (Yes, I am drooling here.  You know what I am planning to do after completing this post!)

Freshly brewed coffee with thawed and warmed up mother's jack halva

The most important reason why this is possible: the highly reliable supply of electricity.  Unless the system is knocked out by some super storm, power outage is very rare, and is barely for a couple of hours even when that happens.  A couple of hours of loss of power doesn't affect the frozen halva.  So, all is well.

The refrigerator at my home is an extremely important equipment for my health.  This refrigerator is a tiny speck in the extensive refrigerated landscape of America.

The diet of the average American is almost entirely dependent on the existence of a vast, distributed winter--a seamless network of artificially chilled processing plants, distribution centers, shipping containers, and retail display cases that creates the permanent global summertime of our supermarket aisles.

That is no hyperbole.  Not even a tad.

At least 70 percent of the food we eat each year passes through or is entirely dependent on the cold chain for its journey from farm to fork, including foods that, on the surface, seem unlikely candidates for refrigeration," Twilley writes in introducing her show. "Peanuts, for example, are stored between 34 and 41 degrees Fahrenheit in giant refrigerated warehouses across Georgia (which produces nearly half of the country's peanut harvest).

It is a near-magical world in which we now live.  I don't have to say "open sesame" in order to find amazing riches.  Orange juice (which I don't drink because of acidity issues) is no longer seasonal thanks to gigantic refrigerated juice tanks.  No produce, for all purposes, is seasonal anymore--thanks to refrigeration, we can move grapes all the way from Chile and display them on grocery shelves here during the off-season.

To a large extent, this convenience has also been our downfall--such abundance at relatively low prices does not help with our biological drive to maximize calories in the most inexpensive ways possible.  The population gets obese.  And without the tough-love mothers and grandmothers like mine, kids can eat whatever they want and we end up with childhood obesity!

So, think twice, even thrice, before you open that refrigerator or freezer.  

This is your world: you're the last link in the chain.

The last link in this refrigerated and frozen food chain.

But, hey, it never hurts to have a couple of packets of mother's home-made jack halva in the freezer.  Maybe I should bring back one more packet when I go to India the next time, and stay away from the ice cream.  Hello, mother!

A different kind of a reunion: a few minutes with "Nallamma"

A few days ago, dad called Nallamma's cell phone number.

"Really?  She has a cell now?" I asked with utter amazement.

Nallamma and her husband, Seenivasan, were a couple we had known from our Neyveli days.

Every year, some time after mid-January--after "Pongal"--they would set up camp in our backyard.  For the next six months, they would bid to harvest mangoes and tamarind and jack fruit and cashew all over town.  Then, sell those to wholesalers in Panruti and beyond.

Over the years, Seenivasan and Nallamma became standard fixtures in our lives, and we in theirs.

Her son and daughter and grandchildren have all been college educated.  One granddaughter has just about wrapped up her nursing program.  Nallamma, who continues to live in the village, uses a cell phone to connect with her family.

Seenivasan died a couple of years ago.  Until then, they almost always visited as a couple. Now, she comes by herself, and has suddenly aged a lot.

Apparently she had come by a couple of months ago, and she was informed at that time that we two brothers would be here at this time.  To enable this reunion was why dad tried her cell phone number a few days ago.

But, her cell phone had been switched off.  It was off for a good reason--the battery had no charge, and there was no way to re-charge it because electricity was off in the village thanks to Hurricane Thane!

Nallamma, however, hadn't forgotten about the dates that we would be here in Chennai.  And thus she showed up.

We recalled old stories.  There is something wonderful when a person who knew us when we were kids wishes us nothing but the best.  There is simply no doubt that she means every word of it. 

The cyclone, Nallamma said, destroyed all the mangoes and jack and cashew in Neyveli and Panruti.  She and Seenivasan always brought us the tastiest jack all our lives, even all the way to Madras.  "Nothing this year" she said, because the cyclone blew through just when the young green jacks were beginning to show up on the trees.

That is life--sometimes even the young ones are gone.  Am glad Nallamma is around.

Google search and my blog. What does this say about me?

It has been a while since I looked at the traffic data for my blog.  It is crazy that the posts that I thought were/are most meaningful are not the ones that draws most visitors though.

It turns out that some of my blog posts do show up in the top ten, or even the top five, for a few search terms that result in visitor traffic to my blog.  Some of these are:

• "Graduate school ponzi" Search results #3 and #4 are my posts
• "Anil ambani wife" my post is the fourth listed; all the three higher ones are from Wikipedia
• A variation of this same content, for which my post is the first among the results: "tina munim wedding"
• "map of the ottoman empire" why my post is pulled up as the tenth most relevant site simply beats me
• A post that has attracted quite a few visitors was one in which I was all drools about jackfruit!

So, if I piece together a composite image of me as a cyber-pundit offering opinions, then it appears that I am a graduate school curmudgeon who drools over jackfruit, while trying to make sense of the connections between the Ottoman Empire and Tina Munim.

Really?

Noooooooo ... it ain't me, babe :)

Drooling, thinking about jackfruit ....

"Chakka", as it is referred to in Kerala, morphed into "Jack" .... but, who cares what it is called ... it is one tasty fruit.

Back in India, my mother cooks the young, unripe jack fruit--before it develops into its huge size--in a couple of different ways.  One of my favorite dishes.  Am drooling when I think of it. 

I think it is one of those dishes that is fast disappearing from the urban kitchens.  Unfortunately.

And the ripe fruit .... aaaahhhhh!!!!

Last summer when I was in India, mother, father, my sister, and I sat on the floor and worked on a ripe jack fruit--cutting it up, and plucking that fleshy fruit without messing it up much.

Then to remove the seed from each and every one of those.  Mother cooked those seeds, which is a wonderful dish by itself.  When we were young and we had a backyard, we used to roast those seeds and then sprinkle salt ....

All these thoughts on a cold, foggy, mid-winter morning :)