I started working in 1999 in what is today one of the biggest home-bred Internet companies in India. I was 23 and had a robust online life. Those were the days when my boss, a ‘print person’, was still trying to fathom why there was no space after a stop in www. Senior people from the marketing department commissioned a study to a consulting firm that charged them lots of money.
After months, marketing put together a presentation. The head, who had no doubt cleared many presentation-skill exams, grandly declared that the data had been a revelation: that email was the go-to thing for most people online. Puzzled, we asked why they hadn’t just asked us. We were too young and naïve to understand the dynamics behind why people commission studies.
A couple of weeks ago, as I read the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health, it’s like déjà vu. The report traces the connection from farmer to plate, to health to planet. Yes, of course, our individual health is related to what we grow, and consequently, to what we eat, our community health, and the environment itself. Kind of obvious, isn’t it? But much like the emperor’s new clothes, we can’t call it out, because The Lancet . The publication has declared 2019 as The Year for Nutrition, so one can only hope that this will be the start of something like the anti-tobacco movement, where big corporations are curbed, and farmers put at the forefront.
“The intentions of the commission are great,” says Sheela Krishnaswamy, a Bengaluru-based dietician and erstwhile head of the Indian Dietetic Association. What are these intentions? To achieve planetary health diets for nearly 10 billion people by 2050, for which five strategies have been outlined. While the study puts out clearly that its guidelines are just that — guidelines — and shows us Instagram-worthy pictures of what the ‘flexitarian’ plate can look like (because they talk about a range), the core of the diet is lowering meat, sugar, and processed food; upping plant-based options (fruit, veg, legumes, nuts). Hello traditional Indian diet.
All this is based on a 2,500 kcal diet that most Indians don’t have the luxury to consume, and the ones that do are making it up with junk food. The thing is, what’s new? “…the Commission proposes boundaries that global food production should stay within to decrease the risk of irreversible and potentially catastrophic shifts in the Earth system,” says the report. So will America opt out like it did from the Paris Agreement, referenced in the report?
Will Indian dieticians change what they’re saying to us? No, because what they’re currently advocating is just what the report stipulates. Will it change my obesogenic environment? Unlikely. I’ll need something stronger. In the meantime, on your plate, make sure only 1/4 to 1/3 is carbohydrate foods (unpolished rice or millets or rotis or potato or maize or oats); another 1/4 is protein ( dals or dairy or lean meats or egg); and the rest is filled with some fruit and lots of veg, says Sheela. Basically, eat what your mother puts on your plate.
