Do not - Stir fry your Conscious!

I do pass the following quote to my food process engineering student group.  They are encouraged to follow the dictum – ‘You must eat to live’ than ‘live to eat’.  I also say that for the latter category studying food process engineering may not be the best option but look elsewhere where the gourmet mindset based curriculum is served!  

In Sri Lanka planning your menu is a big item on any agenda.  It is no surprising at times to hear immediately after ones belly is full what may be best for lunch and dinner and so on – we plan this aspect of our lives quite intently.  Even in conference planning I have seen many a situation where the menu planning takes more time than the content planning for sessions.  That kind of situation indicates that most of our lives are more towards living to eat!  Yet for all that rigour and concern the farm-to-mouth supply chain concerns are of least importance and we have paid a premium price over the years from one loss or another.  

Planning the menu for the nation and giving variety, affordability and nutrition has not received the attention it deserves.  As losses, mount and we indeed can sadly boast of food losses in various segments ranging from 15 to 50% of the production or the catch depending on whether we are speaking on fish, paddy to fruits and vegetables.  

Discussing post harvest technologies and importance has being on the agenda for decades.  Still the same situation exists minus few important developments.   Because of these excessive losses, the cost to the economy is huge but minus strong and focused action, the situation is unlikely to reverse.  It is important to remember that this mystery “post harvest technologies” are simply the use of process technologies.  This lack of understanding has prevented the planners missing the vital first step.  

For an example there is the eternal quest for that perfect dryer within the establishment and there are many dryer types proposed and used and abused as well.  As professional process engineers that is the advice if they eat to live then the movement to arrest these losses and aggressively act as change agents is possible.  The expectation is that when you eat while indulging in the sensory experiences you must also contemplate the farm to mouth scenarios as a professional and analyse what goes on.  The reasoning is that your life extends beyond the plate, and your efforts should be in making a positive change in the environment in which one live.  In this particular supply chain improvements needed are many.  The situation is all the more unfortunate as Sri Lanka can boast of exotic resources and with different ways of processing can go a long way in titillating the senses and the economy.  I am quite keen to see the freeze dried powder of Nethrapalam (a plantain variety costing Rs 150 a piece!) as a confectionary filling or on cereal energy bars.  If we take the view of cost of freeze drying to start with we will not get anywhere as it is happening today.

It is important that our marketing skills are turned inwards to support our foods.  We are quite eloquent on what some one else produces.  Unless there is an external interest, we are also slow to understand the value of resources within.  Our pineapples received extra TV coverage when Tony Grieg developed an affinity to this exotic fruit.  We have forgotten that Anita Roddick of Body Shop had one of her first products after observing Sri Lankan women rubbing their faces with the skin of the pineapple while bathing.  Though there is a question mark over the actual occurrence of the latter incident, the fact remains - what do we observe?  

Take for example salt.  We obtain our salt from seawater evaporation.   In many countries, you have to mine for salt and have to work hard and dig deeper.  Walk into some exotic organic food establishments and you may see higher prices being quoted for natural organic sea salt!  To develop ‘organic sea salt’ in Sri Lanka we are few procedures away as our process is mostly in line with the guideline.  However, we are not interested in such branding as the consumption is for an internal market.   Expensive packaging plus some additional analysis really gives more return on investment from something we take for granted.  We need this revolution in food processing.   What can drive this change?  We have survived with losses for a long time and yet to see these figures causing mainstream change.  Consider neigbouring India who has gone through two revolutions related to food – Green and a White revolution.  The latter relates to milk and the whole operation made Dr. Kurien famous and ‘Operation Flood’ was presented as a cinematic experience – visit at least the YouTube for ‘Manthan’ – 1976 Hindi film, which says the Amul story.  We certainly can do with some similar achievements.  What drove Dr. Verghese Kurien is interesting – He had been privy to a statement made by an outsider about his country.   The statement made by a British expert had been that “the sewer water of London is superior to the milk of Bombay”.  Who is going to egg an individual for action with statements similar to these?  There are many possible ideas if one can think and recent revelations from the catering sector should be food for real thought.  

There is a strong need to challenge the status quo.  The need to process foods as a means of preservation had prompted many developments.  From the times of Napoleon, which Nicolas Appert won with his concept of food, canning – exactly 200 years ago — to the more recent projects of USA’s Defence department to produce ‘Meals-Ready to Eat’ which brought out retort pouches.  These developments have come about because of strong interest and the desire for keeping foods for a long period of time as well as realising convenience.  It is important that busy life styles are equally facilitated through nutrition on the go rather than fillers to kill you later on which most fast foods are.  The kind of thinking that drove Napoleon as well as US Dept. of Defence should be present to some degree in our nation’s planners.  We know that the first action in any disaster is bringing out food packets but we do have a problem here as per our readiness as we only depend on the kindness.  Considering the direction, societies are taking as well as the need to face emergencies call out for making most of your produce based on the concept that one must eat one can and then can what one cannot!   With today’s technology, a much better meal could be served.  The early canned material was ridiculed, as more suitable as axle grease and no such statements are necessary today.

It is important that we just cannot afford these losses.  The absence of processing is striking in some sectors.  In most situations food and drinks appear as SME’s that demand support and subsidies.  A fresh way of approaching is necessary.  It is altogether too common to hear that technology is expensive when it comes to food processing.  These expense-based judgments unfortunately are only made with respect to process equipment.   It is important though there may not be any sincere love than love for foods for many, at least the planners should allow some stirring of their conscious to enable technology diffusion and innovation to have a more modernised food processing industry in Sri Lanka.  The shift that would bring in society by way of reducing losses and improving the disposable income of people and if purposefully done the productivity due to better nutrition may defy traditional ROI calculations.  While eating we must indeed allow some blood flow to the brain to continue some analysis rather than pumping all elsewhere to support only the process of digestion.

(Professor Ajith de Alwis is Professor of Chemical and Process Engineering at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. With an initial BSc Chemical engineering Honours degree from Moratuwa, he proceeded to the University of Cambridge for his PhD. He is a Science Team Leader at the Sri Lanka Nanotechnology Institute. He can be reached via email on [email protected].)