Organic food in Hyderabad

Six months ago, suggesting my friends and acquiescence to buy organic food (grown without any toxic chemical based pesticides or fertilizers) was an uphill struggle, but I see a huge turn around today, thanks to Satyamev Jayate. Now, I get approached by the very same people for help with finding organic food in Hyderabad!

This post intends to guide people of Hyderabad in finding organic foods near their areas of residence.

It’s pretty easy to find organically grown dry groceries in Hyderabad, but getting regular supply of vegetables and fruits is still tricky. Hopefully next few years will show more options, with the efforts put in by some of my friends, for making organic food readily accessible in the city.

Center for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA), started by Dr. Ramanjaneyulu GV (fondly known as Dr. Ramoo, a participant and beneficiary of SMJ’s episode on toxic foods), has done some pioneering work training many farmers in AP in sustainable agricultural techniques. I truly admire the dedication of the CSA team in making organic possible in Hyderabad.

Today, with the help of CSA and some other organizations, there are many outlets for organic foods in the city.  The conception that organic food costs a hefty amount is no longer true. Most of the organic produce I buy cost as much as their non-organic counterparts. Two major reasons behind a little higher cost of several organic products are : 1.) Land that’s used to chemicals take a few years to rejuvenate after beginning with sustainable farming methods. 2.) Organic food supply chain is not that evolved as of now. Most groups have to set up their separate supply chain, collecting produce separately from farms that are geographically scattered.

However, the branded products that are usually found on the supermarket shelves may be pretty costly. Hence I stay away from them.

Below is the list of many reliable and cost-effective places for buying organic groceries, vegetables and a lot more:

• Sahaja Aaharam: In its office premises, CSA runs this small store, one of the very first organic stores in the city. The store is located in Tarnaka. One should call them first and check out the availability of certain products before visiting. Sahaja Aaharam is also a good place to buy good quality organic seeds.
• Good Seeds : The venture was started by four organic food enthusiasts as a for-profit venture with the intention of helping organizations like Sahaja Aaharam and others in marketing their products and to make consumers aware about benefits of organic food. Good Seeds runs a monthly organic bazaar at Saptaparini, Banjara Hills. One can find everything from dry groceries to vegetables, natural washing powders and even natural cosmetics there. YouSee, a group working towards better waste management has a dry waste collection booth in these bazaars, which they later give for proper recycling. Good Seeds has also started five pick up points in Secundarabad, Banjara Hills, Jubilee Hills and Gachibowli. They can be contacted at orders@goodseeds.in for more information.
• Jiva Organics: Launched a few months back, by Shyam Penubolu, Jiva Organic carries a wide variety of products which can be browsed at their website with respective prices. They have recently started home delivery for vegetables/fruits(around selected areas) and an organic catering service too.
• Hyderabad goes green: Their store in Banjara Hills stocks a number of eco-friendly products, including some organic food products and daily dump’s home-composting pots. They have just recently begun Saturday bazaars for organic vegetables and fruits.
• Sristi Naturals: I have had good quality organic grapes from Sristi Naturals during the season. More information about their products can be found on the website. Mr. Satya also does home-delivery for organic fruits and vegetables in certain areas near kukatpally.
• Prakruthi Natural & Organic Store: They do not have online presence as per my knowledge, but they can be contacted at: Sri Mukh Complex, Shop No. 2, Upper Ground Floor, Himayathnagar Main Road, Himayatnagar. Phone number: 8341120702 (Raj)
• Daaram: Their store is located at:
  1-10-3/1, Boorugu Vihar, Lane next to Andhra Bank, Near Prakash Nagar, Opp. Old Airport Lane, Behind Bottles & Chimneys.  http://daaram.blogspot.com
• Other than this, there are outlets such as Nature’s basket and fab-india. Many super market also stock organic products now. You can spot them under brand names such as ProNature, Down to Earth, 24 Letter Mantra, Organic India etc. Most of these tend to be a little pricey.

Go Organic! Go Healthy!

Why vegan? – a personal account

Why did I turn Vegan? A question I face every time I refuse a cup of milk-tea. It has been a year now since I turned vegan completely, so I find it is a good time to publish this long pending post.

What is Veganism?

Essentially, a vegan is a person who eats “nothing that comes from a mother, nothing that has a face”. In other words. a Vegan (pronounced vee-gun) diet and lifestyle refers to the choices that are made with compassion towards all the living beings. It excludes all the products derived from animals, that is, milk and its by-products; meat, fish, eggs; honey;wool and leather.

Milk and Cruelty

It was only during breast-feeding related discussions of community health fellowship I came to know that breast milk is not an endless resource and stops after a few years of pregnancy! (Believe me, I know a lot many techie friends who still don’t know this!). Somehow it din’t occur to me to apply same logic to the cows too. Adithya, a friend (also a medical doctor) introduced me to the concept of veganism and later I started reading and understanding more about it. And that was the starting of a year long step-by-step journey towards compassionate changes.

I never imagined that a cow would be forced into pregnancy repeatedly throughout her lifespan (either through artificial insemination or by a common bull) and injected with strong bovine growth hormones that give her painful stomach cramps. When she yearns to feed her baby, the milk, that’s actually made for the calf, is stolen by us, humans. As if that’s not enough, male calves are directly sent to slaughter house and females are kept alive for milk. How can we justify all this torture just because we humans have acquired an addiction to ‘milk’? We are not satisfied with our share of our mother’s milk and still want more, so we steal from someone else’s mother, which happens to be a cow here, even when we grow up, and can supplement our bodies with all kinds of other foods. (A must watch  video). No mammalian specie, in nature, drinks milk of another specie, nor does any animal specie drink milk after the age of weaning!

Environment and Hunger

Non-vegetarians often have this misconception that they are saving food for vegetarians by eating animals! Now, did you know that for getting 1kg of beef it takes almost 10-12 kgs of grains? (3-4 kg for chicken). Almost 50% of maize in india and 80% of soy, maize in US goes to cattle feed. The whole process of feeding grain to cattle and than eating meat, seems too inefficient taking huge amount of land, water, fertilizer and other resources. Even international agencies like UN produced a report in 2010 urging people to move towards meat and dairy free diet.  [Video] In 2006, UN-FAO had also brought out a 400 pages of report detailing the impact of livestock on environment and stated that it’s responsible for a substantial part of total GHG emissions. [Full report here]. Raising cows and buffaloes for milk also takes enormous amounts of grains and water. Milk today is consumed more in the form of cheese, paneer, ghee, butter etc.

Personal transitioning

I have always been enslaved to my sweet tooth, and have enjoyed all kinds of milk based sweets, ice creams, pastries etc.  Hence when I found out the brutality behind milk and recognized the fact that milk itself is so needless for my body, I tried to come up with many possible arguments to refute  these claims. I reckon this initial reaction only came out of my own insecurities about losing those delicacies that had become an integral part of my diet. It took me a while to digest the facts and internalize them. While traveling further in many rural place, I found out that all the cruelty related aspects recorded by others are not some isolated incidents. Meanwhile Pulkit too was exploring the idea of turning vegan. Both of us still believed that cow’s milk is good for us health wise. With regular pain-killer intake, Pulkit felt (factually incorrectly in hind sight) that he should continue 1 glass of milk, but he stopped all things he consumed merely for taste (sweets, paneer, ice creams etc). I never had a habit of drinking raw milk, so I started cutting down other things one by one, beginning with cheese and paneer dishes.  It took us 2-3 months to become complete vegans (Pulkit also stopped raw milk later). The first 2 months seemed difficult, but later on we never realized when it became just a way of life!

Please read this neatly compiled common questions in case you are planning to go Vegan. Sharan has a very helpful health booklet for the beginners (free download). For hostel students, Arun, an IISc student has devised some excellent guidelines.

I have prepared a short note containing my personal tips for transitioning to vegan diet. It can be downloaded from here.

Vitamin B12 and D Vegans or non-vegans, deficiency in Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D is very common today, due to our clean diet and increasing pollution (that’s blocking UV-B rays of the sun). Read all about Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D (the links also have supplement information). People deficient in Vitamin D should start the supplement and vitamin B12 is something that everyone would need to have as supplement. 

Speciesism  (discrimination based on the type of species)

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men.
-Alice Walker

I recently read about human slavery in Rome and other countries in the past. It was disgusting how they treated fellow humans , but I see very little progress in the attitude today. We have simply replaced humans with animals, the rest remains the same! Some argue that it’s natural for humans to feel more for their own species. That’s perfectly fine as long as we don’t derive our happiness at the expense of another innocent species. We may be more powerful than the other species, but then Brahmins are also more powerful than Dalits in most of rural India, yet we don’t believe that Brahmins have a right to dominate Dalits, do we? If a powerful specie is entitled to exploit a weaker species, by that logic a powerful gender should also be justified to dominate a weaker one. But then, why do we, educated and civilized people, stand up proudly for gender equality?

Human civilization has been going through a long process of evolution. We started off with many things right but some wrong. Sexism, racism, human slavery, hunting animals for fun, patriarchy are some of them. In time, we have recognized some of these mistakes and corrected them, yet there are many more to correct. Veganism, in my view, is just one of those pending corrections.

Vegan for good health!

It was during the time of exploration, when we were searching for nutritional replacements for Pulkit, we met Parag, a Plant based Nutritionist in Bangalore who gave me two books ‘The China Study‘ and ‘The Food Revolution‘. These books along with Sharan‘s Peas Vs Pills workshop broke so many nutrition related myths.  I was fully convinced that milk is not only needless for human consumption but can also be harmful for human health!

Ingredients of the cocktail called ‘Milk’!

Milk – by dictionary definition means “A white liquid produced by mammary glands of female mammals for feeding their young”. Right, all mammals produce milk for their babies (not for humans! We humans seem to think everything is made for us!) Hence milk is tailor-made for that particular specie.  For e.g., growth rate of a calf is 4 times higher than that of human baby, hence nutrients such as protein, calcium etc are also 4 times higher. These high-levels of protein and calcium are not suitable for humans. Besides, all the sources of animal protein are coupled with high amount of saturated fat that’s linked to rise in cholesterol level and results in various lifestyle diseases. And in fact doctors like Nandita Shah, Neal Bernard, Caldwell Esselstyn and John Mcdougall have been reversing diebetes, heart diseases etc just by healthy vegan diet! (More resources are in the end of the post). Besides, isn’t the animal protein based food (milk, meat, egg) the only source, that can raise LDL (bad cholesterol) levels in its raw form?

What about Calcium?

This is the most frequent question I get. It’s actually a myth that milk is the best source of calcium, something that came out of advertisements by dairy industries and white revolution in the country. Almost anyone with basic nutrition training knows that protein inhibits calcium absorption, and milk is nothing but full of protein (casein which is also mucus forming). In fact below snapshot of calcium comparison between plant based foods and milk would tell you how much misled are we by the industry funded research and ad campaigns. [Check the end of the post for the complete table]

Calcium (mg) content in 100g of Food Items : Til (Sesame seeds)  - 1470;  Curry Leaves – 830; Methi (Fenugreek) Leaves- 395; Ragi- 344; Corriander  - 184;  Cow’s Milk – only 120!!

Read all about calcium and its absorption here.

Our anatomy and meat-eating

When I talk to some friends about eco-friendly lifestyle they rhetorically ask “so do you want us to live like caveman?” (as if avoiding plastic and cycling etc. resembles to life of a caveman!). Ironically, when I talked to same people about veganism they asked “But humans have always been eating meat since caveman’s time!” – But we are not Caveman anymore! We are far more evolved  and civilized and have discarded loads of things that cavemen were naive enough to adopt.

I have not found a single person who’s able to hunt and kill even a rabbit without tools and then tear it apart, and eat with all the blood without cooking! What would a 2 years old hungry child pick up when offered raw carrot, and live chicken? Our basic human instincts match mostly of that of herbivores.  But we forcefully train ourselves to change those instincts when we grow out of the innocence of a child. (read Comparative Anatomy of Eating by by Milton R. Mills, M.D.)

If slaughter-houses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian – Sir Paul McCartney (detailed video)

It also makes me wonder why we love one some animals as pets and kill others to eat! After all, both have same feelings and desire to live!

Plant and pain

“So you eat plants, don’t they too feel pain?” – A question primarily non-vegetarians ask (more often than not, merely to win the argument). As per dominant scientific opinions while certain plants certainly respond to stimuli, none can feel pain due to a virtually non-existent nervous system. Contrast that to animals who even feel psychological pain (e.g., dairy cows let out cries of anguish for days every time her calf is forcibly taken away and deprived of its righteous milk). Secondly, even if we hypothetically assume plants to be capable of perceiving pain, non-vegans still would kill/hurt more as farm animals don’t drop from heavens, they are bred/farmed using a massive amount of plant based food and natural resources. Besides life of a plant is drastically different than that of humans or animals. For e.g, when you pluck a leave, it grows back (doesn’t happen with any animal body part). Most plant parts are needed to be eaten or used so that they can propagate by means of pollination.

Cooking – a new hobby!

Vegan-cake, made by me!

Cooking vegan dishes is my new-found hobby! Here are some of my favorite vegan culinary websites:

Sharan (excellent source for alternatives to milk products), Tongue Ticklers (Run by Harini, who lives in Mumbai), Holy Cow Vegan (exhaustive!), Veganosaurus, The Rawterian (Raw vegan food blog. Quite innovative!), IVU (more than 3000 international recipes!), Hobby and more, Vegan Chutney, Vegan on the Prowl

Good communities on the web that help with transitioning:

Vegans in India, Vegans in NCR (delhi, Gurgaon, Noida),Mumbai Vegans,Bangalore vegans, Chennai Vegans , Ahmedabad Vegans, Pune Vegans, Hyderabad Vegans

Table: Calcium (mg) content in 100g of Food Items

[Source - Nutritive Value of Indian Foods. Book released by National Institute of Nutrition, Indian Council of Medical Research, 1989.]

                Food Item                             Calcium Content

• Til (Sesame seeds)                                1470
• Agathi Greens                                         1130
• Curry Leaves                                           830
• Moringa Leaves                                      440
• Methi (Fenugreek) Leaves                  395
• Ragi                                                              344
• Horsegram                                                287
• Rajma (Kidney beans)                          260
• Betel Leaves                                             230
• Badam (Almonds)                                 230
• Chana (Chickpeas)                                 202
• Corriander (Cilantro)                           184
• Urad                                                             154
• Jack fruit seeds                                       133
• Moong (Green gram)                             124
• Cow’s Milk                                                 only 120!!!

More resources on vegan nutrition:

• Sharan - General FAQs, Cattle and milk
• Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine – PCRM
• T Colin Campbell Foundation (Author of The China Study)
• CNN documentary on Bill Clinton’s vegan diet for his heart disease
• An exhaustive compilation of all types of vegan resources
• Not Milk (A complete resource)
• Gary Yoursofsky’s wonderful speech
• Vegan Body building and athletes
• All about protein

Slow Death – Not so slow now!

This is my second summer in Bangalore, the (ex-)garden city. I recall that during the last summer I never felt the need of a  fan in the house, whereas this year I sweat even when the fan is on! Just within a year of my stay in the city, I can see a clear difference in the weather-pattern. This reminds me of the frog example in the Al Gore movie ‘The inconvenient Truth’. The frog,  when it falls into a jar of boiling water, senses the problem and instantly jumps out, but when the same frog sits in a jar of luck warm water and the water is heated slowly, it can’t sense the gradual temperature rise and remains inside well past the point of physical damage. Our collective nervous system is quite similar to that of this frog – short-sighted, unable to detect any trouble (read climate change) that appears to grow slowly, even though it’s actually speeding in. [Do not miss to watch the 1 minute video of the frog example!]

When it comes to financial security, we all think long-term, we save money for our kids’ future, get their insurance done and what not. But on the other hand, we go on adding heedlessly to our carbon footprints, which will only lead to a disastrous life for our kids. Why don’t we ever think that if we have witnessed the temperatures rising till 45 degree, earth quacks, Katrinas, Tsunamis and a number of floods in last 25 years (my age), it’s more than likely that our kids shall see even worse?! They may not even have access to enough water, let alone fuel. At this rate, there will certainly come a time when no  amount of money would be able to rescue us.

There are people who complain about congestion (best illustrated by this witty cartoon), from sitting inside their SUVs. There are others that crib endlessly about what we have done to Mother Earth, despite being among the prominent culprits.  “It’s become too hot”, “Bangalore isn’t the same green city now”, “there’s just too much of pollution”, “traffic congestion has become a big nuisance”, “fuel prices have gone sky high” … the list just doesn’t end! We do acknowledge the existence of  the problems, we do voice our complaints, often quite aloud, but then just sit tight and retreat to our mundane tasks and momentary comforts, rather than channeling the fire to action.

But thankfully, not everyone thinks or acts the same way! Each time I meet a new chap who walks the green talk or hear about an organization  plunging to alternate energy, I feel hopeful. For last few years I have been able to find myself a lot of like-minded fellows who ardently attempt to keep their carbon footprints down: be it BCW [Bus/Cycle/Walk], cutting the usage of plastic, water conservation and so on. Even here, the list is endless

A discussion with my cook when I was telling him why I do home composting or cycle to work ended with “Madam, aapke akele karne se kya hoga, baki sab to vaise ke vaise hi hai”. True, I alone can’t do it, but imagine out of 20 people I talk to, 2 of them start cycling to work, and they talk to another 20 and the chain-reaction continues. Some day soon, it could reach 100 such people who try to make 2000 (20*100) more people aware,  and the numbers may keep multiplying like this! This is not just possible, but also probable.

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. – M K Gandhi

Small steps like using cloth bags, getting tap-leaks fixed at once, shutting down the computer, switching off appliances – if practiced collectively – can go a long way towards restoring the balance. And, once you jump into this ocean of change, you will subconsciously make sure that the chain continues. For example whenever I refuse plastic bags, I try make my reasons clear to the shop-keepers too . Here is a complete list of such tiny steps that can make a substantial change.

If only each one of us would  take a step forward, without worrying about others, I think we can conquer any challenge.

As Margaret Mead rightly said: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Haybox Cooker

Recently I tried the Haybox that I had bought during AID India conference from Srikakulam volunteers. And I must say it works magically well!

(Left)Rice before transferring to Haybox, (Right)Rice after Haybox cooking

These Hayboxes were basically designed to help the villagers of Srikakulam   cook rice efficiently and save on fuel as well as time. It also serves a means to support their livelihoods.  ‘Hay’ being an insulator is able to  preserve the heat for sufficiently long time, hence when rice is transferred to Haybox after having been brought to the boiling point, it cooks on its own. I also tried this at home with the Haybox that I bought (Demonstrated in the photograph). It took around 25 minutes to cook 1 cup of rice for me. There was no access water left and it was also possible to keep it hot till lunch time.

The detailed report from AID Srikakulam can be found here.

Haybox in Srikakulam, is primarily used to cook rice, but it can be used for most of the cooking for which we use pressure cooker such as making Khichadi, boiling vegetables etc.

Here’s a video that shows a Haybox demo given by Ravi Kuchimanchi to the villagers of  Srikakulam.

A post on Compost!

home-composting bins at my place

Waste segregation is something I’ve been practicing over a year now. Though I was never sure if that remained segregated after having been collected by BBMP, I feel the chances of the source segregated waste getting mixed with normal waste are lesser and it may even make segregation at destination easier. I’ve read and heard about some initiatives by BBMP for solid waste management, but I still have some doubts about it’s efficiency when I see piles of jumbled up garbage lying on the street sides. Finding more about this schemes and implementation level details is another action item pending in my list. But till that time, I thought of solving at least my in-house waste problem, by getting a home-composting kit from DailyDump. After getting them, the dustbin for ‘wet garbage’ has become almost obsolete in my kitchen. I never knew composting can be so neat and easy. The final compost that comes out of the waste, indeed gives a typical fresh earthen smell. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to understand such complexity of the nature, that grows food out of the soil and has a way to finally get them back to the same form!

I’ve also put together a mini garden outside my kitchen, to utilize this compost. This, in a way, has become my new-found hobby

Namma Raste, Namma Ooru!

Lemme start with the meaning of the title. These Kannada words were foreign to me till Nov 19! But now I know that ‘Namma Raste’ means ‘Our road’ and ‘Namma Ooru’ means ‘Our city’.

‘Naama Raste, Naama Ooru’ was a protest to assert our right to inhabit a green city. The government seems to have been reading so much into road widening, that it has greatly undermined the value of trees, a fundamental necessity for sustaining the human race. The event was master-minded by the Environment Support Group (ESG) [many of you may relate to this by the name Hasiru Usiru ]

Coolest caption . It reads "Do you want a barren city like my head?".

The walk was quite well organized. It didn’t disrupt the traffic at all!

Hundreds of concerned citizens turned up for the walk. It was heartening to see many kids also marching for this cause! I was accompanied by Goli and Mayank, two of the more concerned people I know. We walked from Lalbaugh West Gate to Town hall, sporting colourful, innovative posters, roaring slogans against the government’s unlawful steps [Yes, much of the tree felling was illegal. More in the report]. The participants signed an appeal to the Chief Minister of Karnataka, urging him to preserve the green cover.

At town Hall, the destination. The volume of the crowd is a testament to the fast-growing realization of climate change.

Have a Cracking, Cracker-less Diwali!

A must-watch video on what happens in most of the cracker factories. Yes, those people need employment, but not at the cost of their lives!

Here’s something more on the subject you can read.

Story of Stuff

Although this video has already been shared with some of my friends via Gtalk, I am putting it up as a post for those who are not connected with me through Gtalk. (Click on the image below)

This excellent, fast-paced video coverage will give you a bigger picture in terms of environmental effects of blind consumption and wastage of stuff. I simply loved watching the entire series of video chapters. My recommendation is to go through all of it, but in case it looks time-taking, don’t miss at least last two chapters (consumption and disposal).

Green is the way to go!

(In case the above link doesn’t work, please visit http://www.storyofstuff.com/)

Go-cycle Bangalore meet

Around 8 am Sunday, April 27th, the place near the Bethani High School (Kormanagala) was mobbed with cyclists, sporting white colored T-shirts and lavish smiles – smiles stemming from the satisfaction of having taken a right step towards preserving the environment. This was all part of a Bangalore-wide campaign to celebrate the car-free day wherein people are appealed to keep their fuel-hungry four-wheelers at bay. Cyclists from all over the city drove in to a common point on the MG road, inspiring many on-lookers along the way. The press took a generous notice of the event, which had been very well planned. Many of the participants bike to work on a regular basis and almost all of them have significantly cut down their fuel usage

This was my longest but eye-opening cycling ride that broke my misconception about my limited cycling capacity. If I recall the first time I rode Pulkit’s bike to work, I had found the drive so exhaustive that the moment I got hold of Pulkit, I told him that I was dropping the plan of getting a bike for myself. But, soon after a few more rides, I found myself quite comfortable with this new mode transportation, and now I have come to a stage of where I am truly enjoying my rides to office.

It was very heart-warming to interact with many like-minded people, conscious on matters of environment and pollution. May more and more citizens become aware of these issues, and more importantly, start acting on them!

PS 1: For those who are in support of using the bicycle as a preferred mode of transportation: you are not alone, find more like-minded chaps on bikeszone forum.

PS 2: For those of you who had asked, here is the link to that newspaper article.