Junk Food is a dangerous “normal”. It has to go! - Day #18 (11 April 2020) 21 day #Covid19 Lock down

Day #18 ( 11 April 2020)

Junk Food is a dangerous “normal”. It has to go!

I was reading some very foodie things! The virus is an all-round celebrity! It has got a lot of people to even write foodie things with it! Now, don’t get me wrong, I was not talking about eating the virus! Don’t be surprised, nowadays, you talk about any animal, even cockroaches, and some one in the crowd will come up with stories on how such-and-such a nation eats cockroaches and that they have a factory producing it, and so on. By the way, they could be right, and again, you guessed the nation right!

Stories related to food and the virus, or the lock down following the Covid19, were initially about how people rush to groceries and pick up ( ransack!) essential food items to stock for a long haul. It was quickly followed with all sorts of experts prescribing what kind of food is good and what is bad during a Covid attack; what the young, the old and the normal people should eat; what women should eat, so on and so forth. Then there was a series of articles and messages on how one can boost their immunity to defend against the virus with nutritional supplements, certain vitamin intake, and even detailed suggestions of vegetables, fruits, herbs and exercises, like yoga, that can help. And there was this weeks of discussion on immunity - herd immunity to be specific, that the British believed is their approach, but were shocked by the estimates of deaths that this can cause. But, for our case, yes, immunity was also discussed!

So, that brings us to the question – are we as a species, strong enough, bodily, to resist the Covid19 virus? Meaning, even if the virus infects us, will we survive by our strength or immunity? With the number of affected people in 210 nations and territories reaching 18,46, 833 and the number of deaths 1,13,883, inspite of all the medical systems overworking, we can never be sure!

We could always say that this virus is highly infectious and that there is a certain set of vulnerable population that is at a higher risk. That is the point I wish to make. This vulnerable population is a very very large number, one that we worked hard to create, over a century, perhaps. Let me explain.

WHO says that as on 2017, 1.9 billion adults were overweight and 650 million obese, globally. An estimated 41 million children preschool were overweight. High blood pressure, heart diseases, diabetes and certain types of cancers are attributed to overweight and obesity. Increased consumption of junk food – primarily high energy carbohydrate, fat, salt and sugar rich diets are the cause for most of them. ( https://www.who.int/features/factfiles/obesity/en/ ).

UNICEF in its 2019 report finds that around 200 million children under-five are either undernourished or overweight, while one-in-three globally - and almost two-thirds of children between the fragile ages of six months to two years - are not fed food that nurtures proper development. (https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/10/1049261 )

This is the “normal” that we have been living in for a very very long time. To bring us to this “normal” Governments, food technologists, the chemical and food industry, the large retail chains and consumers(we!) have invested billions of dollars, and today we have a few billion people in the vulnerable or high risk category with a health condition that may not resist the onslaught of a Covid19 like disease.

We have not only been “trained” to consume the junk that is produced but also been “trained” to bring up a generation specifically on this kind of food. One just needs to look back into your homes! So many of our young now do not know what natural, healthy food befitting human consumption actually is. The crisis is also that we have also been “trained” not to know or respond to the fact that while we consume this food, the industry that produces this may have impoverished large communities and denuded forests and natural ecosystems to produce the ingredients that go into the junk food – for instance soya, meat and palm oil. There could be many others. So, this “normal” of ours is about too much of the dirty, unhealthy kind of food for one large side of the population, and deprivation of adequate nutritious food for the other side of the population. Together taken, both the have’s and the have-not’s now form nearly half the world’s population, vulnerable, immunity compromised and waiting for a virus!

I believe we will come out of the Covid19 crisis in a few months time. The sufferings have been huge and costly. Economically we may take a long time to recover. Meanwhile, will we ever do anything with the learning?

In this case, it is about a simple, fundamental and the most essential act of Eating – and the fact that we must eat better than we did before we got into the Covid crisis.

The act and hence the policy around eating, that is about the individual, family and the society and eventually the nation and the world, should mean that we have enough for all of us. Equity is the word, and there must be Food justice – an assurance that nobody goes hungry. The policy should also be that such food is healthy, natural, safe and locally specific to the culture and the ecology of the region. This is one fundamental need that has been hugely compromised with food becoming standardised, manipulated to make it homogeneous, universally available and available all through the year, everywhere, industrially produced and globalised for all populations. Food has also been dangerously infused with chemicals, including pesticides used at various stages of its production.

And lastly, food is one of the biggest economic drivers. Starting from the farmers to a chain of other enterprises that bring the produce from the farm to the plate, in processed or raw form is a massive chain. But today, the farming community globally is facing a crisis of survival, unprecedented in history. This has also to change. The hands that feed the world cannot be let to die. Infact, they should be in the first line of people who will have to prosper in a changed world.

If we are to look at the collapse of the health of the world, then the industrial food production system is the No.1 culprit, and that has to go. It has to be replaced with a large shift to Community Food systems, large and small, bringing together the individual, the private and the public, that can cater to the real needs of a “post-normal” world.

Here it is interesting to note that even within states, we have different sects of people in different levels of a compromised immunity status. One needs to go beyond conventional reasons to look at,for instance, why the Blacks and the Hispanic populations across various Covid19 hit states in the US are having higher rates of deaths than the whites. In Chicago, more than 70% of the deaths related to the coronavirus were among black residents, though black residents make up only a third of the city’s population. In Michigan, black residents make up just 14% of the population, but over 40 percent of the Covid-19 deaths. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/opinion/coronavirus-poor-black-latino.html )

I am not directly attributing this to only junk food, but the fact that this population is addicted to junk food, and that this is cheaper and hence preferred is also matters that need further exploration. Similarly, in nations that still have some community food systems intact, have held on to the virus attack, inspite of poverty and lack of resources. The fact remains that in such populations, like in India, the local food systems are not as disrupted as in the cities of developed nations. Even in the major cities of India, we can see people having healthier diets. For example,green leafy vegetables are a daily staple among most of the residents of the Chennai city. But this is also changing with a changing preference among the youth.

Rajesh Krishnan, a bio-technologist turned organic paddy farmer and entrepreneur has an interesting take on this. He says, “We were always a foraging species. When the lock down hit us, I picked up a book that had compiled information about the herbs and edible green leafy vegetables found in our gardens and homesteads. I wanted to see which of them I can find around my home. I could identify and pick so many of them. Our elder farmers here know all of them by name, use, properties and the way to consume them. We are so rich in the diversity of our freely growing food and the knowledge of it as well.” A friend, Priyanka, had earlier helped us compile information about edible leafy vegetables that grow in paddy fields. She found more than 80 of them. Most of them are still consumed by the tribals and villagers in Wyanad, Kerala, making it a free, easy available source of nutrition. This could largely be true of most country side in India. This is the kind of food and knowledge that needs to be integrated into the present food basket. This is the kind that will give local food security and resilience, both at the society as well as at the individual level, even as we conserve our ecosystems.

With the sagacity that comes with farming, Rajesh added, “but modern man still forages; look at how he goes from supermarket to supermarket to pick up all that junk food, and today, we are foraging using the mobile and an app!”. Agreed, it’s the same fingers and hands, but are we making sure it is healthy food!

One thing is very clear, this “normal” into which the economic world will simply go back post-Covid is is too dangerous for humanity! Thousands of very sustainable models are growing up all over the world, that is demonstrating the possibility of a sustainable, resilient food system! The Community Food systems approach has a future and it just needs us now. We need not wait for the next virus or a disaster to adopt them into our homes and the society.

“Stay at home” - the Ubuntu way - Day #5 (29 March 2020) - 21 day #Covid19 Lock down

Day #5 (29 March 2020)

“Stay at home” - the Ubuntu way

Atlast we are all back home, most of us atleast ! In the close circle of our father, mother, husband, wife, sons, daughters, grandchildren, our pets...and nobody else.

The maids have gone to their homes, the gardeners have been told not to come. The traditional home-delivery vegetable and fish vendors – the pushcart man, the woman with the basket of vegetables on her head, the fish-vendor man who comes in the carriage-auto ( we call them petti-auto), the fish-vendor woman, again with the basket of fish, all have gone home. The distinctive horns, bells, hoots, shouts, calls have all stopped. Missing are those mornings when they come and we haggle with them, poor people. Its not as if we don’t know that they live by it, but we all have our opinions made about each one of them. “That Mary!, everytime she gives us the worst fish she has, let her come tomorrow !”. It’s like that. We know they don’t always give us the best of their stuff, but there was always a tomorrow, for them, and for us.

The Covid19 killed it all, atleast for now, and we don’t know for how long. We have been following the statistics that speak of how many people, world over, has been affected with the disease. For the record, at this point it is 685,782 cases affected by the SARS-CoV2 virus, and a frightening 32,239 deaths. But how many have been affected by the lock down to contain the virus? Statistics say it is atleast 25% of global population, with the worst in India, China, US, France, UK, Italy, South Africa, Columbia, Spain and Argentina having been impacted with a full lock down or a partial lock down. Everybody has been asked to “Stay at Home”. Again, for how long, we don't know.

When my mother sent her maid away, she had this worried look. My mother assured her not to worry and that her salary will not be cut. She also gave her some money to tide over the crisis. After all both her sons and their family will not be paid, as they are contractual workers. Before leaving, the maid asked, “Amma, but who will make food for Nair sir ?”. Nair sir, was this neighbour, down the lane, who was old and alone, for whom she cooked everyday and cleaned the house. His son was in the US and the daughter in Canada, and he had lost his wife a few years ago. Five days back, the maid cooked food for a couple of days, packed it all into the fridge, and left. Because he lives in the city, my mother believes he would order food through one of those apps and survive. I do not know whether he regrets this condition or whether he misses a family. His only recreation, a walk up the lane and into the main road, some gossip with more of his peer, has all been stopped with the “Stay at Home” order. His children do call most days and ensure he is fine.

In the last few decades, since the 1980’s, there was this trend, atleast in the urban centres...when we pushed all our children into a globalised world or it took them all away from us. I remember my family also encouraging me to follow the peer, and go to some prospective land, at that time, the Middle-east or the USA. I remember that strange fear that caught me and how emphatically I resisted the prospect. I refused to leave home. They call it Xenophobia. I deny the accusation. Loneliness frightens me, living away from family is unthinkable. But wasn’t it natural ? Now, I see so many of my parent’s contemporaries live the lonely life. Some escape the solitary life with their attitude, many turn recluse.

The “Stay at Home” for close-knit loving families, with some assured salaries or good bank savings is re-connect time, with all the Covid19 induced cautions. For those without assured salaries, and are in some business or service sector that has to work everyday for the money to come in, there is some worry. But many are taking their time to be with the family and reconnect, sometimes with their disturbed relationships. After all, life in the past so many years has not been smooth, with never a moment off for love or care. As a friend who I spoke to said “Many of us haven’t even looked at each other as we used to, way back, when we started life together”. Its mending time for all of us.

But then there are families who are having a hellish time staying together, forced by the order of the lock down - “Stay at home”, is a scream on their heads. These are those whose lives took a dive down, and relationships have become irreparable. As an instance, here was a family whose friend spoke to me. He intervened as a psychiatrist. The father, mother and daughter don’t see eye to eye and the way they cope is to use the home, literally as a lodge, if you understand what I mean to say. Now, they are all at home, together, 24 hours and for 21 days. That is nightmare, but the friend of mine believes this is also an opportunity to start introspecting, relate with each other and mend. But then “they have three separate bedrooms, three mobile phones and their own worlds”. The three are waiting for the parole, literally, to get out of each other.

‘Ubuntu’ is now known to most of us. It has many meanings with the most often quoted being “I am, because you are”. Its an assertion of dependence as against independence, of cooperation as against the individual. We see a lot of Ubuntu in the tribal communities, and even in some farming communities and so less of it in modern developed ones. I believe modern developed societies are as human and need to relate to so many things around, and more so with their own kith and kin, in a deeply dependent manner. If Covid19 can make it happen, so be it !

“You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.”

- Richard Bach

"No other way" - Day #1 (25 March 2020) - 21 day #Covid19 Lock down

Day #1 (25 March 2020)

"No other way"

Yesterday, the unexpected eventually happened. At 8 pm, the Prime Minister of India appeared on TV and announced a 21 day complete lock down of the country. This was unprecedented. Its never happened in our lifetime, nor of our parents, nor our grandparents. Probably, never. He went on to explain why the lock down and how deep is the crisis. He said “we have no other way”. Everybody has to be isolated and distanced from each other, social distancing will ensure breaking the chain of the spread of the virus. Life will never be the same after the Covid19, many believe. But how many of us will be the same, even after the Covid19 crisis that has hit humanity like never before. I wonder. Not one nation seems to have been spared, not one caste, creed, religion, colour, status, age, sex; seems to have any immunity against this seemingly-flu like virus. It does look like a very even-handed virus, a socialist one, a leveler ! Yes, almost like we would expect God to be, or even Governments to be, and lost hope that both would ever be. God, as we know him or her or it, has never been even-handed. So, haven't Governments. That, we know. There are Gods and Governments that help people prosper, but a selected few of them. How else do we explain the fact Oxfam recently found. In their report 'Time to Care' they found that the world's 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 per cent of the planet's population. That translates to 0.000027% of people holding more money that 60% of the world. Earlier in 2017, they found that 73% of the wealth generated in India went to the richest 1%, while 67 million Indians who comprise the poorest half of the population saw only a 1% increase in their wealth. In such a world, how even-handed would this leveler be ? And how would an equally leveling decree of a 21 day lock down be ?


The Covid19, which is a strain of the SARS-Cov2, which is a type of Corona Virus, can host itself in some animals and human beings as well. It seems to have jumped out of an animal and found the human host, possibly because some human consumed the animal which hosted this virus. It's a freak accident with some human help, in the whole play of ecology, on which we shall dwell later.
So, coming to the socialism of the virus. As I said, this virus seems to be more impartial than any other. And at the time of writing this sentence, the world has seen 4,28,243 people affected, 19,101 dead and has spread to 194 countries and territories across the world. And there are 195 countries in the world today. Then, you would ask me which is that one nation which has not been affected. Probably, the one with the least indulgence in globalisation, I guess!

Today morning, like all mornings, started with hot tea and biscuits soaked in tea. Surrounding me were the three newspapers that has become habit – the Hindu, which is an inheritance; Mathrubhumi, which gives the local news and my wife prefers; and Deshabhimani, because the party members in my ward, selected me as a subscriber (please dont frown, I paid for it !). Every page, except the obituary columns and the sports pages, were just Covid19, and everything else was also connected to Covid19. The virus was like a superstar – a qualification, when only Covid19 stories sell, and any other story sells if you have a Covid19 in guest appearance at the least!!.

One news stood out and speaks of that which we never see, and would never wish to see happen. It was a very small news tucked away in a corner of one of the vernaculars. A woman and a child were killed in a forest fire, and three others seriously burnt, when the family was attempting to cross the forests on foot, from Kerala to Tamilnadu, so as to reach their village before the borders shut down. These were farm workers in the plantations in Idukki, and as everything came to a standstill, they probably wanted to get back to their village. The village, home, is where all those crores of workers who have crossed state borders and are daily-wages across India, would want to run away to, especially when a debilitating crisis hits them. The two deaths was only a bizarre accident. The death ensured that it gets reported. But does it end with a news like this ? No. Is it just these two deaths ? No.

Yesterday, the PM said, “People, wherever they are should stay put, and not travel”. With no work, no food, no dwelling, no relatives, this is nightmare for crores of Indians, who were forced to migrate, a phenomenon that has come to be mainstay in a globalised liberalised nation. But, as some one trolled, when “Globalisation” is replaced with “Global Isolation”, the migrants reach a state of squalor, which no amount of rhetoric, nor promises would help.

Most of my friends, in a better looked after state of Kerala, are Working From Home (WFH), and they have stocked up for the shutdown. When I , for instance, was sitting in front of the TV, watching Modiji declare the 21 day lock down, it didn't displace me from my comfort. 21 days is a bit too much, I thought. Thats all. Two weeks should be ok. One never sees the big side of the nation, the poorest half of the nation. Those that even today live a hand-to-mouth existence, the ones in perpetual deprivation. The ones, for whom this lock down is devastating.

These thoughts unnerved me, quite a bit. I stepped into my verandah, looked out into the darkness. “Suppose out there in a sunken home, there is this man, the bread-winner, whose tomorrow is too dark, and hopeless, and he looks around, sees light still burning in my comfortable home..., and suppose he also feels he has “no other way”, but to...”

The shut down may be unavoidable. There could have been “no other way”, but does it give us any lessons on the way we have distorted our communities, our society, our ways of life, our welfare systems, our confidence, dignity, economy, relationships and transactions. Time for thought, surely.

Sridhar Radhakrishnan

@sridhar67