Wheata Bread!

One of the more interesting organizations who I spoke with while down in Kerela was Health Action by People. The organization is working against the scourges of diseases of the affluent. Through a number of sub-organizations, HAP works at addressing primarily hypertension, diabetes, and heart troubles. Though I learned about lots of their range of activities, there is one project which has been of great interest to me. Aiming to reduce major health troubles HAP has started a bread company. How odd.

While much of what I have been studying has been the indiscriminate introduction of bread products by private companies to try to make a quick buck in developing nations, this is a situation where a non-profit is actively supporting the destruction of indigenous diet with hopes of improving health and the local economy. Wheata is the brainchild of an enthusiastic though, at the time I met him at least, discouraged German man affectionately called “Dr. Karl.” He studied biochemistry but got interested in public health, and somehow ended up in Kerala a couple of year back. While talking with some baker friend of his from Germany he struck upon the idea to promote a healthy change in food consumption through the introduction of whole wheat bread to the region. Diabetes is a major problem in Kerala, the state has six times the rate of the disease as the UK and three times the absolute number of persons diagnosed with the disease, and this just might help.

Leavened bread is being eaten in India, mainly in the form of white bread for breakfast. Toast caught on at some point and now people can't get enough of it. Lke the traditional breakfast food of Kerala appum and iddlyapum (rice flour breads and noodles eaten with vegetable or fish curries), white bread has a low glycemic index. Food with low glycemic indexes aggravate diabetes, whereas foods with higher glycemic indexes, like whole wheat bread, help control blood sugar levels. So, working to fights against the scourge of packaged white bread Dr. Karl started making whole wheat bread. On top of that, HAP is in the process of developing a franchising scheme which would help to spread the bread across the state and allow small businessmen to make a tidy profit peddling the stuff. Priced at just two rupees above white bread, using organic wheat imported from Punjab, no stabilizers, emulsifiers, or preservatives, the bread should be flying off the shelf, right?

Erm... no. Cause people don't like it. Everyone thinks that the whole wheat bread is too dense, too stiff, and just not sweet enough. Eating the bread myself, I must admit it is a bit bland, but I would take it over the store bought white bread any day. It's actually got texture, a crust, and some authentic flavour, though mellow. With a culture that leavened bread isn't a part of, only the most spongy and palatable product survives. So, stuck in a situation where Dr. Karl and Co are trying to convince people to change what they are eating, it is towards an even more radically different diet rather than a more traditional one that they are fighting. It will be interesting to see if the project becomes viable and if it is actually able to make a difference in the eating habits, and health, of Keralans. Until then, I expect that a tragic amount of German whole wheat bread is going to mold.