How Indians are embracing the superfoods all around them

While trendy Indians craved quinoa, West’s hipster cafes took an everyday Indian spice and popularised ‘health drink’ turmeric latte. Now Indian firms are looking at country’s regional diets in quest for a superfood to sell to world

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Grains such as millet have long been a staple of Indian cuisine, due to their low cost. Ironically, millet is now a trendy health food in the West.

Published: 5:30am, 24 Oct 2016Updated: 5:20pm, 24 Oct 2016

For centuries, Indian mothers have been giving children who have a fever or cough a glass of hot milk with “haldi” turmeric) mixed in. No one ever talked about it as being worthy of note.

Now, turmeric latte is found in fashionable cafes and coffee bars abroad, where it is touted as a health drink. In a report on food trends in the US, Google revealed that searches for turmeric increased by 56 per cent from November 2015 to January 2016.

In India, turmeric is an everyday spice found in most kitchen cupboards. It’s used without a thought. Unlike in the West, no Indian thought of packaging and promoting turmeric latte as a health-giving drink, to be priced at a premium and consumed in a trendy cafe.

Hot milk mixed with turmeric is an Indian home remedy for a cough. The drink is now a popular item at hipster coffee bars in the West.

Like turmeric, many foods traditionally seen in India as being healthy could soon be packaged and marketed in the West as superfoods and become mainstream, much like the Andean crop quinoa.

The list of potential Indian superfoods is long: betel leaf, tamarind, millet, moringa (the extract of the drumstick leaf), jackfruit, millet, barley, jamun, amaranth, and coconut oil, to mention only a few.