“Homemade Food is Always Healthy”: The Ambivalence of a Traditionalisation of Diets in Bengaluru

Abstract

In India and elsewhere, traditional diets are praised for their ostensibly positive impacts on consumer’s health and environmental sustainability. Promoting their perpetuation, or in some cases rediscovery, is supposed to prevent people’s alienation from locally sourced food. However, “traditional diet” is also a vague concept that does not particularly address the aims mentioned above. In this contribution, we will discuss the possible affordances of traditional diets for health and sustainability, while at the same time questioning the application of the term tradition. Recent developments in the rural–urban interface of the South Indian megacity Bengaluru are presented as a case study. We argue that some aspects of Bengaluru’s traditional diets, for example the high consumption of whole grains such as finger millet, are indeed conducive to health and sustainability. However, the concept of “traditional diet” is prone to fallacies about the capacities of some traditional dishes, while the hegemony over the definition of what is traditional provides the basis to exclude certain groups based on their food practices.