Assessment of Indian cooking practices and cookwares on nutritional security: A review

Abstract

Food provides us nutrients and the energy required for growth, reproduction, and maintenance. Energy is required to perform all voluntary and involuntary activities like digestion, respiration, circulation, carrying out professional, household and recreational activities. Despite having rich food diversity, we are using only a few items as our staple food. With the adoption of eastern cooking practices and cookwares, risk of both pre-and post-transitional diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, malnutrition, obesity, etc. has increased significantly. Aluminium toxicity and nutrients breakdown has become a common problem in pressure cooking. To overcome this problem, it is important to shift from the modernized cooking methods to our traditional cooking practices, i.e., use of earthen cookwares, clay pots and some selected metal utensils, e.g., copper, iron, brass, etc. It has been shown that earthen, copper, iron, and soapstone cookwares do not leach toxic trace elements into the food and enhance the sensory qualities without decreasing the food nutrients. Adoption of traditional Indian cooking practices (such as fermentation, roasting, germination, etc.), cookwares (such as earthen, copper, iron, soapstone, etc.) and increasing the consumption of healthy diet grains like millets, etc. can easily combat the pre- and post-transition health problems in India, effectively. This review would provide a deep understanding to the people to decide the best cookware and cooking processes that will improve their health and provide ample nutritional value to them.