Dig into healthiness

Gurnaaz Kaur

We all know healthy food is good food, but who would trade taste for health? Not many. What is food unless peppered with butter and spices? Well, there are those who’ve found a middle ground. Dieticians are now working with chefs to deliver you food that not only scores on health, but on taste too.

Two months ago, Mohali-resident Harpreet Kaur, along with five members of her family, did what they hadn’t ever thought of. They let a Chandigarh-based company plan their menu for the day. “The food tastes good; chefs act promptly on feedback; the dietician works on diet plans weekly,” she says.

Harpreet says four of them are still continuing with the meals as the results were there for them to see. “In the first month itself, I lost 6 kg while my husband saw a difference of 4 kg. We’ve stopped going out for dinners because here every day feels like eating out, and we still lose weight,” she gushes and says that while it did feel a bit expensive in the beginning, the results felt every bit worth it. 

Welcome to the times. Here health consciousness is rising and money seems cheap. So while people are waking up to the need of being healthy, there are those who are capturing this upcoming “market”. Harpreet’s family spends approximately Rs 25,000 per person per month. However, not all diets cost a bomb.

On offer

There’s DietShala, an online service that promises a calorie-counted healthy meal at a reasonable price in Chandigarh. The six-month-old start-up by four young people caters to the needs of those who do visit dieticians but fail to live up to the diet plans, are regulars at gyms and need that extra bit of protein in their meals. In short, it is for those who want to be fit but have no time to spare in the kitchen. Harpreet’s family is one of the customers.

Diet Shala customises every meal, every day and delivers it at your doorstep. “There’s young working population that is independent, cash-rich but strapped for time. Eating out has increased but healthy food options are limited if not non-existent. We decided to bridge the gap,” says one of the partners, Rohit Bhatia.

Chandigarh is also home to Poshtic by Ashima Aggarwal and Gaurav Sikriwal, who promise dietician-recommended cuisines. “We want to make eating healthy food simple for everyone. We have pre-workout and post-workout recipes for gym goers,” says Ashima, an IIM-pass out, who left her job as an area sales manager to set up this venture.

Poshtic was set up in January and Ashima says the response is positive. From daily and weekly orders by individual customers to having corporate clients such as Uber and PepsiCo, there’s enough on Poshtic’s plate. One of their customers, Carolyn Glover, from the Canadian Embassy, says, “I’ve been a lunch subscriber at Poshtic for four months now. I’ve dined at many 7-star hotels in India and almost every time I have fallen sick because of the food. But, now it is guilt-free indulgence.”

Small cities, big awareness

The trend isn’t limited to the ‘modern’ Chandigarh alone. Punjab, too, is ditching butter chicken for healthy food. In Jalandhar, Deliver My Diet has been running for two months. The owner, a teacher-turned-entrepreneur, got the inspiration to set up a café after her own failed attempt to live up to prescribed diets. “Going to a dietician is not even the first step towards getting in shape or achieving a healthy lifestyle. I realised this when I paid for consultations, bought memberships at gyms, but couldn’t include all those complex ingredients in my diet,” says  owner Sonia Bembey. She has collaborated with Bangalore-based NutriLife for designing its menu and executing the recipes.

If we are talking of a trend in Punjab, can Ludhiana be left behind? Of course not! The city where women love to flaunt their beauty and diet has Diet Saga by a brother-sister duo that has brought together a health café-cum-diet clinic. Sania and Yogansh Gupta say: “There are no frying pans or white sugar in our kitchen. People come here for a sinless indulgence.”

Healthy food is a nationwide movement and took off full throttle in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad years ago. Delhi has many such customised healthy food delivery options like Leanbodies.in, Fitness Fuel, Innerchef and Healthy Box; there are TLC Kitchen and Etonomist in Gurgaon.

As business booms 

Innerchef’s spokesperson says 40 per cent of its orders come from housewives. However, it is not all about making money. It requires a lot of hard work. Certainly not when you are one of the first ones to get started with something like this.

Tarani Kapoor, founder of TLC Kitchen, was a textile designer by profession but a cook by passion. She knew how difficult it was for people to go home and cook after long working hours. She felt the pain herself and ended up realising her dream of cooking. “It’s been two and a half years and it’s not been easy. There have been times when breaking even also became a challenge. But I am convinced about what I am doing. It’s high time people realised that spending on healthy food is not a luxury but a necessity,” she says. 

Sai Gundewar, who runs Foodizm, a tiffin delivery system in Mumbai, says when he started out in 2011, there weren’t many players. “This industry has seen a steep rise. It’s a multi-crore business today,” he says.

From the city of nawabs to the country’s Sillicon Valley, there are tailor-made meal delivery options. Nuts Over Salads in Bangalore has a menu of 350 different salads, each costing just Rs 99. Fitmeals, which started as an inspiration to heal an unwell and unhealthy friend, has become quite a sensation in Hyderabad. The subscription-based service for healthy foods is not only famous amongst the locals but also has fans like VJ Bani. “As soon as I land into Hyderabad, all that I look for is the specially handcrafted Fitmeals for me. Their quinoa sushi is one of my favourites,” vouches VJ Bani, who is all praise for the food startup that caters to your nutritional/calorie needs at a click.

Food and fitness that once seemed two opposite ends of the same spectrum have been blend together like an art by these gastronomists. What are you thinking?

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DIY

Take to healthy eating now. Superfoods, known to be rich in much-needed vitamins and minerals, are also source of antioxidants that keep diseases at bay. Among these are spinach, beans, sweet potatoes, salmon, fruits, nuts, whole grains and berries. Include these in your diet and feel happy. Healthy too!

Start worrying, lady!

India’s women are more likely to be obese than their male counterparts, a new research shows. There were 20 million obese women in India in 2014 compared with 9.8 million obese men, according to a study published in the British medical journal, the Lancet. Severe obesity was observed in an additional four million Indian women. There were less than 8,00,000 obese women in India in 1975 compared with 4,00,000 obese men.

Plump figures

A study has revealed that India has the third highest number of obese and overweight people (11 per cent of adolescents and 20 per cent of all adults) after America and China.