Some Lessons in Making Sweets and Snacks Healthier | Some lessons on making sweets and snacks healthier Article by N. Raghuraman Pipa News

After spending 60 hours selecting sweets and snacks for a family wedding that started a few months ago, fifteen shops and several tasting sessions, I learned a lesson on how to choose these items not just for special occasions, but for everyday use. Some of its lessons are as follows. Shailesh Kolte, who runs the famous Mahalakshmi sweet shop in Jalgaon, asked me, have you chosen sweets according to the Atata (ATATA) formula? I couldn’t answer for a while. It took me ten minutes to understand the meaning of this acronym. Here A stands for Appearance, i.e. how does the sweets look? In this you have to see its shapes, colors and combinations, as well as whether different colors match each other and if a color is missing. Finally we see the shape of the sweets, whether it has to be cut or eaten whole in the mouth. T stands for texture How does our hand feel when we pick up the sweets? Is it hard, soft, juicy or chewy? Is it appropriate for the person or group we are recruiting for? The next A is aroma, meaning what does it smell like? Want to see if her scent is fruity, floral, smoky, oily or chocolatey? Second one is for t test. I mean how does it taste when tasted? It is very important that the taste of sweets should match its aroma. And the last A is aftertaste. That is, after eating sweets, which taste remains in the mouth for a long time? Some flavors are such that you want to keep them in your mouth forever and not end the fun by eating something else. I also learned from Shailesh that if you want to keep sweets for a long time, avoid taking them under lights in the showcase. UV rays from the bulbs can oxidize them. So ask the salesman to buy the sweets from the back tray instead of the sweets from the counter. You can also check the sugar used in Halavaya. If it contains regular sugar, it contains sulfur. Choose confectioners that use pharmaceutical grade sugar. The same thing applies to snacks. It’s true that foods fried in low-quality oils are bad for you, but snacks fried in oils high in MUFA (monounsaturated fatty acids) are good, say professional chefs. They increase HDA or high density lipoprotein cholesterol, also known as good cholesterol. But, I and my celebrity chef friend Sanjeev Kapoor are of the opinion that no matter how good the omega factor in oil is, if it is consumed in excess, it is harmful. However, frying at high temperatures will destroy the omega vitamins. Indore neuro surgeon Dr. Deepak Kulkarni always advises me to eat very little sweets and fried foods – just to taste, not to fill the stomach. { Funda Asa : Any lesson about the quality of air, water and food is always important if we want to live a healthy life.

N. Raghuraman, Management Guru [[email protected]]