Freddy Mo

Blog: Solutions for Food Insecurity in India

by Freddy Mo 

INTL 190 Food Security: Challenges & Risks for the 21st Century in Asia

Prof. Jana Fortier 

University of California, San Diego 

Indian people are facing one of the toughest hunger/malnutrition problems in the world, “Our world in data” indicates that 30% of Indian people are malnutrition, and about 37% of Indian people are hungry right now. One of the reasons that I wrote this topic was because I want to put down some of my advice/solutions/recommendations, to enhance the quantity, and quality, of food consumption for Indian people, in order to minimize Indian people’s hunger problem. Before comparing the relationship of prepared-food and “natural food”, or which one is more nutritious/safe, we should always remember that, Indian children have one of the highest stunted rates in the world, and one of the major reasons is because of food contamination, poor fruit and vegetable consumption, which is the consequence of paying less attention and putting not enough effort on food security. Before clarifying what habit/process is easier to contaminate the food, I believe to realize the existence of the question and getting the idea of how to solve it is important.

During the week 7 lecture of Intl 190, I have been told that central/south asian and Africa share the same level of food security problems which are both doing bad in water resources, food storage and nutrition remaining in food. It probably sounds more reasonable when Africa is doing badly on food contamination, and Russia is doing badly on planting, since most of the area on these two places are facing super cold/hot environments, which makes it almost impossible to figure out the solution except importing food from other countries.

But Indian people’s situation is quite different. “Our world in data” indicates that the biggest challenge of why food consumption is poor in India, not mainly because of the weather, but the habits that they store the food, has a higher chance to contaminate it. Lower educated Indian people often use their hands to make/prepare their food, and the dirty environment that surrounds them has a high chance of contaminated food. Also, the miscalculation of the food storage time is also a big concern, some people put their food in the refrigerator for too long, and when they consume it, a lot of nutrition has been broken, and the bacteria might already be spreading to all over the food.

Solutions

The best solution will be something that solves as much as the problem that I mentioned before. In the rest of the article, I will introduce some methods that could help Indian people to figure out their food contamination problem, and also, improve customer’s value/experience throughout the process of the prepared food packaging/the idea of design.

When people talk about frozen prepared food/dry food, the first couple sentences that come to their mind will always be unhealthy, lose too much nutrition, vegetables couldn’t do well on it because the size is thin and small(unlike meat) so the vegetables are “weak” when put in the refrigerator... But the reality is that when every simple process that people(probably food factories) are doing well(I will introduce them later), the nutrition and the taste will remain, and probably going to be better.

Since one in three Indian people are vegetarian, but the food input structure of Indian people are not vegetables dominant. Poor vegetable and fruit consumption situation is severe in India, it leads to high carbohydrates consumption(70-80%) in the Indian group throughout the years, which is too high. The US institution of Medicine recommends a “healthy diet structure” that may help us to balance/improve the leptin, insulin-parameter.... Which is 45-65% carbohydrates input and 20-30% protein input, it is hugely different from Indian people’s diet structure. In order to solve Indian people’s health problems, aiming to make vegetables and fruit more achievable for Indian people should be the solution. I will specifically talk about the process of preparing vegetables and dry vegetables. In fact, The common step of making prepared vegetables and dry vegetables is to blanch them first, and I will start from here and describe how these procedures will work.

Before we talk about why blanching vegetables is necessary, we first need to figure out what enzymes are and what role does it play in vegetables. Most of the fruit and vegetables contain enzymes, especially when they are separated from the root, and that’s why supply chain is so important, because if the shipping time is short, then the growing speed of enzymes and other chemical compounds will not accelerate. Enzymes are a chemical compound that might cause loss of vegetables' and fruit’s color, and the nutrition, also, the flavor will be affected by it, and turn bad eventually. Inactivating enzymes is the reason for blanching vegetables and fruits.

How to blanch vegetables are important, because doing wrong on any detail on any single step might lead to failure. When blanching the vegetables, it is not necessary to put them in the warm water, and if the circumstances allow, “steam” them instead of “wash” them might be ideal (because it use as less water as it can, which following the “healthy cooking instruction” that Health department in University of Minnesota recommoned), but whatever the option is, to take as less as time to “steam” or “wash” it is necessary. Also, those vegetables can not just be placed somewhere that’s room temperature, we will want it to be cooled quickly, or put it in the cool water to cool off, because the original temperature(when we steam or wash it) will stay in the vegetable, and if we put it in somewhere that’s room temperature, or even hotter, than the vegetables will easily cooked itself by just “staying there”. At the same time, the blanching process could also destroy microbes that exist on the outside of the vegetables, and also make some vegetables (like broccoli and spinach) firmer. In vegetables and fruit, 90 percent of their weight is water. Water and other chemicals are maintained in strong cell walls that determine the structure and texture of the fruit and vegetable. So, at the moment that people freeze fruits and vegetables, they're actually freezing the water in the plant cells only. Also, when the water freezes, it actually expands, and the ice crystals may probably make the cell walls break. That's why the texture of thawed produce is much softer than when it was raw. That's also true, when talking about the food that is usually eaten raw, for example, when a frozen tomato is thawed, it becomes mushy and watery. Ideally, people should serve frozen fruits before they have completely consumed them. Partially thawed fruit is more appetizing when the effect of freezing on the fruit tissue is less noticeable. Textural changes due to freezing are not as apparent in products that are cooked before eating because cooking also softens cell walls. These changes are also less noticeable in high starch vegetables, such as potato, corn and lima beans.

When deciding what kind of cuisine, or food will be made, and selling it as frozen food, going to choose from the most “simplest” cooking difficulty should be ideal. An Indian Food like “Palak Paneer”, it is a boiled spinach that has been flavored by few species, also, during the cooking process, it only uses very little amount of water to blanch it, which make the spinach to fully store its nutrition, and won’t be lose any in the water. So far, every detail of the procedure has followed the “healthy cooking instruction”, that the health department of University of Minnesota recommended to us(less water and less time to cook, species instead of salt). At last, mix it with french cheese, and then, enjoy it! It is a super healthy and yummy food in India, the reason that I would choose it as the cuisine of our frozen food is because the whole process of making this food, it not that complex, any kind of factory where making it, could just focus on few specific step that are important, and then improve it and making it well, the quality will be easily to maintain. The most important is that the food making process of this food, also follows another “health cooking instruction”(no fry and oil), which means that this food is achievable, under the concept that I talked about before. The most important is that the features that making this food, strictly follow every single step in healthy instruction, too.

For the fruit, the blanching process might not be necessary for them, since almost all the fruits could be eaten immediately(raw), without any process to make it more “mature”. Adding ascorbic acid to fruit in order to control enzymes is ideal, because the biggest difficulty associated with enzymes in fruits is browning and loss of vitamin C. Actually, the enzymes in frozen fruit are controlled by using chemical compounds that interfere with deteriorative chemical reactions. Also, “Ascorbic acid may be used in its pure form or in commercial mixtures with sugars”(Healthy department of University of Minnesota).

Dried Food Solutions

After the blanching process, the next location of vegetables and fruits would be chosen to go to the dry food market or frozen prepared food market. For the rich family, their refrigerator probably has great capacity and electric power to store their food. At this time, frozen prepared food can be a good choice. But what if some poor family, or poor area, doesn't have a refrigerator or electricity? I believe the dry food market will take care of them.

"Asia Pacific is projected to witness the fastest growth in the upcoming years owing to rising demand for ready-to-eat and make-ahead meals in countries, including China and India. Increasing number of dual-income households has been boosting the demand for convenience food, which, in turn, will augment the sales of air-dried food in the region. In addition, the growing food processing industry will create a wide opportunity for air-dried food in the upcoming years."(Air-dried Food Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Product (Coffee Beans, Fruits & Vegetables, Meat, Herbs), By Application (Household, Commercial), By Form, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2020 - 2027). Dry food market and technology has been growing dramatically throughout the past few years, and expected to grow more in the next ten years. One of the reasons that the book “Air-dried Food Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report” predicts that the two population giants, China and India, will gain the most growing potential of dry food market in the following years, and it was because the people from these two countries are too busy, which both working over 2000 hours annually(Most of the western countries are working about 1500 hours, USA is about 1750 hours, in 2017).

The conveniences of dry food, as a function, to save these people’s time, and become the next trend of Asia’s food market. Over the past few years, the food trend shows that the consumers are choosing products with fewer preservatives, high nutrition value, low fat, and cholesterol. At the same time, most people shifting inclination towards nutritional product forms, has pushed the growth of the market. In fact, what most people don't know is that a product’s nutritional value is actually minimally affected in the air-drying process. Fruits and vegetables, such as carrots, peppers, sweet potatoes, and winter squash, contain high vitamin A content and they can retain their nutritional value once they are packaged with an air-dried process. In addition, organic food has been greatly promoted and supported by western countries’ governments in recent years, and I believe the future of the organic dry food market will be bright also.

In fact, not only vegetable and fruit could be made as dry food, many carbohydrates and drinks could be made as powder, and this is a kind of dry food also. I will introduce a kind of milk tea that is fitable to make as a dry food. In India, masala is a milk tea that contains species like ginger and pepper, and mixed with a huge amount of milk(milk can be made as powder too). So it would save customers time by just simply adding water in it, when people want to drink it. Since there are many kinds of species that required to put in the masala, and it is difficult for any individual household to store everything in stock at the same moment, I believe to let a factory to prepared and store everything for the customer might be an idea solution when people wants to drink masala.

The promotion of dry food brings various benefits for economic growth, one of them is decreasing the pressure of the supply chain. In the process of dehydrating, the main purpose is to pull all the water out of the food as possible. Actually, water plays the biggest role, when we calculate the weight of them. Most of the fruits and vegetables contain more than 90 percent of water. For example, lettuce contains 96% of water, cucumbers contain 95% of water, strawberries contain 91% of water, and oranges contain 88% of water... When people pull out all of these fruits and vegetables’ water, they actually decrease about 90 percent of their weight. It will cause a huge impact on the carbon emission, since the boat and truck can save a lot of gas and money when delivering dry food. If in the USA, it probably will be a bigger contribution to carbon emission rather than saving money, because we have a lot of dollars to buy gas from Saudi arabia, and we have the most gas in the world, and that was store in our ground for our future generation to take it.

But in India, I believe the promotion of dry food will bring huge “happiness” to both economic growth and supply chain. India has one of the biggest populations in the world, which brings huge pressure for the train/subway system. It is not hard to see Indian people overloading their train/subway, and I know, the way they get into the train/subway is dangerous and taking a lot of risk to their life. They can be falling down on the rail, or hit/grind by train/subway. Such things always happen in India, and we can always see it from any kind of news. It is sad, because in India, most of the people and the government don't have much money to make their life better, or to spend money to improve their traffic system, but what if the promotion of the dry food could save a lot of shipping fee/gas fee for Indian people, and transfer these saving, to make a contribution to the Indian's traffic system, such as building more rail or subway/train, so people doesn’t need to take that much of risk when they want to get to a subway/train, since the traffic system has been well improve already?

But unfortunately, “Regardless, in India scarcely any segment of perishables are dried which prompts huge misfortune as far as cash and work other than soak ascend in costs of wares amid the off season.”(Avijit Mallik, “Drying and dehydration technologies: a compact review on advanced food science”). In the world today, about 20 percent of perishable food has been made to be dry food, or has been through the dry process. But in India, almost none of the perishable food has been through the drying process, or to become a dry food. We have to realize that the standard to define a perishable food is something that contains more than 80 percent of the water. Since almost all the fruits and vegetables contain about 90 percent of water, the main nutrition income of Indian people is mostly perishable food. So the promotion of dry food not only saves Indian people’s life and money, but also makes what they eat more healthy and contains more nutrition. At this time, how can we not say that the food drying process does bring “happiness” to India?

Improving Packaging

Actually, the biggest reason that the dry food market is growing so fast recently is because of the development in the food packaging industry. Advanced packaging materials, including paper packets, stand-up pouches, and wooden packaging, has been influencing the market growth positively. Also, the idea of the package is to maintain the quality and quantity of the food, and prevent any kinds of external contamination from humidity, temperature, and microorganisms. Now, the food packaging technology is already good enough for the development of the dry food market, and this is the reason for the happening of the following food trend.

Food packaging technology determines the accessibility of dry food, but the design of the packaging style has determined the willingness of customers to buy it or not. In the article of “Subway’s glocolization”, it indicates that the color “pink, green and blue-green” are arousing Indian’s emotion, remind them about friendship and family. At the same time, “Research has proven that colors can intensely disturb temperaments and emotions to the extent of elevating metabolism, blood pressure, alertness and sometimes fatigue (Feisner and Reed, 2013)”. My suggestion is that, when design the color of the food package for indian people, should using the color pink, green and blue-green will be a idea, because these color can be the connection between them and their close friend and family member, at this time, should and would including animals, because Indian people share unique relationships with animals, and it would just remind them, how and why, the reasons that they’re eating vegetables today(because they don’t want to eat animals, and want to protect them). The whole function and the process has contributed to making a connection between Indian people and what they value(animal), and it would also create value for customers if the whole design of the package has arouse people’s imagination, and it is something that the markets want, because something that could activate people’s imagination, it just added value on this product. One of the reasons is because that, the mental trip that customer has been through, is going to really appear in front of them, at least for a sec. It's just like why when we think about hitting someone, we feel angry. When we think about a lover, we feel romance. When we think about a tiger that is chasing us, we are afraid. All of these consequences are because the moment that we think about one thing, that thing is really showing/appearing in our eyes/retina(at least for the moment that we are thinking it), and allows our neuron of our brain, to receive it and spread it out all over our body, causing a sensational experience. If more valuable experiences that customers could receive, the price of the product is reasonable to go up, because the packaging is really gaining advantages for the product.

The whole package of the food would be only one kind of high salieness color(can be pink, green, or blue-green), because the salience of one color has activated the “priming system” in the human’s brain, which makes it more noticeable and looks important. Please imagine that, when a guy is shopping and walking in Ralphs or Wholefood, and sees one specific area that shares the exact same, noticeable and beautiful color, it is tough for people to ignore it, isn’t it?

Conclusion

The purpose and the mission of this article is going to introduce the solution of the food insecurity problem in India, from the aspect of food cooking to food packaging. In the next decade, I believe the Indian food security and wasted problem will turn good, since the newest technology is allowing the existence of “dry food” to live in our market. In the near future, Indian people could consume a lot of dry food that they hoped to consume before, since the vegetable option of Indian people will be increased to a huge amount. I believe that will also make Indian people’s vegetable consumption bigger, because their choices are gaining.

Also, food packaging provides an area/media to deliver its “message”, through its packaging. It is a good opportunity to an product to making its own advertisement, so making it as much as fitable with the style is important, and the process of designing it can be difficult too, but people has to always taking it care as the “heart” of their product, since the appearance of the product, are highly linked with its revenue/success in the market. If the advertisement can fit multiple points of styles that are relevant with the food, then I believe it would be a great advertisement, since it has delivered the concept that the seller wants to say. When we look at the history of Indian people, they’re probably the most nice/peaceful group of people in the world. They have been taught to be honest and humble from childhood, the unique relationships that they maintain with animals could also reveal Indian people’s character. They love animals and are willing to treat themselves as the same as human beings. It is not easy for a group of humans to develop such emotion with animals, so I believe that putting the image of animals on the cover of the food package will be a good plan that fits the style of Indian people, and arousing their emotion with the color of pink, green, and blue-green, which represented peace and love in Indian culture.

Finally, I want to mention that the promotion of dry food in India’s market should be done quickly and well, since Indian people have already sacrificed enough, from missing the benefits that dry food could bring to them. If the food shipping pressure has been decreasing, then the “human shipping” pressure will also decrease, since they’re sharing correlationship. So, the promotion of dry food is going to take care of nutrition, money, and life for Indian people. If we want Indian people to eat more healthily, we should act now. If we want more Indian people to save their lives from poor traffic systems, we should act now. If we want to make “insecurity” to “security”, we always need to act now.

References

Simi, Demi, and Jonathan Matusitz. “Glocalization of Subway in India: How a US Giant Has Adapted in the Asian Subcontinent.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 52, no. 5 (2015): 573–85. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909615596764.

“Air-Dried Food Market Size: Global Industry Report, 2020-2027.” Air-dried Food Market Size | Global Industry Report, 2020-2027. Accessed March 14, 2022. https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/air-dried-food-market.

“Prepare Food for Health and Safety.” Taking Charge of Your Health & Wellbeing. Accessed March 14, 2022. https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/prepare-food-health-and-safety.

Schafer, Authors: William. “The Science of Freezing Foods.” UMN Extension. Accessed March 14, 2022. https://extension.umn.edu/preserving-and-preparing/science-freezing-foods#sources-56881 0.

“Should I Vacuum Package Food at Home?” National Center for Home Food Preservation | UGA Publications. Accessed March 14, 2022. https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/uga/vacuum_packaging.html.

Mintz & Schlettwein-Gsell 2002. "Food Patterns in Agrarian Societies: The Core-Fringe-Legume Hypothesis". Gastronomica 1.3 (2001): 40-52

Appadurai, Arjun 1988. “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India.” Comparative Studies in Society and History. 30: 3-24

“Drying and Dehydration Technologies: A Compact Review on Advance Food Science.” MOJ Food Processing & Technology. MedCrave Publishing, January 12, 2018. https://medcraveonline.com/MOJFPT/drying-and-dehydration-technologies-a-compact-review-o n-advance-food-science.html.

Data

“Annual Working Hours per Worker.” Our World in Data. Accessed March 14, 2022. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-worker?country=GBR~USA ~SWE~CHN~IND.

“Share of Children Who Are Stunted.” Our World in Data. Accessed March 14, 2022. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/child-stunting-ihme?country=IND~CHN~SEN~LKA~S YR.

“Daily Caloric Supply Derived from Carbohydrates, Protein and Fat.” Our World in Data. Accessed March 14, 2022. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-caloric-supply-derived-from-carbohydrates-protei n-and-fat?country=~IND.