Hyderabad: Next time you sit at the breakfast table, what about food made from Millet boxtail, moth beans, sea buckthorn, lily water, sweet potatoes and sorghum? This can be your great grandfather as a daily menu.
A large number of foods, vegetables, and fruits are more than three to four generations ago but faded far from the daily spread, is set to return.
Agricultural scientists here have taken the task of reviving food that provides nutritional support to ancestors.
Scientists at the International Plant Research Institute for Tropical Semi-Arid (ICRISAT) in Hyderabad have prepared a large list of food grains, vegetables, fruits and oil grains which are widely cultivated around 100 to 150 years ago.
Some of them were very popular as far as four to five decades ago.
This list also includes leafy vegetables, fruits and vegetables that quickly disappear from farmers’ priority plants.
According to scientists, tubers such as sweet potatoes and sweet potatoes and pulses such as gram red and Masoor Dal (Lentil) loss of popularity.
And, grains like Sorghum have arrived at the “FORAT FOODS” list.
Even popular potatoes, jackfruit, acidic acid and custard lose their shiny as the preferred food ingredients.
Register, prepared by the ICRISAT team and scientists from other research bodies, is part of the global manifesto which will be submitted to the UN food system summit later this year.
Icrisat scientists, who said this food was not only nutritious but would also help resolve food shortages, holding an international seminar last month, on “Grandpa food” in run-up to the UN KTT.
“Foods that are forgotten have the potential to improve some problems faced by our food system today and will face in the future because the world’s population grows, climate uncertainty becomes more general and diseases related to the diet rise.
It’s time for us to get rid of them from their ‘forget’ tag , “said Joanna Kane-Potaka, Assistant Director General, Icrisat.