Byloom presents Paushtik Life was an informative talk session on food held at the Hindustan Park boutique store and cafe, Byloom, earlier this month. Byloom partner, Bappaditya Biswas, conducted the talk session with Angushman Das, a food security activist, and Ruth Chattopadhyay, founder of Paushtik Life, an eco enterprise focusing on sustainable and sensitive sourcing and retail. The audience listened with rapt attention as Angushman spoke about the safe food movement, while Ruth spoke about mindful eating and cooking.
During the conversation, the duo dwelled on several myths and wrong assumptions about some food products. They also discussed how the present world is suffering from rampant pollution and contamination issues, and safe food is becoming largely inaccessible to the masses. They informed the audience members on how most things we consume are a derivative of harmful chemical ingredients and preservatives that in turn greatly affect our bodies in a negative way, making us further prone to chronic diseases.
Angshuman, a programme manager at WHH, a German organisation working on sustainable food systems, has an experience of 22 years in this field. He narrated how his activism took him far and wide, through the rural areas of India and other countries, interacting with the farmers. He pointed out how genuine concern for the environment and organic farm produce and such related issues is quite low and not enough to bring about the needed vocalisation of problematic policies surrounding food. He explained to the audience that our concerns related to food are mostly taste-related and not really the constituents that we end up consuming on a daily basis.
Ruth Chattopadhyay elaborated on how she started her socially responsible, producer-caring and people-oriented initiative back in 2018 as an alternative to the unhealthy and cold-storage food we eat on a regular basis. As she traced back to where her concern started, she mentioned how coming from a family of food enthusiasts, the quality of food the family was consuming concerned them. Thus, Paushtik Life became a local farm-to-table concept that made organic food more cost-effective and readily available. It had started with around five local farm producers and a limited customer base, but now employs 32 producers catering to city-wide consumers. Ruth also advised not to use non-stick cookware which impart a lot of chemicals in the food and to pay special attention to what’s written behind the packets before consuming them.
The audience listened to the speakers attentively, while many of them raised questions about food myths and the truth behind them.
(L-R) Bappaditya Biswas, partner, Byloom; Sanhita Sensarma and Ahana Majumder.
(L-R) “Today’s event is all about safe food and the food that forms who we are. The main aim is to educate people about what safe food is. Be it rice, be it oil, everything that we know of,” said Bappaditya Biswas, partner, Byloom.
“I am happy that Byloom is making such efforts and also there is an audience for it. We must be the devil’s advocate and keep raising questions, this is the right way to move forward,” said Sanhita Sensarma, a lawyer.
“It is indeed a much-needed forum to get clarity and authentic information about organic and mindful foods. The session by Angshuman really enriched us,” said Ahana Majumder, a professor at NIFT.