NAGPUR-BASED PROTEIN BOX IS IN GOA with its focussed health-conscious meals…seen outside their “cloud kitchen” at Miramar is Utpal Ghosh and Upurv Paul; alongside are Saish Naik and Mohit Talreja. Take a look at their menu, can seriously lose weight eating some of the agreeable meals!

By Tara Narayan

NOT enough protein! It is a cry in despair and ignorance as far as so many vegetarians are concerned — in good health and more so in bad health! The doctor took a look at a patient (suffering from God alone knows what), checked him out meticulously and prescribed, “Please organize more protein rich meals, nutritional supplements and injections and physiotherapy for the patient…” Easier prescribed than done of course! My idea of a protein rich meal is to place a bowl of creamy moong dal, redolent of garlic, ginger and all infinitesimally nice, finally swirling with chopped green coriander…but will the patient eat it?
Nope, oftentimes it’s a case of remove all the green coriander please, “My weak dentures just can’t chew, okay.” Okay, point taken. So what is more agreeable? Soft cakes, croissants, jellies, cookies, rice-dal, kichadi-kadi, mashed potatoes and generously buttered garlic bread is easily a hot favourite and in general all things soft and preferably sweet. Mostly it’s a case of soft refined carbohydrates zindabad!
So one morning there I was saying protein rich meals, huh? What’s that? In my quandary I thought okay, maybe I can find a tiffin service which is health-conscious, protein-conscious, and sensitive to senior citizens’ palate and digestive issues. My search for a protein-focussed meal introduced me to the Protein Box guys from Nagpur. It’s an exciting start-up which my friend Nina Figueirdo introduced me to. Protein Box, I understand, has two so called “cloud kitchens” in Goa, one in Panaji and one in Porvorim.
The best thing for young educated people to do is set up start-ups like this one for they know health-conscious food is something a whole lot of young sporting people are on the lookout for; they may have time to go work out in gyms to acquire Salman Khan or former Sushant Singh Rajput fitness (whom I had a very soft corner for) but they can’t find the kind of food they’re looking for love or for money. Now they can find it for money maybe! Protein Box is here.
To cut to my present search for a protein rich tiffin service I found myself talking to Saish, Mohit, Utpal and others, about five of them engaged in doing protein rich meals. Look them up online and their menu says they do “low carb hi-protein meals, corporate meal plans, body building and pro athlete custom curated meals, keto and vegan meals.” They’re looking at monthly subscriptions, and will consider weekly subscriptions initially for you to make up your mind whether you like their menu or not. Yes, they are guided by a qualified nutritionist, they also want to do senior citizen-friendly meals. Damages? Rs2,000 per week to Rs8,000 per month and a couple of meals later I learned each meal was more or less Rs250 and delivered at doorstep in the vicinity of Miramar beach-Caranzalem.
Their menu with pep up promotional lines like “Eat Like A Pro,” “Eat Clean, Train Hard” and so on, offered a range of undoubtedly more protein-conscious temptations in Beverages like kiwi/strawberry/mango shakes but done with the Bihari favourite mix of “sattu” – interesting (sattu is basically roasted gram flour of various density and I imagine would make for a protein rich shake, it is the power ingredient of most people in Bihar)! Then, smoothies of fresh yogurt with various blends of banana, coffee, dates, peanut butter…I thought one of these days I must try out the spinach and veggies special blend (Rs120 per 350 ml portion)! They also have whey in milk shakes flavours of raw chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, mixed fruit, etc, you get the idea.

A LOT of young folk look for these milk shakes to grow muscle packs presumably. Take a look at their Meals section and you have a box of cottage cheese and exotic veggies sautéed, “egg lunch box” (also chicken/prawn box), other item numbers featuring brown rice, scrambled eggs, boneless fish, cheesy corn spinach mushroom mixes and so on. There is some salad choices, low grilled recipes like wraps and omelettes. On the whole I thought Continental in nature but useful for a bad day when there’s no time to fix something better and desirable at home.
I ordered a few of the custom-designed meals and got some interesting fare like rava dhokla with crushed sprouts and veggies in it, not oily despite the spread of mustard seeds on it), oatmeal porridge (also very filling), one dinner meal came with mashed potato which had cut veggies in it and a brown bread sandwich (the veggies the hubby couldn’t chew so he spat them out, hardly any generous garlic in the plain brown bread sandwich, could have been better), one evening I got some interesting “tomato and spinach soup, ragi upma to be laced with cut banana portion.” Yes, hi protein and agreeable if one is inclined to eat banana in rainy monsoon weather! Then one lunch I ordered their cottage cheese lunch box listed on their menu and got portions of brown rice, paneer gravy, plus very nicely thinly cut mixed salad with wedge of lemon. If you wear dentures the brown rice is chewy, paneer cubes a little hard and tomato gravy over spicy for a senior person’s palate…what to do!
I told Utpal Ghosh, more or less the boss (along with Abhay Karande), if I come and pick up the meals since their “cloud kitchen” is so nearby and bring my own stainless steel dibba, is it all right? He said he would give me a Rs12 discount! I confess I hate piling up these fancy black plastic containers in which the food comes – even if they are finally slipped into designer brown paper bags! Whoever finds a perfect replacement for plastics in the food industry small or big will be doing Mother Earth a huge favour, why favour! It’s what we should do, boycott plastics in food takeaways and also the obnoxious thin stapler pins which I have seen seniors struggle with while unwrapping a food package…sometimes the tiny sharp zinc pins fall in the food and cause an emergency.
REMEMBER seniors may be coping with eye problems in dim lighting at home when they sit down to eat! My advice to the Protein Box young foodie entrepreneurs is to review their meals for seniors citizens at least and introduce an element of Indian food …how about millet phulka or millet kichadi/porridges? The use of beans, pulses – I love “makhana” or popped lotus seeds, and various chutneys (Protein Box does have a to-live-for mint chutney, it’s real honest mint chutney which I wouldn’t mind buying in a larger portion to stock up in the fridge at home for use as I like it).
What else? I will leave you to check out Protein Box one of these days if you’re interested and like me are in search of protein meals. My take is that anyways there’s very little health-consciousness in the roaring multi-cuisine takeaway food business in Goa, Protein Box is a rare enterprise I will give my blessings too — with the hope that it becomes more economical! I guess their preparation overheads and home delivery is just too high…you may order via Swiggy of course. Utpal tells me if their current 30 odd orders daily touch 100 soon he would be happy. I wish them good luck. Doing a health-conscious venture like this one in food cannot be easy. In the meantime if you’re a die-hard vegetarian do review your meals, are they rooted obsessively in refined simple carbohydrates? And hence the many health issues you may be vulnerable to…are you making the most of such vegetarian protein ingredients like our wonderful treasure of millets, beans, pulses, veggies and more, all of which we have in plenty in our traditional agriculture.
It’s not so simple of course. It’s tragic how over time with the industrial food revolution our urban eating have fallen prey to the consumption of excessive refined white breads, confectionaries, fryums and the absolutely dreadful fried Mughlai paratha of Kerala or Malabar cuisine doped with some fat like ghee or oil. In Goa many like the economical thali meal deals in Goan eateries down town – featuring chappati, rice, sabzi, a veggie, a dal, bit chopped salad, chutney, pickle, papad, katori of dahi and/or digestive kokum solkodi/tival, maybe a sweet like “mangane” or “kelyacho halva”some days.
Right or wrong thali meal deals are rated as a perfect combo of food to eat; I find most thali meal deals oiled up, spiced up and puri/chappati undercooked or overcooked, cloyingly thick — not like my Guju rotli or phulka! What I’m saying is that refined white wheat flour and refined white rice seem to be the two mainstays in most meals – the fillers. Wheat is such a mainstay in most meals – be it in the form of flour, maida, dalia or rava (all wheat presentations). Rice is mostly a fluffy white affair.
The switchover to millets has just begun as freshly educated folk are shunning wheat and rice for the half-a-dozen odd millet being promoted back to life this year through various government schemes – irony or not, the poorer classes eat wheat roti and rice in their urban working places in indifferent eateries, or if they are in rented rooms and have women folk who make time to cook early in the morning before pushing off to respective work places.
IN my home I’m being treated to criticism that I’m not protein conscious enough! Mostly rice-dal or kichdi-butter milk kadi or rotli or masala paratha or idli/dosa…I suddenly realized there’s some truth in the criticism and hence the search for a protein-tiffin service which I’ve waxed lyrical about here this week! It is a fact that we are eating just too much carbohydrate food although none of us are diabetic yet, although I sometimes think I must be insulin resistant, whatever that means! It means too much body entrenched in fat or obesity. It adds up to trouble sooner or later. Especially if one is parked before a computer all day long and some more at night…a familiar modern times syndrome.
In such a scenario of a host of health issues I found one rare doctor pointing out we suffer from nutritional deficiencies like the B vitamins and C vitamins and protein – and here we have typical senior citizen syndromes of starvation and malnutrition! We learn to too late in life when it is almost over that just about every damn disease is due to nutrient deficiencies – when food is definitely not medicine in our modern sickly times, it’s more like half-a-dozen prescriptions of medicines pretending to be food!
My concern is what’s happening to senior citizens, my contemporaries (including me), I see how in all our painful misadventures we forget to drink water (so essential for every one of all those trillions of cells in body beautiful), but will ask for a kokum soda or ginger ale or tea or buttermilk – but no water, thank you. All this is just to say it is never too late to make sweeping changes in your present diet if you think this is what is contributing to your poor health – sometimes it is very simple to make the changes. Health meals are all about going low in oil, salt, spices, no sugar, no overcooking and yes, the focus should be on protein for that’s a weakness for so many busy people. Most meatarians don’t have a protein problem, mostly vegetarians have.
And finally, if for reasons from A to Z you’re not able to do your own health-conscious meals – by all means call on Protein Box! I am by and large all thumbs up to such health-conscious services and welcome them, wish them oodles of luck. They just need to be more inventive, organized and trained, that’s all!