THERE IS a quiet, dietary revolution brewing in the lunch boxes of Pune?s health-conscious professionals. But unlike the eponymous, over-125-year-old dabbawallahs of nearby Mumbai, the tiffin boxes here come sealed with a unique ?health cover?. So, you have wholewheat snacks, crispies made from oats, jaggery instead of sugar, chivdas made of brown rice, jowar roti, ragi pancakes, spinach with ginger, amla drink and so on. The grains and spices are organic. There?s no place for sugar and fat here; milk and milk products are a strict no-no.
Started by animal rights activist 51-year-old Anuradha Sawhney, who headed People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals? India operations for nine years before turning ?food evangelist?, the ?vegan dabba service? is cooking up a storm among its customers in Pune, considered the cultural capital of Maharashtra. From just one customer on the first day of the service in November 2012, and nine in the following three days, Sawhney?s highest record has been 110 deliveries a day so far.
Veganism is a type of vegetarian diet that excludes meat, eggs, dairy products and all other animal-derived ingredients. Many vegans also do not eat foods that are processed using animal products, such as refined white sugar and some wines.
?I provide dabbas to stay healthy,? says the versatile author of The Vegan Kitchen: Bollywood Style!, as she packs 35 tiffins for the day. The meals go into insulated boxes with smaller tiffins inside. In January, she sent out 61 tiffins. The cost is R180 to R280 per tiffin, depending upon the location.
When this correspondent visited Sawhney?s residence, the tiffin menu for the day was salad, cabbage with jowar roti, ragi pancakes and spinach with ginger and an amla drink. What?s more, the tiffin boxes are delivered with a 4pm snack tucked in, ranging from the ubiquitous paav bhaji to the humble samosa, but with a small rider?they are made of whole grain and are baked and oil-free.
Sawhney explored the healthy fat-free snacks to help people meet the 4pm challenge when hunger pangs make people nibble at chips and deep-fried snacks at the workplace. Last year, she started healthy desserts, cupcakes, healthy breads made without refined flour, or just 10% of it if need be, and multigrains. ?The fat content, if needed, can come from rice bran or canola, but no hydrogenated fat. And they wouldn?t be made using preservatives. The cakes are much appreciated?vegan cakes are a hit with my customers,? she adds.
Sawhney?s veganism was born out of her own need and experience. High-cholesterol, triglycerides, hypertension and high sugar levels drove her to seek alternatives. It was only when she turned to the right kind of vegan food along with light exercises that her condition was reversed.
It is only after lifestyle diseases strike people that the search for the right kind of food begins, observes Sawhney. ?Shifting to healthy food is especially hard at the workplace. Companies are not bothered about what their employees are fed. There is food floating in oil there,? she adds.
Interestingly, Sawhney?s target customers are non-vegetarians. ?It is not difficult to turn vegan as it is all in the head,? she says. She is researching hard to develop alternatives so that people can enjoy the food and not treat it as a punishment. Apart from writing the oil-free/vegan cookbook, she also runs professional vegan cooking classes and happily hosts guests?who search her out on her Meal Tango website for a vegan meal?at her Uday Baug residence in Pune.
In turn, the guests love the concept and are pleasantly surprised. ?There are misconceptions about vegan food. For those who do not know better, thought vegan food is tasteless and colourless, as someone said to me. But do you know that a vegan meal can be as good as many fine-dining five-course spreads but much healthier?? asks Shashi Khanna, a retired HR professional. Khanna happened to visit Sawhney?s home with her husband and was offered a delicious spread starting with a welcome drink, lollipop starters, a main course and lip-smacking desserts. She wrote about her experience after the visit on the Meal Tango website.
Sawhney has painfully devoted a lot of her time to research and develop dishes without using traditional ingredients. She has just perfected the vegan ice-cream?and she claims one won?t be able to point out any difference. She uses organic soy milk, evaporated cane sugar and lemon juice without any preservative for the unique ice-cream. ?However, the process is time-consuming and raw materials cost more,? she points out.
Talking about the absence of milk and milk products on her menu, Sawhney points out the dismal state of the dairy industry in India and how milk is adulterated. ?Milk is diluted with urea, detergents, blood, puss and hormones. So no dairy products for me, as they are the root cause of all diseases,? she says.
Coming back to her vegan dabba project, Sawhney says she has been supplying to only select destinations in Pune at the moment, but is keen on supplying elsewhere in the city as well, depending upon the response. The only hitch, she feels, is that Pune does not have a dabbawallah system like in Mumbai. ?There is no easy way to deliver these tiffins across the city because public transport is dismal and cannot be relied upon,? she explains. This means creating her own delivery network, but this adds to the costs. This year, however, Sawhney plans to aggressively market her tiffins. The staff is now trained and this has enabled her to scale up. Her website is up and running, and social networking is giving the required push to her venture.
There are people who want to invest, but Sawhney is not sure whether she should take up the offers. ?It is a personal guarantee that I am giving and I do not want to take a chance. I am very passionate about it,? she says. A couple of restaurants have even approached her, either to run a vegan restaurant or supply vegan food to them. Stores are also keen to have her products on their shelves. As a first step in this regard, Sawhney plans to launch snacks under her own brand, Back to Basics. These will be crispy, sweet and savoury oats, energy bars that use dates and jaggery instead of sugar and red rice chivda. Along with chef Adil Sheikh, Sawhney is also readying up a baking unit, where she will have her own wheat and millet breads, besides a range of desserts.
The excuse that there are not many vegan options is not correct, points out Sawhney. ?Today, there are many alternatives available. There is soy milk, almond milk, textured tofu?just use these. Use the same masala as you would in cooking mutton or chicken. Make kala chana kebabs, for instance, with the same spices and it will be hard to tell the difference,? she says, adding: ?It is a big fallacy that milk is the only source of calcium. There are others like nachni, saag and spinach. Idlis and dosas made from millets, barley, jowar and bajra are good options too. Peanut curd or soy curd work just as well, so does chocolate mousse made from tofu.? It?s all in the mind, she concludes.