Chennai: Bring back attention to tradition food

Chennai: "Traditional food bucket in Tamil Nadu has long history which is not changed much and most of our traditional foods are from produce of the land. Traditional food is safe, medicinal and contains wisdom of 1,000 years" says Shunchonngam Jatak Chiru, Principal Secretary / Commissioner, Directorate of Agriculture Marketing and Agri Business, Government of Tamil Nadu.

Inaugurating the conference on Traditional Foods organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) as part of Foodpro 2019 here on Sunday, he called for efforts to bring back the attention of consumers to traditional foods and also maintain the demand, supply and logistics chain of traditional food products.

"Strategic research on traditional food has to be done immediately or else we will lose out to the other countries," Chiru said. He also called upon the farmers to look at relevant technology and marketing strategy to prosper. For its part, the government would invest in infrastructure like cold storage and food parks to improve the food production, he said.

Srinivas Reddy, Member, Foodpro 2019 Steering Committee and Senior General Manager, Blue Star Ltd said "Traditional foods play an important role in our
local identity, consumer behaviour and transitional heritage for future generations. The increase in demand for traditional foods would help growth of small and medium enterprises."

As India carries much culture and ecological differences and it has wide range of traditional products which needs to be registered in Geographical Indications to establish the trust and to become brands in the market, he suggested.

A. D. Padmasingh Isaac, Conference Chairman & CMD, Aachi Group of Companies said, "Food culture in India is very unique as we have invented food as medicine very long ago. Traditional food is healthy and rich in nutrition."