Ramanisblog

Tag: Agriculture and Food

  • What Did Vedic People Eat ? Indus Sarasvati Harappa Food

    I have noticed that despite the multitude of Languages,Dialects and terrain, the food habits of the people of India , especially of the Brahmin Community seems to be uniform.

    I have made the observation on Brahmins because I am familiar with it.

    During my professional Life, I have covered India extensively and had partaken food with the local people in Kashmir,Punjab,Bengal,Odisha, Gujarat, MP, UP , not to mention the southern states.

    Copper plate from Harappa site.jpg Plate with vertical sides. Copper and bronze plates were probably used exclusively by wealthy upper class city dwellers. Discovered in 1938.

    What struck me was the essential food habits are the same, right from offering water first to the householder eating later.

    Major difference is that in the Northern States Wheat is consumed in place of Rice.

    (Rice is consumed more in the Southern States of Kerala, Tamil Nadu,Karnataka, Andhra,and in th East Bengal and Odisha.)

    Yet for Religious ceremonies Rice is being used and the vegetables that are used all over the country for important ceremonies like Sraddha remain the same.

    Sanatana Dharma, being the unifying factor, I looked into what our ancestors of Sanatana Dharma Hinduism ate.

    Here it is.

    ‘

    The Harappans grew lentils and other pulses (peas, chickpeas, green gram, black gram). Their main staples were wheat and barley, which were presumably made into bread and perhaps also cooked with water as a gruel or porridge. In some places, particularly Gujarat, they also cultivated some native millets; possibly broomcorn millet, which may have been introduced from southern Central Asia; and by 2000 BC, if not before, African millets. They fed local wild rice to their animals and probably began to cultivate it, though rice does not become an important crop until Post-Harappan times. The Harappans must have eaten a range of fruit, vegetables and spices : these included a variety of brassica, brown mustard greens, coriander, dates, jujube, walnuts, grapes, figs; many others, such as mango, okra, caper, sugarcane, garlic, turmeric, ginger, cumin and cinnamon, were locally available and probably grown or gathered by the Harappans, but the evidence is lacking. Sesame was grown for oil, and linseed oil may also have been used.

    Meat came mainly from cattle, but the Harappans also kept chickens, buffaloes and some sheep and goats, and hunted a wide range of wildfowl and wild animals such as deer, antelopes and wild boar. They also ate fish and shellfish from the rivers, lakes and the sea; as well as being eaten fresh, many fish were dried or salted – many bones from marine fish such as jack and catfish were found at Harappa, far inland.

    Harappan houses had a kitchen opening from the courtyard, with a hearth or brick-built fireplace. Pottery vessels in a range of sizes were used for cooking; in wealthy households metal vessels were also used.

    Few certain agricultural tools have been found. Flint blades were probably used for harvesting. A ploughed field at Early Harappan Kalibangan shows that the plough was in use by the early 3rd millennium BC; its criss-cross furrows allowed two crops to be raised in the same field, a practice that has continued into modern times.

    Richard Meadow
    We have a good deal of evidence for Harappan subsistence. Staple crops varying by region and time period included wheat, barley, millets, rice, and pulses.

    Food in Indus Valley civilization has been predominantly agrarian in which excavations reveal that the Indus valley people were habituated in consuming Barley which was one of the major cereals of the community. While specimens of Barley have been found in the ruins of Mohenjodaro, it has not been proved whether they used to consume rice or not. However the use of rice must have been known to them. Along with Barley the civilisation also cultivated peas and sesamum along with spices of brassica which is very similar to modern day Rai. While these have been major crops of the Indus Valley civilization, the civilisation also reared buffaloes, goat and sheep which prove that milk was major food article for these people. Along with the vegetarian food items the people of Indus valley civilization also consumed meat that was evident from the fact that meat was included in the offerings made for the dead. With the excavation of number of artefacts like sling balls of clay, copper fish hooks, the arrow heads, the flying knives etc strongly prove that these were required to kill and rear animals and birds which were dressed with these instruments and included in their food items after cooking. Their food items as such included beef, mutton, pork and poultry products, the flesh of Gharial or crocodile, turtle and tortoise, flesh of fresh local fishes from nearby rivers and dried fish from sea coasts. The bones and shells in hard form has been found in and around the houses of the Indus valley civilization.

    References, Citations.

    http://a.harappa.com/content/what-kinds-things-did-indus-people-eat

    http://www.indianetzone.com/52/food_indus_valley_civilization.htm

    Fuller, D. (2002) Fifty Years of Archaeobotanical Studies in India: Laying a Solid Foundation in S. Settar and R. Korisettar (eds.) Indian Archaeology in Retrospect, Volume III. Archaeology and Interactive Disciplines, Publications of the Indian Council for Historical Research. New Dehli: Manohar: Pp. 247-364.

    Fuller, D. (2003) African crops in prehistoric South Asia: a critical review in K. Neumann, A. Butler and S. Kahlheber (eds.) Food, Fuel and Fields. Progress in Africa Archaeobotany, Africa Praehistorica 15. Colonge: Heinrich-Barth-Institut: Pp. 239-271

    Fuller, D. (2003) Indus and Non-Indus Agricultural Traditions: Local Developments and Crop Adoptions on the Indian Peninsula, in S. Weber and W. Belcher (eds.) Indus Ethnobiology: New Perspectives from the Field. Lexington Books, Lanham, Maryland: Chapter 10.

    Fuller, D. Q (2005). “Ceramics, seeds and culinary change in prehistoric India.” Antiquity 79 (306): 761-777.

    Fuller, D. Q and E. L. Harvey (2006). “The Archaeobotany of Indian Pulses: identification, processing and evidence for cultivation.” Environmental Archaeology 11(2): 219-246.

    Fuller, D. Q (2006). “Agricultural Origins and Frontiers in South Asia: A Working Synthesis.” Journal of World Prehistory 20: 1-86

    For animals, the domesticates humped cattle, sheep, goat, and perhaps water buffalo were of principle importance for both primary (after death) and secondary (before death) products. See:

    Meadow, R.H. and A.K. Patel (2003) Prehistoric pastoralism in northwestern South Asia from the Neolithic through the Harappan Period. In S. Weber and W. Belcher, eds., Indus Ethnobiology: New Perspectives from the Field. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books (Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group), pp. 65-93.

    Both wild animal and wild plant resources continued to be important including fish, molluscs, hunted animals, and various wild plants for fodder, food, and medicines. Linen, cotton, and wool were important resources for textile manufacture, and silk was also used., coming from wild silk moths. For the last, see:

    Good, Irene, J.M Kenoyer and R.H. Meadow (2009) “New evidence for early silk in the Indus Civilization.” Archaeometry 51: 457-466.

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  • Eat Fruits and Vegetables for Better Vision

    ScienceDaily (Dec. 19, 2009) — Carotenoids, found in green leafy vegetables and colored fruits, have been found to increase visual performance and may prevent age-related eye diseases, according to a study in the Journal of Food Science, published by the Institute of Food Technologists.

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    Authors from the University of Georgia compiled the results of multiple studies on the effects of the carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin on visual performance. These carotenoids play an important role in human vision, including a positive impact on the retina.
    After reviewing the various studies, the authors concluded that macular pigments, such as lutein and zeaxanthin do have an effect on visual performance. Lutein and zeaxanthin can reduce disability and discomfort from glare, enhance contrast, and reduce photostress recovery times. They can also reduce glare from light absorption and increase the visual range.
    Lead author Dr. Billy R. Hammond Jr. noted that the research of the effects of lutein and zeazanthin are important because “it is clear that they could potentially improve vision through biological means. For example, a study conducted in 2008 suggests that the pigments protect the retina and lens and perhaps even help prevent age-related eye diseases such as macular degeneration and cataract.”
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091218125804.htm

  • When You Eat May Be Just as Vital to Your Health as What You Eat.

    Breakfast-not later than 7 am,Lunch-not later than 1 pm,Dinner-not later than 10 pm.
    Breakfast must be heavy;avoid drinking water during meals.Fill the stomach half part,1/4 water,leave 1/4 empty.Avoid oil in breakfast.
    Lunch must have leafy vegetables,nothing should be deep fried,oil to be used minimally,use spice rarely,drink butter milk,minimal use of meat and root vegetables.
    Dinner-avoid milk products and curds and desserts like ice cream.
    Do not engage in conversation while eating.( Source;Indian food habits as per Smriti)
    Take fruits in empty stomach.
    ScienceDaily (Nov. 26, 2009) — When you eat may be just as vital to your health as what you eat, found researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Their experiments in mice revealed that the daily waxing and waning of thousands of genes in the liver — the body’s metabolic clearinghouse — is mostly controlled by food intake and not by the body’s circadian clock as conventional wisdom had it.
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    “If feeding time determines the activity of a large number of genes completely independent of the circadian clock, when you eat and fast each day will have a huge impact on your metabolism,” says the study’s leader Satchidananda (Satchin) Panda, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Regulatory Biology Laboratory.
    The Salk researchers’ findings, which will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could explain why shift workers are unusually prone to metabolic syndrome, diabetes, high cholesterol levels and obesity.
    “We believe that it is not shift work per se that wreaks havoc with the body’s metabolism but changing shifts and weekends, when workers switch back to a regular day-night cycle,” says Panda.
    In mammals, the circadian timing system is composed of a central circadian clock in the brain and subsidiary oscillators in most peripheral tissues. The master clock in the brain is set by light and determines the overall diurnal or nocturnal preference of an animal, including sleep-wake cycles and feeding behavior. The clocks in peripheral organs are largely insensitive to changes in the light regime. Instead, their phase and amplitude are affected by many factors including feeding time.
    The clocks themselves keep time through the fall and rise of gene activity on a roughly 24-hour schedule that anticipates environmental changes and adapts many of the body’s physiological function to the appropriate time of day.
    “The liver oscillator in particular helps the organism to adapt to a daily pattern of food availability by temporally tuning the activity of thousands of genes regulating metabolism and physiology,” says Panda. “This regulation is very important, since the absence of a robust circadian clock predisposes the organism to various metabolic dysfunctions and diseases.”
    Despite its importance, it wasn’t clear whether the circadian rhythms in hepatic transcription were solely controlled by the liver clock in anticipation of food or responded to actual food intake.
    To investigate how much influence rhythmic food intake exerts over the hepatic circadian oscillator, graduate student and first author Christopher Vollmers put normal and clock-deficient mice on strictly controlled feeding and fasting schedules while monitoring gene expression across the whole genome.
    He found that putting mice on a strict 8-hour feeding/16-hour fasting schedule restored the circadian transcription pattern of most metabolic genes in the liver of mice without a circadian clock. Conversely, during prolonged fasting, only a small subset of genes continued to be transcribed in a circadian pattern even with a functional circadian clock present.
    “Food-induced transcription functions like a metabolic sand timer that runs for 24 hours and is continually reset by the feeding schedule while the central circadian clock is driven by self-sustaining rhythms that help us anticipate food, based on our usual eating schedule,” says Vollmers. “But in the real world we don’t eat at the same time every day and it makes perfect sense to increase the activity of metabolic genes when you need them the most.”
    For example, genes that encode enzymes needed to break down sugars rise immediately after a meal, while the activity of genes encoding enzymes needed to break down fat is highest when we fast. Consequently a clearly defined daily feeding schedule puts the enzymes of metabolism in shift work and optimizes burning of sugar and fat.
    “Our study represents a seminal shift in how we think about circadian cycles,” says Panda. “The circadian clock is no longer the sole driver of rhythms in gene function, instead the phase and amplitude of rhythmic gene function in the liver is determined by feeding and fasting periods — the more defined they are, the more robust the oscillations become.”
    While the importance of robust metabolic rhythms for our health has been demonstrated by shift workers’ increased risk of developing metabolic syndrome, the underlying molecular reasons are still unclear. Panda speculates that the oscillations serve one big purpose: to separate incompatible processes, such as the generation of DNA-damaging reactive oxygen species and DNA replication.
    Panda, for one, has stopped eating between 8 pm and 8 am and says he feels great. “I even lost weight, although I eat whatever I want during the day,” he says.
    Researchers who also contributed the work include postdoctoral researcher Luciano DiTacchio, Ph.D., graduate students Sandhyarani Pulivarthy and Shubhrox Gill, as well as research assistant Hiep Le, all in the Regulatory Biology Laboratory.
    The work was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health and the Pew Scholars
    Story Source:
    Adapted from materials provided by Salk Institute.
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091125094321.htm