Indian food divide: Fat on junk or death by hunger
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17/09/2008
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Asian Age (New Delhi)
Patralekha Chatterjee
THE UNDERFED still outnumber the overfed. But food is the new religion of aspiring India, competing with sex on the pleasure-o-meter of the urbane and the upward-mobile.
There have always been those who clearly love food for its abiding satisfactions. But the food gurus of today are the spiritual leaders of the gastronomic world. They not only guide us towards new eateries and new cuisines, but also help create new needs, new snobberies and raise the bar about the cheese, chocolates, wine and olive oil we consume. All this may seem good news but as our eating alternatives expand, so does our anxiety about eating itself. Alongside food, fear of fat is the obsession of the day among a certain kind of urban Indian.
Even as malnutrition continues to stalk India