Like most people who are fairly comfortable in the kitchen, for a long time I believed I had adept knowledge in making healthy and smart choices when it came to food. However, my real understanding of food only came in when I began working in commercial production. It got me to see food in a completely different light and question everything I thought I knew about food.
Have you ever asked yourself where the ketchup in your kitchen cabinet comes from? Is it only made with tomatoes? Why does ketchup stay fresh for months while the tomato rot after a few days? Most of the time we are unaware of where our food comes from or how it’s prepared. Although we make smart choices with organic vegetables and unpolished rice, we often neglect a significant portion of our meal: that of packaged foods and condiments.
The food industry faces a number of challenges, especially in countries as dynamic as India. When you produce food on a large scale the focus always shifts from nutrition and health to cost, standardization and shelf life. I soon realized the only way to really understand food or be smart about nutrition was to go back to the basics and re learn everything.
Bonne Food is a pet project, part of the Bonne Bakery initiative where my full time job is to create healthy bakery products. Baked goods are only a small facet of a much larger spectrum of food, much of which we are still yet to discover. With Bonne Food I hope to celebrate food and rekindle the joy of sourcing, preparing and eating real food.