Food with a dash of history and biology
— Photo: K. Ananthan
Naturally healthy. — Photo: K. Ananthan
WORLD FOOD Day was time for celebration on the campus of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), with the students organising an exhibition on food processing and packaging.
One of the popular stalls featured historical events related to food packaging, and displayed a host of information on natural containers made of tree trucks, leaves, pieces of bark, animal bladders, horns and skins. This was in sharp contrast to modern packaging materials such as tin plate, tin-free steel, aluminium and plastic.
Fruits and salads grabbed the attention of visitors at the stall `American Delight'.
Unlike most Indians, people in the United States preferred to eat a lot of apples, oranges, pineapples, bananas, pomegranates, cherries, raisins, cashew nuts, honey and condensed milk.
This provided high nutritive value with a mixture of proteins, fats, carbohydrates and vitamins.
A stall highlighting the concept of ready-to-eat foods, explained the Western practice of `eat-on-the-run' that was now spreading fast in many of the urban centres in India. `Post Pasteurization' and high pressure processing were two techniques commonly used to increase food safety and shelf life of edible products, besides destroying pathogens.
One of the stalls was devoted to demonstrating the impact of automation in the fish and meat processing industries.
A sensor linked to a computer could weed out cracked eggs from the production line of poultry industries, and enzymes could be used to break down tough meat fibres. Milk products prepared in the university laboratory were on show.
"India is very rich in biodiversity but there is a paucity of documentation and efforts to protect plant and animal resources. Foreigners are even trying to patent turmeric and basmati rice," observed the Director, Centre for Plant Protection Studies, TNAU, T. Marimuthu. He said that food process technology should be environment-friendly, and ought to meet the needs of consumers.
The Dean, Agricultural Engineering College and Research Institute, TNAU, R. Manian, noted that education on campuses abroad was turning from agricultural engineering to process engineering and food safety engineering.
The university was currently implementing two schemes, one on food security and the other on food safety and post-harvest quality. Under these programmes, several agricultural scientists from TNAU were obtaining special training in the United States and Canada.
A. A. Michael Raj
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Karnataka
Chennai
Coimbatore
Hyderabad
Madurai
Tiruchirapalli
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
