The Spicy Symphony: Unravelling the science of food with Ashok Krish

‘Science is a process and a language’ — a thought instilled by his grand uncle fundamentally transformed the way Ashok Krish looks at everyday life. Being an author of ‘Masala Lab: The Science of Indian Cooking’ and the Global Head of Digital Workplace at TCS, Ashok has donned many hats effortlessly, from a software engineer to a social media influencer, debunking myths and sharing the science of Indian cuisine, popularly known as Masala Lab. Furthermore, he has built a loyal following on his social media handles by breaking down the process of cooking food and seamlessly blending the symphony of spices together with the history and chemistry of food.

Sharing science backed statistics, he encourages his audience to look at food through the lens of curiosity and question everything with logic. Join us as Ashok shares the wonders of the post-evolutionary human behaviour that took the discovery of fire to build an empire of flavours and spices, and unravel the origins of our habits and cuisines, down to the molecules in this scintillating conversation on the Go-Beyond Podcast. 

Transcript

Akshay Kapur:

Welcome to the Sony Pictures Networks Go-Beyond Podcast where we go beyond the surface and uncover the extraordinary. 

Food is a topic that connects with every individual differently. For some it's about taste, for some it's about health, for some it's about fond memories we associate with a particular dish or cuisine. For our guest today it's about something more, It's about science. A software engineer by education, global head of digital workspace at TCS by profession and a multi-instrumentalist, columnist, and author by passion. His book Masala Lab and Instagram page of the same name delve into the science of Indian cooking and more. It is a pleasure to welcome Masala Lab's chief scientist Ashok Krish on the Go-Beyond Podcast to talk to us about the science of food. Ashok welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

Ashok Krish:

Absolute pleasure being on the show and I’m doing very well. Thank you, Akshay!

Akshay Kapur:

I'm glad to hear you're doing well, and Ashok I have to say I looked at your Instagram profile and it has an extremely thought-provoking statement I think mentioned under your name which says – “A healthy disregard for authentic food”. Can you tell us about what this authentic food that you were referring to is and what do you mean by disregard? (Laughs)

Ashok Krish:

Yes. So, I think I would step back and say that I think sometimes terminology and jargon - People sometimes use these terms differently and they often use it as a way of discriminating and use it as a way of you know, keeping people out or keeping certain things out or doing value judgments right? 

So, in my opinion I think my sort of problem with the way people use authentic food. Although I'm sure there are people who mean something very sensible and nice when they say authentic cuisine or authentic something is that a person from that region with a history and a culture who's been steeped in that, who's been trained in that is cooking something. Yes, that's authentic! You know, there's no problem with that at all. I think the problem only comes when people say this is authentic and something else is not authentic.

And they often use that to narrowly define what food ought to be right? And this completely misses the point about how food is a constant product of trade and travel and colonialism and history and migrations. But what is an authentic biryani? What is an authentic sambar? What is an authentic idli? Because you know how an idli is made, the ratio of urad to rice and so on… changes every 10-kilometers right? So I want people to have a slightly more open-minded view of what food is.

Akshay Kapur:

Right

Ashok Krish:

And don't let the word authentic, be something that prevents you from enjoying food, right? Let it be something that allows you to enjoy food. 

Akshay Kapur:

Right? So, can I Just flip the question and ask you do you feel like there's anything that is dis-authentic with food, food preparation with you know meals or cuisines or anything like that?

Ashok Krish:

I think as someone who's sort of travelled the world and really eaten every kind of food, I find it very hard to genuinely find something unauthentic. But if you really ask me the kind of foods that there is, perhaps a certain category of let's say sort of appropriation of cuisines from say the global south you know - Indian, African and some of these more traditional cuisines and then sort of you know, place it in a very western fine dining,  French kind of context and then judge them using those kinds of terms where you know some random western chef is making a Pad Thai or somebody's making like a traditional butter chicken and you can sort of see so there is a certain inauthenticity when you do not give credits to the cultures that you have been inspired by right.

Akshay Kapur:

Right.

Ashok Krish:

And I think you know there is a certain level of honesty and transparency which I think people with privilege should exhibit where they are co-opting the cultures of people who do not have that kind of voice right? I mean in that situation I think I might find a few very posh kind of Indian food served in a very western context and setting to be slightly inauthentic. But at the same time, I absolutely love Indian chefs doing amazingly sort of fusion things. I've found some of these really, really, creative fusion Indian restaurants in London and New York or San Francisco sometimes more than say Mumbai or Delhi. 

Akshay Kapur:

Right. I have to ask because you seem very passionate about the subject when and where and how did you develop a passion for food and especially food writing?

Ashok Krish:

I think writing is a meta skill I've always had I mean I first and foremost sort of see myself as a creative writer, right?

Akshay Kapur:

Okay.

Ashok Krish:

I mean in the sense that all the way from when I was 10 years old. Writing humour, writing for school plays, participating in these jams and dumb charades and anything that required any form of creative writing and expression was something that I've always been into and it was natural for me in my twenty’s to get into blogging because that allowed me to have a democratic place where I could write whatever I wanted without an editor looping over me and so on….. 

Akshay Kapur:

(Laughs)

Ashok Krish:

And that was the of the initial sort of early era of the social media right in the in the mid 2000’s and so on and that gave way to obviously Twitter a different kind of expression, and then eventually writing about food which again I've always seen a lot of my skills.

As I like picking up skills that are combinatorial, meaning that I get to combine them with other skills I have as opposed to it being a rabbit hole by itself. So, for example, I'm trained as a Carnatic classical musician, but I somehow avoided getting into the rabbit hole of Carnatic classical music and saying that that's the only thing I will play. I would rather be at the level where I'm able to use my software engineering skills to make better more fun music in a quicker amount of time, in a more internet-friendly fashion sort of do more fusion and remix and mix heavy metal and Carnatic. 

So, for me mixing food and writing was just a natural thing. I've been cooking since I was 13 or 14-years old because you know my mother taught the only son of us who was least likely to cause an LPG explosion in the house how to cook…

Akshay Kapur:

(laughs)

Ashok Krish:

… and because she had a traveling job and I you know ended up sort of learning how to cook and I've been cooking since then right and in some shape or form. I lived in the US for about 7- years so I had to cook daily. So, for me, combining writing and cooking had to happen at some point of time. It started around 2016-2017 when I started sort of creating and curating a Twitter presence very significantly focused on food. Prior to that I used to be a little bit more crazy on Twitter doing all kinds of things, jokes and politics and all that but eventually I think it sort of became non-productive to kind of engage in those very polarizing topics. I thought maybe I think you know food is something that hopefully I think you know will unite people rather than you know make people fight although rudely surprising on social media people fight about food as well. 

Coming back to the whole combination of writing and food, it started around 2017 I started documenting some of the vegetarian cuisine that my mother specialized in and there's actually like a very viral Twitter thread that has like 400 posts of that thread of photos of what my mother cooked every day right for the for like 5 years or something like yeah, um and then it kind of started there and then I started obviously sharing sort of science snippets because I was always someone who liked understanding things from first principles because I absolutely sucked at exams, and I absolutely sucked at memorizing things, 

Akshay Kapur:

(Laughs) Ok.

Ashok Krish:

And so for me for me science was a crutch because it basically sort of legitimized the ability to ask why till you go all the way around to the bottom right? And be okay with saying I don't know right and be okay with saying I could be wrong right? And in that sense, I would probably credit my grand uncle who was a research scientist with really instilling in all the activities during summer holidays and all of that right? and he would sort of instil this basic idea that science is not some privileged thing that some people do right? Science is not done by Science, Science is a process and science is a language. There are two things.

Akshay Kapur:

Right.

Ashok Krish:

It's a process of trying to uncover truths about the world while being honest about what you have found and being okay with being criticized by someone who finds you wrong and then gives you a better theory right? That's the process. 

The language part is essentially describing things with a level of precision that you do not lose information and translation and tone of voice. So, in that sense I think my thought process around 2020 was that nobody had bothered to use the language of science to describe. 

So, this isn't a this isn't a book about the scientific process of how food happens. This is describing Indian food in the language of science because the going in principle was that our grandmothers are chemical engineers. I mean they've essentially experimented in the kitchen for centuries and generations and are fine-tuned by learning that this is how this is how you estimate rice for water, and this is exactly how you get a soft chapati, and this is exactly how you get a deeper thicker gravy. And essentially when you interrogate those things and then try to apply common day-to-day science – physics, chemistry, and biology, you kind of then understand yeah! this is exactly why it happens and I was surprised to find out nobody had written about it and so I said OKAY, fine, Let me be the first one to write about it!

Akshay Kapur:

(laughs) Fair enough. I see that you're talking about applying the scientific method and language to describing and talking about food. Is that also synonymous with when we talk about the science of food? Is that what the science of food means to you or is there something more because we know with your Instagram page you sort of communicate a lot more in terms of in-depth and in terms of different angles towards this right? 

Ashok Krish:

Absolutely Yes. 

Akshay Kapur:

So, could you expand on that? Is there something in addition to just expressing food through science or is there something more to that as well?

Ashok Krish:

So, over time I've come to sort of look at this this universe of food through I think three lenses, and a very simple way because I like simpler models in my head right? Nothing very complicated. 

The first is the stuff that happens before it comes into your kitchen, right? So basically, how is rice actually made? How is it processed? How does it go from seed to that white thing you buy. How does Atta go from.

Akshay Kapur:

Right.

Ashok Krish:

You know the wheat seed and the various varieties and the hybrid and all that? How does it go from plant to what you get and what happens when you buy a packet of biscuit - open it right? And how was that made right? What went into baking it and so then there's the pre kitchen right? 

Then then there is Masala Lab which is basically you have the ingredients in the kitchen, you've cooked your food and then you put it in your mouth and you're tasting it.  So that's Part 2. And the science of it is like how do I get better flavour? How do I maximize flavours of spices? How do I make a dish taste more interesting? How can I save time in the kitchen? How can I be more productive? How can I use better appliances? That is basically the goal of Masala Lab and so basically it was earmarked to saying that I am not dealing with the production agriculture. All of that I am assuming you're going to a store buying stuff. I'm going to start the book where you have ingredients and you're making chana masala is basically where Masala Lab stands, and it ends when you put it in your mouth right? 

Akshay Kapur:

Right (Laughs)

Ashok Krish:

Sorry go ahead.

Akshay Kapur:

I was just going to say don't you feel that where you get your ingredients, what ingredients you buy affects the step 2 and the step 3 or where it ends?

Ashok Krish:

Absolutely see these are just ways for me to categorize this information because that is a different world. Of course, it affects this world, right? Whether something is organic or not, it does affect its flavour, does affect its sustainability, does affect a bunch of things, right? Whether something was processed or not processed does affect. 

Akshay Kapur:

Okay.

Ashok Krish:

Its eventual nutritive value and so on these are connected. But these are just a mental model of how I see the world that these require very different skills to process, right? So, one is the sourcing part, one is the kitchen and putting it in the mouth because appreciating flavour and the brain activities and the nostalgia and all of that is also what you call now call - Neuro Gastronomy, is of very keen interest to me from the point of view of how we appreciate food. How we experience flavour. Now once it leaves your mouth and goes into your oesophagus, food is not chicken tikka anymore.

It is actually a ball of protein carbohydrates fats and micronutrients. That's it. It's like a homogenous ball and at that point nutrition takes over. The science of nutrition and digestion and metabolism and fitness and a whole range of very complicated things if you really ask me.

Akshay Kapur:

okay.

Ashok Krish:

The third part is probably the ones where it is most complicated, and we don't have all the answers. which is why there is so much misinformation about it.

Akshay Kapur:

That's fair I'm assuming that part of the process is something you're equally passionate about, correct?

Ashok Krish:

Oh ya absolutely! Yes! I mean it has been something, definitely. Ever since I started the Instagram and I recognize the fact that again, this is a space where obviously I'm not a doctor, I'm not a nutritionist, I'm not any of these. Again as someone who's largely been a autodidact self-learning person in that sense.

I have relied on and collaborated with people I consider to be like science-minded experts right? So I would collaborate with say Dr. Abby Phillips when it comes to you know with toxins and things like liver and related things, I've collaborated with like a nutritionist like Amita Gadre who have a sense of okay what's happening macros? How do you get it? How does your body digest protein? How does your body digest carbohydrates and what essentially happens and so on. I've worked with gastroenterologists who deal with the gut and the gut bacteria and all of that because that is also a very crucial part of this entire sort of you know eating and health as we are now discovering. 

What role the gut bacteria actually plays, the gut brain access and so on. So, let's put it this way I think the second space is where I've largely worked with food scientists and chefs and grandmothers, okay and the third one I have largely focused on science mind and this actually needs a little bit of attention because I think in India people actually get a lot of that third part of that wisdom about what happens once food goes inside, and they get this wisdom from traditional bodies of knowledge like Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and other things right? And this is an ever-present thing and there is also a bit of a tension between how modern medicine understands and views the body and the more holistic nature of how wellness is thought through in an Ayurvedic or any of these other traditional systems of wellness and so on right? So, I think there is always that tension. Then yes.

Akshay Kapur:

Right? You know and I definitely agree I think with especially with the advent of social media, especially you know, becoming more accessible these days. The third tranche is sort of where you see a lot of content being pushed. 

Ashok Krish:

Yes.

Akshay Kapur:

You also see a lot more demand for that kind of content because people are asking a lot of questions in that space. I'm curious to understand from your perspective because you spent a lot of time in in the second tranche we're talking about where the food the ingredients are in your kitchen. The meal is being prepared and then it goes into your mouth at that point what is the synergy between that.

Ashok Krish:

Yes.

Akshay Kapur:

Phase and then the third phase where it gets digested and where the nutrition is being extracted from the food?

Ashok Krish:

Yes, so that's a great question because see I think what happens is that um everybody seems to have a different view of how these things intersect. So, if you ask a chef.

Akshay Kapur:

Okay

Ashok Krish:

What he thinks about what he does in the kitchen and what he thinks about nutrition?

Akshay Kapur:

(Laughs)

Ashok Krish:

You will get a very hard separation where there is there is no intersection at all because the honest truth is that a chef has to his primary goal is to make delicious food, not healthy food and unfortunately deliciousness and healthiness are often you know at odds ends right? They're actually completely opposite, right? yeah.

Akshay Kapur:

Well I'm going to interject really quickly and sorry to interrupt you but I because I was actually going to highlight the same thing that there is a commonly accepted perception that if your food is healthy, it's not tasty and if it's tasty it's not necessarily healthy. How do you feel because you talked about the preparation. Could you highlight that as well?

Ashok Krish:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely I think this is interesting part. So, the thing is that and I want to particularly highlight India because I think we actually have a fantastic cuisine that is actually technically able to make super healthy food also, super delicious.

Akshay Kapur:

Okay.

Ashok Krish:

Because of our richer use of spices, ok. But at the same time let's also appreciate that a lot of our diet sometimes is very high on carbohydrates. A lot of deep-fried foods, a lot of very oil rich and so there are some macro imbalances on average. But again, it's possible If you're sensible, if you're largely eating at home right.

The average Indian meal cooked by a mother or grandmother way way more healthy than the average meal that could be cooked in an American household (Akshay: Laughs)with a lot of you know, processed food from sausages and things that you poured out of cans and so on right? 

Akshay Kapur:

(laughs) Right, right.

Ashok Krish:

Different people will see different intersections of how these things play out. But I think what has happened in social media particularly is that I constantly find people are attributing the wrong causes in terms of what you do while you're cooking in terms of its effect on health and people I feel because of the pressure to create content and also I guess the incentives that drive the need to create more scaremongering content meaning (Akshay Laughs) that you will not build an audience by saying a microwave is perfectly safe. You will absolutely build an audience by saying microwave will cause cancer. 

Although there is no evidence reference to that effect. But the point is that I think and you can apply this to a lot of things rights and it very easy to find people who will say oh nonstick is bad using aluminium vessels is bad, using aluminium foil is bad, using MSG is bad. So, the problem is that I think because of social media and the fact that people now consume complex information and ninety second chunks you know shots and reels and so on or the TikTok generation, what's now happening is that, that's not the end of the story right? And the problem is that the person is not giving you the full picture at all. So, when somebody says that the aluminium is toxic, etc, etc…

Akshay Kapur:

Right.

Ashok Krish:

And these people also suddenly cite a study that showed that aluminium was found in the plaques of patients with Alzheimer’s right? So, they put those two things together and make this completely unscientific correlation that therefore you must not cook on an aluminium pan, it begs a very basic question. How are you certain that the aluminium in those Alzheimer’s plaques came from the vessel you ate, right? Because aluminium is the most abundant metal on the planet. It is everywhere. It's in your drinking water. It's in every medicine you eat. It is literally inside the vegetables that grow in the soils because aluminium is in the soils also, right.

Akshay Kapur:

Okay.

Ashok Krish:

The amount of aluminium that your vessels are going to leach is not even a rounding error of the amount of aluminium you are anyway consuming, right? 

Akshay Kapur:

And just to clarify when you say this you mean cumulative over a number of years, or is this like what you said that the rounding error that you're referring to?

Ashok Krish:

Yeah, over years over years right over years, right? Yeah, over years. It's a rounding error right. And the other thing is that because they deal with this misinformation so regularly, the Alzheimer's foundation has a specific section that clearly says there is no connection between dietary consumption of aluminium and the use of aluminium cookware and Alzheimer's disease. They've officially said this saying that there is no evidence and yet and yet content creators keep saying this right? So, it's quite a strange thing. Yeah.

Akshay Kapur:

Fair enough and I think just to make sure I'm following with your thought process the timeframe in which we're consuming the content is not enough for us to understand the full picture is one. The second thing you that you're saying is that because of the way social media content is consumed, there's a lot of.

Ashok Krish:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely! Yes, absolutely yes.

Akshay Kapur:

Boldface claims without explaining some of the probabilities or the statistical associations between…

Ashok Krish:

Correct. Yeah yes, so that right exactly science is hard. Science is tricky and scientists speak in a very opaque language filled with caveats. But social media takes those things and says yeah, X equal to Y therefore this is cancer, right? and you know basically there's an oversimplification that happens. 

Akshay Kapur:

Understood. I think that they're highlighting a few things. 

I have to ask you because we're talking about statistical correlation. We're talking about like the scientific language versus the way social media is phrasing things. How does how does a consumer…

Ashok Krish:

Yes.

Akshay Kapur:

…swift through this massive sandpit and and find the gold? How does a consumer really understand what should we be doing because ultimately one way or another it's affecting every individual based on what content they're consuming? 

Ashok Krish:

Unfortunately, I really think this is a complex problem that there are no simple solutions to I keep telling people don't trust me blindly as well. Maybe which is why I think I think 10% of my content is actually focused on giving people thinking tools to say I'm not going to tell you whether something is good or bad.

Akshay Kapur:

Right.

Ashok Krish:

Here are some sources where you can go find out and then build those sort of tools where you know what is scaremongering you know where somebody is doing a causality correlation error. You kind of are easily can spot where there is and this is anecdotal evidence. You can spot where pseudoscience is.

Akshay Kapur:

Um, right.

Ashok Krish:

If you build a muscle for it right? I know it's hard and I wish we could teach science better and more engagingly in school. Scientific thinking I think is a universal skill. So, in that sense I think you know this is a wider deeper problem, but I would actually tell people be sceptical, be universally sceptical and ask first principles questions and don't accept any appeals to authority.

Don't accept something like no, no, no science said it ask for where it to show me. How did you come to the conclusion?

Akshay Kapur:

Right? What you're saying is don't listen to content creators blindly. Don't listen to you know consumer marketing blindly. Develop your own informed decision-making capabilities.

Ashok Krish:

Absolutely absolutely and I would also also perhaps add if that makes life very hard for you because you then don't have a base for how to choose when it comes to food I think a combination of Michael Poland and Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s advice is something I would say is a good starting point and then you adjust from there. Michael Poland’s advice is “eat food” meaning that things that don't come out of packets meaning that things that are where it's not processed right? I mean it is vegetables. 

Akshay Kapur:

Whole Foods

Ashok Krish:

It is produced, whole foods right? The level where you need to get protein. Yes, do that. But I think you can still get protein from plants mostly plants is I think generally good for the planet right? And the last one is “not too much”. This is the hardest advice to follow right? I mean we all love food I mean and the and again as I said if you really think about all the problems people have, they attribute it to.

Akshay Kapur:

Okay.

Ashok Krish:

Ah, hundred reasons except overeating. You could fix so much of your problem if you just simply reduce your caloric intake right, and exercise more, right? I mean but that's very hard to do right? 

Akshay Kapur:

We have to have to allude to the fact you know over time the science of food has also changed significantly and the Atkin Diet Yeah Atkins Diet, you have the Keto Diet, Vegan, Palaeolithic, avoid fats, count calories, consume an ancestral diet. So, I mean with a global more globalized market that we see today.

Ashok Krish:

Yeah, yes, it is Yes, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, correct correct. Yeah, exactly.

Akshay Kapur:

Have our bodies evolved to keep up with the changing consumption behaviour?

Ashok Krish:

Not really. So, nobody wants to eventually cook stuff that makes themselves very very unhealthy and so on over time. So Taleb’s advice largely is that don't ignore traditional wisdom because you found a white paper based on two samples on an experiment done on rats in the last two years. Okay

Akshay Kapur:

(Laughs)

Ashok Krish:

What he says is basically that don't throw out traditional knowledge that should be your base but then individually interrogate some of the micro things that you must not do this. You must not eat, for each those you can interrogate with science but don't throw out the baby with a bathwater, right? That's a good starting point which then brings us to the big elephant in the room.

Akshay Kapur:

sure.

Ashok Krish:

How much food do you eat? This is very very hard to answer right? because it varies right? So, the first point but is about evolution right? here is the problem. Evolution happens on a scale of millions of years, does not happen on a scale of thousands or tens of thousands. it not even hundreds of thousands it happens over a scale of billions of years because the number of genetic, reproduction layers that you need in order to create enough genetic variety for you to do enough experiments then to have a survival of the fittest.

Take hold and so on takes millions of years, I mean that is how you know an elephant African Elephant developed a larger ear and developed a trunk and you know a dolphin figured out how to swim so that is the level at which evolution works. 

Akshay Kapur:

Sure.

Ashok Krish:

Humans are first and foremost post-evolutionary meaning that ever since we discovered the fire, discovered how to cook food, discovered how to grow grains. Okay, these 3 things, right? We are now a different species. The reason I say these 3 things - 1 the discovery of fire and cooking allowed us to have a huge brain because your body does not need to spend seventy or eighty percent of its energy digesting food that a cow needs to do right, because grass is notoriously hard to digest. Okay, it has to spend its life energy trying to digest food. Okay.

Akshay Kapur:

Right.

Ashok Krish:

Human beings use cooking and fire to break down so large molecules into small we use fermentation to break down large into small. So are we literally spend only twenty thirty percent of our energy digesting food right? And by the way once we discovered grains that amount even went down further because grains are notoriously easy to digest. Rice and wheat and millets and all these other things, right and then you kind of fast forward now we do ultra process foods, they are even easier to digest like maida, and things like that right? So, on all of this has happened in a span of 5 to 6000 years. 

Akshay Kapur:

Right.

Ashok Krish:

So, we are evolutionarily cave men actually probably sort of like you know, not even homosapiens, but probably like the we have the metabolism of a Savanna Monkey. okay .

Akshay Kapur:

(laughs) a Savanna Monkey who knows how to use fire.

Ashok Krish:

Yeah exactly right and so therefore not nothing in our genes has evolved to change. But our brains have evolved we were able to externalize that knowledge. We’ re able to pass on that knowledge to other generations. 

So, what Richard Dawkins says is this is not genetic evolution. Human beings are about memetic evolution where a lot of our change happens as a result of transfer of ideas. Not the transfer of genes. We've literally only had like you know 25 generations or twenty - thirty generations since somebody at the time when Christ was alive right? 

That is how slow we are, but evolution takes millions of generations right? So, then this is I think you know something for people to understand that we still have the metabolism of an African sort of Savanna Monkey, right? And a private perhaps a bipedal ape for that most part right? And so, you can see the fact that we are not really designed for eating 3 meals a day, we are actually designed for eating as much food as we can when we find it and then putting on fat and then waiting for the next meal that is how we are optimized. That is why when all of a sudden, sugary foods, are so easily and cheaply available. They were never available a thousand years ago, right? Our body said give me more, give me more, and then we put on fat right? So, basically that is how we have evolved and so therefore our modern-day diet. 

Akshay Kapur:

Right.

Ashok Krish:

So, there's this fantastic sort of infographic that also tells you at the third of the night at Twentieth Century, nineteen hundreds, right? Um, eating one calorie of food right allowed a human being to effectively have access to a certain number of calories of actual energy and work that they could do right, etc etc.. With the machines that they have it because basically machines allow you to not expend calories and you're outsourcing that to machines so basically from the nineteenth century, you think about it the car right.

Akshay Kapur:

okay.

Ashok Krish:

If everything that we see in factories eventually the computer and the smartphone and so on, every breakthrough has therefore reduced our actual caloric need, but we are now eating more, right? So, if you think about a great example is actually breakfast. Okay, so there is actually historically no concept of breakfast in most Indian communities with the exception of agricultural laborers right.

Akshay Kapur:

Right? Interesting, interesting.

Ashok Krish:

So they they're the only ones who need to carb load before really really getting an insane 8 hour workout in the sun. Okay, right? 

Akshay Kapur:

Laughs.

Ashok Krish:

They're the only people who who actually eat breakfast historically right.

Akshay Kapur:

Right.

Ashok Krish:

So that is why if you actually look at Indian breakfast. There is a reason why they are notoriously carb-heavy because they were all originated in agricultural labour communities.

Akshay Kapur:

Interesting.

Ashok Krish:

People who did not do physical labour which is basically all the upper casts and all the other people who are privileged people in society and so on did not eat breakfast. Their first meal of the day would have been at Ten or Eleven o'clock. They would do puja and then eat that was the first meal right? You don't eat before offering the food to the god so you do the puja in the morning and then you eat after that right.

Akshay Kapur:

Correct.

Ashok Krish:

And that's your first meal of the day and then you might eat a second meal. That's basically 2 meals historically and then all of a sudden, I think we had also had this sort of huge wave of the power of American soft power and marketing sort of pushing the whole cornflakes as the morning breakfast as the most important meal of the day. Nobody was eating sugary processed corn before but somehow, we just sort of in the last hundred years we made it like a default.

Akshay Kapur:

Yeah, absolutely. and the the other thing which I think you talked about ah talked about one of the people you mentioned said for the most part consume what your ancestors or your grandparents rather.

Ashok Krish:

As much as you can yeah were practical and yes, yes, yeah.

Akshay Kapur:

I think this raises a couple of interesting questions. The first being um, do you feel it. It brings us to that that that point in time where we were talking about choosing your ingredients. Ah for the meal and the ingredients available and also.

Ashok Krish:

Yes, yes.

Akshay Kapur:

The quality and variety of ingredients available has changed drastically since our grandparents were going to the market especially in India, so one is when you're thinking about consuming largely what your grandparents consume should you also try and factor in.

Ashok Krish:

Indeed, indeed. Yes, yes, very much.

Akshay Kapur:

The quality of that that particular item that they were consuming versus the quality of that particular item in your meal today and.

Ashok Krish:

It's ah it's a good question right? It's It's also but it's also a tricky question because at the end of the day. I also don't want to be too prescriptive with this right? It is important to be flexible. Let's also understand like for example, 80% of the vegetables we eat today, my grandfather's great grandfather father's great grandfather would have never seen in this life. This includes carrot, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, chili, tomatoes, potatoes. All these were introduced by Europeans. Okay, so first and foremost, right? So, it is pretty evident that eating habits and ingredients do change.

So, when I say eat like your Grand Grand Grandparents did, it has to do with the larger sort of philosophy of how you prepared the food and um and the dishes you made and you are okay to swap out ingredients right? either? Yeah, so it's possible that there was some root vegetable that your great grandfather ate. That's not even being grown anymore.

Fine mean replace that with a potato, no absolutely So problem so see I think you know people overthink the nutritive qualities of vegetables and their one their change over time. Yes, there has been a change soil quality has gone down, so it is true that green vegetables generally tend to have like 20 to 30% less micronutrients than they had. Mean they still have carbs protein and the macros they have, the micros they are a little bit less because of the soil quality depending on which part of India you live and so on and depending on whether you can afford organic and on but again because it's only twenty thirty percent again I want to be practical and say that if you eat more vegetables. Right? than process food. You are still doing hundred times better than somebody who goes the additional step and says no I will only eat organic vegetable sourced from a very artisanal, I will do my own gardening so that incremental benefit is much smaller compared to the larger easier impact of simply just increasing the number of vegetables in your diet's right? So therefore, you don't have to break your head that much about it right? So yes, we eat as your grandfather or grandparents did is to say that look eat your dal chawal right? rather than daily pizza and you know ah a burger or something right? I mean that's the point right.

It's also even possible to be creative, adapt your grandfather's and grandparent’s recipes and then use modern ingredients and modern styles and make a Thai version of something like that all those are actually creative ways which is something that I encourage in Masala Lab to make your life more interesting right? Ah, who wants to eat the same 3 dishes, so you know all every time right? I mean you also want to enjoy food, right? yeah.

Akshay Kapur:

I have to I have to say um that we talked about the ingredients and the quality of that. Ashok, I think we've covered a lot of things today and I think a lot of important touchpoints that you've shared with us. Um, so this might be a bit of an unfair question given what we've already talked about but. Ah, we have to give all our guests the opportunity to share a takeaway for all listeners who listen to the podcast. So, I know you've shared a lot of takeaways would you like to maybe condense that down into some specific one or combination of a couple points of a takeaway.

Ashok Krish:

Yes, yes.

Akshay Kapur:

For people listening to this podcast today.

Ashok Krish:

Yep, yeah so um, the amount of food and the macronutrient, micronutrient balance of that Food is far far far more important. Then how the food was cooked what appliance it was cooked in where you bought the ingredients from where the ingredients were grown whether it's organic or not and all the stuff that you see on social media, far far less important than the amount of food you eat the amount of the back rows are you eating too much fat too much protein too much carbs. etc etc… You getting all the micros that is actually more important that I think is a very key takeaway which therefore means embrace convenience, which means that whatever incentivizes you to cook food at home. Do it right.

Akshay Kapur

Great.

Ashok Krish:

And when I say cook food at home, food cooked at home stored in the refrigerator eaten the next day and the next two days and the next four days is still better healthier on the long run than what you might order out from a restaurant because restaurants optimize for deliciousness they add a lot of salt a lot of sugar a lot of fat. That's the only way to make food the restaurant great. That's just the way it works. 

Akshay Kapur:

Right.

Ashok Krish:

So so always embrace the fridge embrace the freezer embrace convenience embrace shortcuts embrace everything that somehow makes it possible for you to eat something that was prepared in your home.

Ah, and don't worry about how old it is how etc people think things lose nutrition in the fridge. They don’t, right? You only lose water soluble vitamins which are easily added back with a side salad and a squeeze of lime. That's all you lose you don't lose proteins, carbs and fat or anything or minerals in the fridge at all, but these are not things that are going to go away right? Ah and again so focus embrace convenience. Um, and really also learn to enjoy a diversity of food because that will inspire you to cook more, it will inspire you to.

Cook food for your loved ones and have them also enjoy that and build that healthy relationship with food while it's good to think food as a medicine. It is better to think food as something that sustains you, you just need to make sure it's balanced enough, and your body will take care of everything else from immunity and all the rest of that stuff. Don't play food as a medicine in that direct sense because it's going to take you down a stressful path where there is just no end to it.

Akshay Kapur:

Right? Well Ashok. Thank you so much for that and for taking the time to join us here on the go beyond podcast. It's been an amazing conversation speaking with you today. Love the topic love the insights you shared. Thank you so much for joining us.

Ashok Krish:

Loved chatting with you, Akshay!