New Foods, New Habits, New Hazards

Habits die hard, and eating habits are said to die harder still. What we grow, how we cook, and how we eat and drink are perhaps conventions most difficult to change. And yet, in the hills across the Himalaya, routines of eating and cooking are under assault. New crops, innovative planting techniques, and the availability of processed foods and soft drinks are altering our diets in significant ways, not always for the better. Nutritious makai-bhatmas is giving way to soft popcorn; local butter-milk (mohi) is losing out to orange squash and aerated drinks; unleavened bread (roti) is being replaced by mass-produced white bread; and in the hinterland, nutritious local grams are being supplanted by rice and other exotic varieties.

"Food habit is a static concept as long as it is not disturbed by external forces," says Yogesh Nandan Baidya, Chief of the Nutrition Division of Kathmandu´s Central Food Research Laboratory (CFRL). Ever since potatoes entered into the Himalayan diet a century ago, these "external forces" have gathered momentum.  Asparagus, kurilo, is now a major sales product in Kathmandu´s Ranamukteswar market. No local farmer would have been able to recognise the vegetable, just three decades ago.