Organic food goes hot at alumni meet 

Nostalgic meetings with old school mates are not occasions where green causes are expected to be espoused. But this is what happened in a recent alumni meet in southern Tamil Nadu. The event was the reunion of the 1987 batch of Government Siddha Medical College in Palayamkottai, in Tirunelveli town. Using the occasion to espouse the cause of altering food habits and going in whole hog for consuming organic food, the ex-students liberally shared their food habits, which were noted down avidly by the recent batches of students and onlookers.

Said Veerapandian, a resident of Panagudi: ‘ From the tips shared by ‘ Nalla Soru’ Rajamurugan, a diehard organic food consumer, we understood some little known things like how garlic should be used within half an hour of crushing it and ginger, within nine hours of splicing it into smaller pieces’. Not only this. Regular grocery items like pounded rice, fresh coriander can be comfortably made into edible items like porridge and mixed with rice is the other important awareness we gained’ he adds.

Himself an organic foodie, Veerapandian is the author of a book in Tamil advocating the cause. An enthusiast that he is, over the past two years has made natural food consumption his sole passion. He affirms that a combination of millet, dry fruits and hand-pounded rice has significantly improved his wife’s health, who was earlier diagnosed with cholesterol and hypertension.

A food blogger, Haseena, a local resident had this to say, after taking down the salient points discussed in the gathering: ‘I have learnt the recipe of preparing a new type of pasta after listening to these veteran students.’ Having travelled round the world and tasting the popular forms of cuisine there, she affirms that Japanese food habits are the most healthy, as it is shorn of oil and spices. She is also a great favourite of Mexican food Tacos, which comprises corn or wheat bread, rolled or folded around a filling.

As Tamil magazine Kungumam, which carried the report points out, the old boy network meet soon saw it morphing into a veritable organic food festival with many of the students and participants coming up with natural food ingredient replacements in routine food and sweet items. A few visitors who had heard of the function were from as far as Mumbai, enthusiastically lapping up the food samples and telling their family members to accept eating the stuff, which was available in plenty and would usher in a transformation from the toxic, unhealthy lifestyles all of us maintain in cities and major towns of the country.