A new AI initiative is decolonising your plate one recipe at a time

Did you know khichadi once had way more dal than it did rice After the British colonised India the dish went through a makeover but not with the intention of making it better ldquoColonial agricultural policy pushed pulse cultivation out to marginal lands to make room for cash crops driving up the cost of dal relative to grain Over time the ratio flipped until khichadi became mostly polished rice with a token hand of mungrdquo explains Kranti Cookbook a new initiative that wants to decolonise your plateVishal NicholasldquoFood is oral historyrdquo says Vishal Nicholas chief creative officer of Glassbox mdash the advertising agency behind the initiative ldquoIn fact there are books that record our food history And yet we have completely forgotten about itrdquoNicholas and team found around 10 books from the eighth to the 16th century mdash right before the arrival of the British in the early 17th century mdash that record the recipes that shaped India before the British could alter them These books span Sanskrit Tamil Kannada vedic languages and even Farsi The titles are Ksemakuthala Lokopakara Manasollasa Bhojanakuthala Susruta Samhita Pakadarpana Ni matnamaiNasir Shah Spa sastr Bhavaprakasa and Caraka SamhitaNicholas says that colonisation forever altered the way India ate ldquoThere has been devolution We have regressed The grains we had earlier were a lot healthier Colonial crop policy changed what farmers could grow The method is still the same but the ingredients have changedrdquo Nicholas says ldquoThe British pushed towards cash crops They also wanted their mills to run So they forced white polished ricerdquoAfter colonisation the protein fibre and calcium content of khichadi went down glycaemic load and fat content went up PICISTOCKAnd so rice became the primary ingredient in khichadi Its protein fibre and calcium content went down glycaemic load and fat content went up after colonisation Kranti Cookbookrsquos AI bot will deliver all this information to you when you ask it for a recipe how it originated how colonisation changed its health value how colonial policy affected the farming of the dishrsquos ingredients and of course the recipe ldquoA food that is meant to soothe you in sickness has become much more unhealthy after colonisationrdquo Nicholas sighsldquoThe idea the Glassbox team had is to have a onestop interactive resource that brings back our foodrdquo Nicholas says The chatbot can converse in English Hindi Bengali Marathi Telugu Tamil Gujarati and KannadaDuring the journey to create Kranti Cookbook Nicholas found many interesting facts about Indian food Like how tomatoes and chili are not indigenous ingredients ldquoNow theyrsquore the basis of almost every curry but it wasnrsquot always like that Indians used pepper to spice food instead of chilli mdash specifically pippali pepper which is known for its medicinal properties It would make your immunity stronger and safeguard you in changing seasonsrdquoIn fact certain etymological theories suggest that the word curry itself mdash which exists in pretty much every culture mdash comes from the Tamil word for black pepper karimulagu Black pepper was the primary ingredient that gave curry its distinctive spicy taste ldquoBut karimulagu wasnrsquot too easy for the British to sayrdquo Nicholas jokesNow theyrsquove introduced a new feature where users can add their own ancestral recipes ldquoAnd then we verify the recipe All of them have to have existed before colonisation For example if you add the recipe for pav bhaji it wonrsquot accept it Because pav bhaji was invented in the 1970srdquo Nicholas says So is the case for vada pav invented outside Dadar station in 1966 dal makhni or butter chicken invented in the late 1940s by Moti Mahal restaurant in Delhi It seems that all of this writerrsquos favs were invented postcolonialism SighThe choice to make Kranti Cookbook an AI bot was a deliberate one ldquoWe could have even made just a website but we realised that in the world that we live today it needs to be interactiverdquo Nicholas says ldquoBut considering that we at Glassbox work on AI with our clients on a regular basis wersquore aware about AI ethics and wersquove limited it The AI bot has been fed only the 10 books we used for research It can only source information from there So if you ask it lsquoWhat is World War IIrsquo It will say lsquoIrsquom sorry I donrsquot knowrsquo because it doesnrsquot have the resources to get that informationrdquoKranti Cookbook ultimately found partnership in Two Brothers India Farms a Punebased farming company that sells organic foods ldquoIt hasnrsquot been an easy journey first in sourcing these books then translating them one by one It is a painstaking endeavour and an expensive one Two Brothers has really helped us in that sense Theyrsquove poured in money send brochures to their customers with information on Kranti Cookbookrdquo Nicholas saysldquoThe aim isnrsquot to go back in time Wersquore not saying that modern food is bad and we should all go back to eating only traditional food But rather to start a movement that reminds India of her rich culinary heritage and revive the traditonal ingredients and preparation styles that were lost to colonialism It was very important for us to not alienate any food groups but just offer some informationrdquo Nicholas signs offLog on to kranticookbookcom to try