Health Wise

At popular super-stores in the city such as Kewal, MG, Empire you can pick anything from baked potato chips to roasted whole grains, diet chiwdas, low-cholesterol tortilla chips, roasted peanuts in tangy flavours, non-fried dals, soya-based mixtures, diet biscuits…Initially, agree store managers, sales were slow, but the last one year has seen a spurt, with more and more people, including youngsters, checking out labels for non-fried, baked and cholesterol-free stuff.

At Sindhi Sweets and Gopals, there’s an impressive selection of healthy namkeens, with almost negligible oil. There are tempting options of roasted sprouts, roasted Kashmiri corn, wheat flakes. Teamed with some spices, these transform into great munchies. Also on the shelves is jawar flakes mixture that offers a mix of rice puffs, a variety of roasted pulses and cornflakes. The mixture is definitely a better alternative to potato chips to go with your pre-dinner snacking. What’s more, many of these munchies are sans chemicals and have no added preservatives too.

Only when there is demand, will there be supply. Walk into any store and from the line-up of health food that’s at hand, you will see how preferences of people have changed. Be it high-fibre flour, soya-based snacks, low-salt and preservative-free munchies, there are also special food items for diabetics, including low-calorie and sugar-free dark chocolate! High on taste and health are low-oil aloo lachha, banana chips, tomato sticks, soya sticks, dals, khakra, chakli….

Not just snacks, regular food items like flour, breakfast cereals, rice, porridge, salad dressings, pastas have got a healthy make-over. “Whatever is close to natural is always best. We Indians have a palate for crisp and fried things and so, namkeens which are not fried and now readily available are such a blessing,’’ agrees Aditi Mehrotra, who has seen people’s taste change for the healthy, slowly and steadily. She recalls how at Peshawari, the owner remarked that brown rice was moving faster than ever before. “That was so heartening, for besides roughage, which white rice doesn’t provide, you also have vitamins in brown rice and the same goes for wheat-bran, oat cereals, muesli, which come with dry fruits and are great options instead of cornflakes, where the quality of corn is marred to achieve crispiness. Oats is a cereal in itself for it’s high in B-complex and fibre,” adds Aditi. And one of the favourite in-between munchies, biscuits too come laded with good health, fibre for sure, as more and more bakeries are serving wheat and soya bikkies, which have less sugar. Organic wheat and soya porridge, dalia with dal, real fruit spreads, salad dressings sans mayonnaise, apricot and amla fruit bites…at Fab India, the range of health food is getting bigger, better and popular. “Even healthier cooking mediums like olive and rice-bran oils are being discovered and we have such a variety at hand, as we do in soya milks,’’ adds Aditi.

“It is good that people are picking up healthy snacking but one has to be careful,” warns Ishi Khosla, nutritionist and proprietor of Whole Foods. “Check labels properly and a tissue test to check on the oil content is always advisable. There are a lot of small time manufactures who often do not comply with health standards. Once I came across a very popular baked namkeen which was higher in fat content than usual fried snacks,” she warns.