Nature knows best

[S.Annadana]

Nature knows best

FOODIE

Arati Menon Carroll / Mumbai May 13, 2007



Kavita Mukhi, owner, Conscious Foods, cooks a dish that looks good enough to eat. And yes, it's organic!

Once upon a time there was a young mother who set herself the highest standards of parenting she could.

All consumption of unhealthy food should cease. So should pointless television viewing. Never mind that the son grew up to watch television for a living (he’s in the movie business) and he still looks upon her organic recipes with some degree of suspicion.

But it was her mostly fruitless search for unprocessed natural foods that led her to believe she had found her purpose.

I challenge you to meet Kavita Mukhi and not walk away convinced that there are components in your diet that just have to go. Starting with white rice, the long-suffering object of her disapproval.

Mukhi is the warrior organic foods proponent who founded Conscious Foods 20 years ago, at a time when the “health” food wave was just rearing its nebulous head. And as much as Mukhi denies having a business bone in her body, she’s made a sizeable success of her company.

Mukhi still retains a role within the company that she recently sold. Instead of breaking her head with numbers, she can now focus on issues closer to her heart like quality control and new product development — products like the Herbal cha sold by the company, which is her personal concoction of peppermint, licorice, cinnamon, fenugreek seeds and cloves.

In an airy sea-facing apartment in Breach Candy, over glasses of apricot and honey nectar (organic, naturally), Mukhi tells the story of her journey from health food retailer to organic food marketer, peppered with anecdotes about her own family’s initial distrust and eventual conversion, starting with the three things she suggests getting rid of immediately from your diet — white rice, iodised salt and refined oils.

“Why do people take such a dim view of using organic ingredients, believing it will alter flavours?” I ask. She smiles, “If anything, organic ingredients enhance flavours. I think the problem arises because people confuse ‘organic’ with ‘fat-free’ and, let’s face it, fat free snacks aren’t tasty.”

In the family kitchen, as she puts together a quick organic snack, Mukhi tells me it is still hard to find organically grown vegetables. So she grows her own in a two-acre plot in Alibaug that she’s converted into a biodynamic farm.

“Biodynamic farming goes one step beyond organic farming,” she explains. I notice she slices the carrots at a slant.

“Macrobiotic cooking believes that opposite ends of a vegetable are the yin and the yang. By slicing at a slant you’re allowing everybody to consume a bit of both,” she explains.

She also makes references to the blood type diet. Doesn’t she ever get confused with these diverse principles for well-being? “I’m only just beginning,” she laughs.

Mukhi introduces me to a herb I have never heard of. Jumboo is a Himalayan culinary herb and “tastes delicious sprinkled over your dal”. Mukhi is an advice-provider with no reservations, a product of her other role as a nutrition counsellor.

“I secretly hope that the people I advise will also go out and buy our products, because I really believe in it,” she says.

Kavita Mukhi is so full of vitality, you can’t help believe what she ingests has something to do with it. So whatever you do, don’t forget to switch to the brown rice. And what was I thinking when I declined her offer of the Herbal cha?