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No raw deal this

Slowly but surely, the health-conscious in the city are paving the way for alternative foods to become the staple diet, discover K. Srimali and HARJEET KAUR ALLAGH

PACKERS `N' MOVERS A handful of people get together to make the sale of raw food a viable business PHOTOS: RAJU. V.

The gluttonous are passé. The frugal are in. Call it just a fad or awareness about the bag of ailments the traditional as well as contemporary foods bring with them, the shift towards alternative foods is catching up everywhere. Vijayawada is no exception. Dietary regime changes from place to place and culture to culture. Do masticating a few sprouts and chewing a few fruits make a meal complete? For some, it's wholesome. Wash the toxins in the body out and make the system work the way it can. Don't add up extra calories to the body, for it cannot take them all kindly. Natural food - usually raw - is perceived to be the best way to keep the show going in a healthy manner.

For Sunita, a homemaker, the day begins with a juice either of bottle gourd, carrot or cucumber. Salad and sprouts, sprinkled with sesame seeds, are her staple diet. She feasts on jowar, maize, and ragi with boiled corn or sweet potato. "This kind of a diet has a lot of fibre besides being easy to digest," she explains.

Organic food

At the other end, the votaries of organic food seek to draw a line of clear distinction between raw food and what they stand for. "Eating raw vegetables grown on chemical fertilisers and pesticides can actually do more harm than good," asserts Chalasani Dutt, who grows leafy vegetables in a truly organic fashion at his Prajasakti Nagar residence. "Fruits and vegetables grown with organic manure and pesticides will have a very different taste and freshness, giving the body the necessary nutritional values," he points out.

Business couple Devineni Madhusudhana Rao and Jayashree too thrive only on the organic food grown in their farm at Tenneru. Their breakfast: papayas, chikkoos, and a drink made of ragi and jowar. They make sure their employees too have their lunch with them, comprising an array of dishes of vegetables grown on natural manure.

Good business

YUMMY `N' CHUMMY City girls popularise the consumption of sprouts and fruits

And preference for raw foods seems to spawn a new business for many. An estimated 20 petty entrepreneurs in the city begin their day at 3 a.m. busy packing small sachets of sprouts, to make them available to morning walkers and office-goers for a price ranging from Rs.3 to Rs.5.

"We sell about 1,000 packets of sprouts a day through various kiosks and small shops, though the demand was previously in the range of 2,000 packets a day," says G. Sambasiva Rao of Healthy Raw Foods, who operates from his house at Kasturbaipeta.

Encouraged by the response, he began the business of packing fruit salads three months ago. An assortment of some seasonal fruits and an odd date comes for an inviting price of Rs.5.

If Rao got into the business of raw foods as a result of his personal belief - he was impressed by the advice of naturopathy practitioner Mantena Satyanarayana Raju - the likes of Md. Arif of Care Raw Foods, Machavaram, took it up as nothing more than a business.

Special classes

"Instead of sitting idle, I thought I could do this to earn some money. We are offering home delivery of sprout packs and fruit salads on a monthly basis," he points out.

To spread the knowledge of healthy eating, classes are held on raw food consumption on select Sundays in Gandhi Municipal High School at Kaleswara Rao Market and at Tadepalli on the banks of the Krishna by the followers of Satyanarayana Raju.

"It is mainly the 40-plus age group who attend our classes to seek advice for hypertension, diabetes and cardiac problems. Of late, a few in the 30-plus category too have begun to drop in," Bairy Srinivas, who teaches naturopathy, reveals. The diet regime he prescribes includes vegetable juice, sprouts, raw coconut, dates, a mix of honey and lemon juice as a substitute for tea and coffee.

Instead of milled rice, pounded rice is better, he says. Organic food is good for health maybe, but surely not a viable business proposition. "Organic food costs 30 to 40 per cent higher than usual," says Ch. Sivaramakrishna (Babji) of Nilgiris Super Market.

Is it safe?

How safe is the consumption of raw food? If necessary precautions are not taken, it spells doom to your health, says noted physician G. Eswar.

"Any raw vegetable will have to be properly cleaned with safe drinking water before consumption. Otherwise, certain parasites that thrive on the vegetables will enter the digestive system and into other parts of the body from there, causing infections of tapeworm and roundworm." he cautions. The ill-effects: convulsions and brain related problems.

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