February 20, 2023
Food for Thought
It’s Sunday morning, the end of week seven. I tested positive for COVID on Friday, yet here I am, drenched in sweat from a workout I just completed. Unfortunately, COVID has been spreading through our little GCIL community these past couple of weeks, and so far, I seem to be the only one that has been asymptomatic. Let’s hope I don’t jinx myself!
Anyways, as my smartwatch calculated my stats from my workout, it let me know I achieved my weekly set goal of intensity minutes, and I couldn’t help but start to reflect on how thankful I am for my health. Friday morning, before I found out I had contracted COVID, our GCIL group had the opportunity to visit Copper and Cloves, a plant-based restaurant in Bangalore founded by a London-born woman named Sarah. Sarah moved to Bangalore over six years ago; she had worked for ten years in the NGO sector in social work and education before she founded Copper and Cloves in 2017. I could feel Sarah’s passion for cooking and eating plant-based food and sharing it with others. She spoke on the trials and tribulations of her path up until now, having to balance making enough money to sustain her business and honoring her values. Sarah’s efforts to provide a space for locals to access nutritional food are indeed applaudable. Still, it got me thinking about the many people in India who don’t have access to or can’t afford a wide variety of fruits and vegetables.
In Whole Numbers and Half-Truths, a book we read earlier in the program which was a rather recent report of the current data on modern India, spoke on how eating ‘right’ is expensive in India. It states that nearly 40 percent of Indians would not be able to afford what is described as a healthy diet. It said that “fewer than 80 percent of rural households report having eaten any fruit at all over the preceding month.”
This is drastically different from my life, where I consume many more plant-based foods than anything else. Heck, I am sitting here, waiting for my second meal of the day to be delivered by Swiggy; our groups go to food delivery these days. Breakfast was a smoothie bowl; snack time was pre-purchased fruit from the fruit stand down the street, and lunch will be a salad. It’s crazy to think that during our first few weeks here in India, many of us complained that we were getting fed many well-rounded meals and wished we could feel hunger. I know none of us meant any harm by those comments; I said it plenty of times myself. But, I think reflecting on this privilege is essential in growing as humans and becoming better citizens of the world. Health should be a right, yet worldwide, health comes with higher cost and privilege.
As I sit here and recall a visit, previously mentioned in one of my past blogs, to a governmental housing sector, I can’t help but relate the statistics in Whole Numbers and Half-Truths to real people I have had conversations with here in India, specifically a woman named Chandra. I enjoy the variety of fruits here in India, and I remember asking Chandra if she ate much fruit; she said she never ate fruit because she couldn’t afford it. Most of the informal workers I have spoken with mentioned how their diets mainly consist of rice or Indian bread, such as chapatis, and some animal meat products because that’s what they can afford and what would go furthest in ensuring all their family members’ bellies are full.
I don’t know how to address the grand challenge of malnutrition. However, I know it is important to remember that nutritional food is not something everyone can access. Although I may not be able to help with malnutrition here in India, at least while I am here on this particular visit, (being that we are only three weeks from departing and our current efforts lie in other areas), I can, though, hopefully, help the issue where it is prevalent back at home by listening to the community’s needs, reaching out to politicians, sharing knowledge with others, and lobbying to make the shift of unhealthy food expensive and healthy food cheap, amongst many others methods of addressing the issue. For now, I hope this reflection piece will stay in the forefront of my mind as I move forward in life and remember to consistently practice being a conscious consumer and never take my access to highly nutritional valued food and my health for granted.
By Katlyn