By CK Chandramohan
Dehradun, 2 Sep: Proper nutrition for health and overall physical fitness could be achieved through addition of locally grown millets to food in Uttarakhand.
This highly neglected form of food needs little or no water, can survive in hot or cold climates and can be harvested several times in a year.
Go back to the traditional wisdom of the grandmothers and grandfathers and understand and appreciate again the highly nutritious and tasty porridges, pancakes, rotis and even puris or kachoris they made and fed to one and all. This, supplemented with local edible mushrooms and even seeds of certain grasses and leaves or tubers of small plants, made the platter complete with lip smacking chutneys to suit all seasons and taste buds.
Although harvesting these millets and grasses might be a forgotten food system, the same could be revived into a fast money generating enterprise by youngsters having the guidance of elders and sometimes by visiting elders who are farm and nutrition experts also.
Reinventing harvesting and utilisation techniques of these coarse grains and leaves could help create a niche of high nutrition for the really impoverished classes that are found not only in these hills but all over the country, feels Dr MK Singh, a crusader for better health practices amongst the less fortunate ones.
Addressing these problems could make a nutrition cum money earning source for impoverished families which no doubt is the need of the hour, especially as the weather has become all the more uncertain these days.
(Born and brought up in Dehradun, the veteran Journalist CK Chandramohan goes around meeting people sniffing the pulse of the area. Beginning at St Joseph’s Academy he graduated to working with The Himachal Times in the 1980s and joined The Hindu in early 1990s. A political and development writer, he finds writing a passion to be lived and enjoyed without hitting anyone below the belt).
