Health is wealth: The significance of organic/slow food in the context of Indian people - Theory and Practice in Hospitality and Tourism Research - page 380

Garretson & Burton, 2000; Keller et al., 2003).
The halo effects also apply to restaurant menus.
According to Burton, Sheather, and Roberts
(2003) found that adding a “heart-healthy” sign on
a menu reduced the perceived risk of heart disease
when objective nutritional information was absent,
even though it was placed next to an objectively
unhealthy menu item (lasagna).
First, as far as food is concerned, India can be
claim the most diverse society in the world. Not
merely that: Indians have borrowed heavily, una-
shamedly and openly from virtually every corner
of the globe. The story of Indian food is often the
story of the blatantly exogenous becoming pro-
totypically authentic. Many food items that seem
Indian came to India late in the day. Of course,
there are always a few ultra-nationalists who claim
that these preparations and ingredients are Indian
and the foreigners, either dishonestly or out of
ignorance, consider them to be originally theirs.
Almost invariably such nationalists rely on some
old texts where some of the analogues of cauli-
flowers and mushrooms are mentioned.
Attractive though such theories are, at least
Indian vegetarian cuisine would have been devastat-
ingly poorer if potato, tomato, French bean, sweat
potato, tapioca, cashew nut, capsicum, maize, raj-
mah, papaya and, more recently, cheese and cocoa
were not made a part of the cook's repertoire.
Even more painful for the Indian food national-
ist could be the fact that chilli, an inescapable part
of Indian cuisine today, came to India from South
America. So did pineapple, guava and chiku . Peach,
pear, cinnamon, blackberry, lychee, cherry, and the
ubiquitous tea came from China; cauliflower from
Europe; onion from Central Asia. India is known
for its spices, but some of its most important spices,
including a few that are central not only to cuisine
but to indigenous healing traditions, have come
from outside. Among them are garlic, turmeric,
fenugreek, ginger, cinnamon, and asafetida. Both
India's diversity and uniqueness in the matter of
food owe their vivacity to a certain cultural open-
ness to the strange and the unknown.
We talk about political sovereignty but we often
forget that we are losing our food sovereignty
because we are eating what the market decides for
us. People must look at the range of the fast food
available in the supermarkets today. It makes us
crazy even trying to choose our breakfast cereals.
And how do we know a certain packaged food is
good for us? It is what we read on the package that
consists of calorie and nutritive contents. And how
can we be sure whether something is good for our

biology when we have not eaten it in the best part
of our lives? Actually we have all become shopping
robots. The moment we enter a supermarket we no
longer use reason. In fact, it is our children who
tell us what to buy and what not to. And we have
become subservient, obliging parents. We have lost
control over what we eat and drink. We have lost
our food sovereignty. It is time to recover our lost
heritage in food and go back to our indigenous
food practices because they are healthy and tasty as
well. Above all, they promote sustainable farming
practices. Thus, on the basis of the above discus-
sion, it can safely be said that in India (and other
countries as well if they are taken into account)
people are facing serious health diseases due to fast
food. It is need of the hour to concentrate on the
issues, problems which are dangerous to the growth
of human beings and society in general. Therefore,
people must be made aware of organic/slow food
which makes their family healthy and wealthy.

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