Anushruti RK is a food writer, photographer, recipe creator, and nutrition advisor based in Mumbai. She specialises in Ayurvedic and Sattvic food cooking and has a food blog based on these principles named DivineTaste. She pursued a degree in Chemistry and Management before taking up cooking and food blogging. This year, at m.i.l.a.p, she gave a talk on ‘Digi-Cookery: Gastronomy in the Virtual World’ along with Thirugnanasambantham K. The MIT Post got an opportunity to speak with her about her foray into the world of food blogging as well as Ayurvedic and Sattvic food cooking principles.

You pursued a degree in chemistry and then management, how did you end up building a career as a food blogger?

When I moved to Mumbai in 2003, I had the opportunity to get into a corporate career. I had specialised in quality management. At that time, Mumbai was new to me, and I had a kitchen to myself. It was like a melting pot of cultures. I had access to so many ingredients. I actually started cooking because I was very inspired by the taste a few ingredients could produce, and I wanted to take that taste outside my kitchen to the people. That is what inspired me to become a food blogger.

Unhealthy food habits are prevalent nowadays, especially in metropolitan cities and even in younger generations. Where do you think this stems from, and how can we curb it?

In my family, my ancestors have been cooking these kinds of food (Ayurvedic and Sattvic food) from generations, and that was an inspiration. At the same time, when I started cooking, I became very conscious of what goes into the food that I eat and the food that my family eats. I had done a course in Ayurveda nutrition and found that ayurvedic principles made a lot of sense. To curb fast food is a difficult thing—the fast-food industry is growing at a rate of 40% annually. People like fast food for a lot of reasons—fast food is cheap, readily available, and it’s tasty. But at the same time, it’s not good for your health, and it leads to a lot of lifestyle diseases. So if someone wants to be healthy, eating fast food definitely needs to be restricted.

Do you feel Indian food bloggers have more content to work with than their western counterparts, seeing as there are countless local cuisines here?

Absolutely. In India, you take any state, the way you make a recipe changes from place to place, for example, take Karnataka. The way you make Sambhar in Udupi will be different when you go a few kilometres and go to Dharwad. The way sambhar is made here is completely different than sambhar in Udupi. At the same time, we have a plethora of ingredients to work with, so many local ingredients to explore and so many cuisines to talk about. We need to delve into our ancient wisdom to find the best recipe book.

What do you feel is the most rewarding part of being a food blogger and what is the process involved in that?

Apps are good as far as convenience is concerned. But when it comes to food, if you are really committed towards your diet, you have to connect with your food and that will only happen when you cook yourself. It all melts down to organising yourself and finding time slots when you can actually cook. Yes, that would be a good option to make these type of cuisines available on food delivery apps, and popular restaurants and hotels. Still, the best way would be to make it yourself because when you cook yourself, you get to know exactly what’s going into your food. When someone else is making your food, they claim that it’s good. You don’t know what they are doing there, but when you cook yourself you know exactly what is going into your food and that is very important.

I can’t say it is a myth, that depends on who you are approaching. But then in today’s time, there is a lot of information available on the Internet. In olden times, your grandmother or your mother decided what is cooked at home based on individual family members’ preferences, and availability of those ingredients. But in today’s time, food delivery apps are there, so much information in terms of Google and Facebook telling you what to eat and what not to eat, and that is not advisable because we don’t know the origin or the source. I want to quote Michael Pollan, one of the greatest food writers of the century who said, “Eat what your grandmother ate and you will be good to go, and you will be healthy”. The science behind this is if you eat what your ancestors ate, your genes are adapted to that kind of food. Your body can digest that food, and that will lead to good health. Eating what your ancestors ate, cooking your traditional meals, eating what is available locally, all these things go a long way in contributing to your health.

The digital world has pros and cons. Talking about the advantages—when you find someone who is reliable in terms of recipes, then you have access to so much of information, to food from different parts of the world, different religions, cultures, etc. All this goes a long way in giving you the information in terms of food and also cooking the food, you know what’s going into it, and you also have the aspect of making that recipe your own by giving your own twists. So yes, definitely the digital world has shrunk our world because sitting at one place you can access recipes from around the world, from different kitchens of the world and vice versa. Someone like me who wants to publish the recipe can make it accessible to people from around the world.