WORLD FOOD SAFETY DAY 2023 CELEBRATION…..Goa Chamber of Commerce & Industry President Ralph De Sousa, in the presence of Goa State Pollution Control Board chairperson Mahesh Patil, FDA director Jyoti Sardesai, designated FDA officer Richard Noronha & GOACAN coordinator Roland Martins inaugurated this special day on June 16, 2023. It was a day long celebration of with intresting talks and the release of Shree Anna Recipe book of Millets. (Inset) Muenzer Bharat’s Mohan Shetty gave a very informative talk on recycling of used cooking oil into biodiesel

By Tara Narayan

IF you’re asking me all we’re doing as a civilisation is fine tuning the art of hypocrisy in our times, we don’t care one bit about what’s happening around us (as long as it is not happening to us)! Look at the noises we make about all the man-made pollution — big time — which is throttling Mother Earth, our primary home, home for all life on earth. Not just for the human race which has evolved to such heights of rapacious greed…our civilisation is at a critical crossroads as E-mail inventor, MITS graduate several times over and man extraordinary in Massachusettes, USA, who is standing as independent candidate for president’s post in America (he is a Tamil Mumbai-born boy from the lowest rung of society in village Tamil Nadu in India), says in many words differently in his online chats followed by half a million people who admire him.
We need to examine our ways of thinking for our own good. Does let me kill you, before you kill me, mode define what being a human being is all about? Say it is law of the jungle but far, far more sophisticated and deadly for it is rooted in a growing minority of cold-blooded oligarchs globally who manipulate economies for power, profit and control – so that only they may reap a heaven on earth. Something like that!
Everybody is chasing longevity these days ironically and making arrangements to be fit forever – keep their physical, cognitive, emotional decline at bay as long as they can…Oprah Daily’s headquarters in New York City is currently promoting Peter Attia’s “In Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity.” This much-loved chat show hostess with the mostest in the US of A is herself a fabulous makeover, a living example of how disciplined eating and lifestyle can do wonders for self-esteem, wellbeing, a desire to live life happily ever after. Oprah is a firecracker and one mega inspirational person I’m following these days! Her healthful changes now see her as svelte, energetic and brimming over with joi de vivre.

USED COOKING OIL FOR BIODIESAL!
I WONDER what all Oprah Winfrey she has thrown out of her life? Refined oil first of all, sugar, salt, refined flours and not least of all alcohol and tobacco? We in India continue to patronize the obsolete good life with hefty helpings of gooey oily meals, soft drinks, all manner of fryums and sweets of course are a way of life. I was thinking of all this anew on World Food Safety Day organized by the Directorate of Food & Drug Administration on June 16, 2023. Hospitality representatives were present along with F & D staffers and there were some lively sessions of which I found the one on “Disposal of Used Cooking Oils” by the Muenzer Bharat the most exciting. You can give them all your used cooling oil and they will recycle it in various ways but mostly in turning it into biodiesel.
Frankly, it’s high time we chucked oils. Put an end to to the production of refined oils and their various consuming fusions. As the eloquent Mohan Shetty said there’s such a confusion of oils today to help us kill ourselves slowly. The refined fats hydrogenated or not hydrogenated are Number One ingredient indicted in heart disease (along with excessive eating of salt) and if you’re asking me, we should not even do tadka or phodni although this requires wee bits of oil if we’re conscious about the ingredients which go into making fighting fit oil through a hundred odd years.
Think of all the gaguantan amounts of oil used for deep frying a host of foods we love to eat beginning with the much Goan mirsang and samosa…frying is the easiest way to cook in most kitchens at home and in restaurants, using one of the scores of refined oils or vanaspati/dalda of various reportedly good to bad to ugly quality.
Most doctors will tell you chuck oils first, then sugars, salties, refined carbohydrates which have low glycemic indices – in fact don’t eat fryums of any kind at all, home-made or from various advertised eateries! Think the myriad packets of farsan we pick up constantly…all fried stuff, although now there is the technology of an air-frying machine to cut fats as an ingredient. Just a wee bit of fat to satisfy taste buds, not enough to count? It is because we eat so much fried food that there is so much left over fried oil all around us and especially in the food business.
As some excellent speakers from Munzer Bharat told all the hoteliers at the day-long educative schedule – to repeat frying oil more than three times is undesirable. The most eloquent Mohan Shetty traced how dumped cooking gets into our drainage system, in the soil of the earth to cause endless pollution and death to other forms of life. Traditionally, some folk sell off the used cooking oil to various entrepreneurs who re-cycle it into say making soap or other consumer products. But at Munzer Bharat they have a system in place to collect all the used cooking oil and this is treated into biodiesel. As a matter of fact waste-based biodiesel cuts CO2 emissions by 95% compared to conventional diesel, “Due to increased efficiency of the waste collection systems we reduce environmental pollution and create secondary resources made from the waste oil…”
He warned that used oils turn carcinogenic with repeated use, rancid oil is carcinogenic. Listening to him I thought how little we know about oil and how its consumption touches so many things down the line…what do we know about the different oils and all the talk of smoking point! The quicker the smoking point the worse the oil to consume! As a matter of fact all the ultra fine coconut oils we love should not be re-used at all for they have an almost instant smoke point! Any oil smoking too quickly is a no, no for repeat fries! Many food businesses freeze leftover oils and then recycle them for frying anew.
We should shun any oil which has turned sedimentary or viscous as a thumb rule, said Mr Mohan Shetty. What a fund of information he is and full of humour, “Some of us think the more we recycle oil for frying food the tastier it is!” It’s like saying the more carcinogenic the food the more we love it…that’s how much we care about our own health! Today there is such a confusion of oils and we think oh maybe the manually pressed or old ghani pressed, the cold pressed filtered oils are okay and healthy to consume; a friend of mine says, “I only use olive oil to fry!”
Truth is seen the price of olive oil lately? It has doubled and most not in the picture of cooking oils don’t know that the pomace olive oils are really the dregs of the olive oil business. Do not buy. Do not invest in any oil at all if you know what is good for you. Well, I do have a soft corner for some cold-pressed oils for doing the odd phodni, but I don’t do fries at home 99% of the time even if I may eat a samosa for old times sake on a bad day!
That’s my take on it at least, my friends. While I may use a little bran oil or cow’s ghee to do a tadka occasionally in my cooking, I must tell you here that the little diya I burn every evening is in physically expressed rice bran oil and it’s so good my diya burns the whole night long and is still flickering at dawn! Bran oil if you’re asking me burns the longest, that’s real low smoking point.

In conclusion the Munzer movement is the best thing to have happened since cooking oil was invented by the food industry! Do give them all your used cooking oil please, it’s the next best thing to do after consuming fryums if you must. They have put into place an excellent system of collecting all this used cooking oil from restaurants and eateries in blue bins weekly and this goes into major recycling operations including the making of biodiesel.

OUT AT THE TAJ CONVENTION
OUT at the Taj Convention hotel last week I was so impressed by their walnut bread and apple strudel laid out that I wanted to buy some home. I asked around if they had an in-house cafeteria outlet but alas they do not, a bakery outlet is always useful if a guest wants to pick up some confectionary of choice for personal consumption or by way of gift to present someone. I suppose one could place an order with the Taj Vivanta Panaji through its QMin cafeteria, I find the chefs here very obliging and occasionally pick up a sourdough bread from here, not often as I would like to of course! At the Taj Convention I noticed they go that extra mile for show-casing eco-friendliness. I was amused to find at one of the G20 meetings going on in Goa that even the writing pads were of such exquisitely designer quality that I didn’t want to scribble anything on them! With it came a pen enshrined in some eco-friendly hardboard with the seeds of fenugreek in it. Meaning, after using it one may plant it to get a gift of methi or fenugreek greens!
Sometimes I don’t know whether to be amused or to be really riled with our upmarket attempts to con ourselves into thinking that we do care about what we are doing to Mother Earth in such small ways, when we really need to making sweeping changes like a ban on plastics manufacture altogether! Alas, as a civilisation we talk tall but continue to be mesmerised by mammon up there where it does not matter, but also down there where it does. Make what you will of this observation. Like the snake in the grass the blinkers we persist in wearing will one of these days reduce us to tears of bitter regret…and death. The eloquent Dr Deepak Chopra in an interview recently observed that as human beings we’re sleepwalking into extinction! Sends shivers down my spine. Think about this and don’t just think.