Are You Skipping Breakfast?

So you had a late night yesterday – there was a deadline to be met, there was a friend’s party, you had to study for your exam, the baby did not let you sleep well – the reasons could be endless. Or you just slept in this morning even if yesterday wasn’t a late night. When you woke up, you realized that there was a high risk of you running late for work or college. And what was your first instinct? Let me skip breakfast and grab something to eat later!

It cannot be reiterated enough how important a meal the breakfast is. And yet it is so easy to skip it. It is the one meal that can get our day started on an energetic note and set the pace for the whole day. It also helps maintain blood sugar levels better rather than create spikes due to rather long gaps between dinner and the next meal. And we are sure as a meal it would find more favour among people if it were well known that having breakfast and the right one can greatly help in weight management! Needless to say, skipping breakfast isn’t the best of ideas from the point of view of our bodily wear and tear.

And what better way to have breakfast than to make it healthy and loaded with nature’s goodness. An organic breakfast not only brings you the benefits that come with having breakfast in the first place, but also ensures that you are not loading your body with toxins the first thing in the morning.

And no, it does not have to be the same old fruits and juice every single day for you to enjoy an organic breakfast! Organic products like Poha (Beaten Rice), Daliya (Broken Wheat) and Sooji/Rava (Semolina) let you enjoy your favourite breakfast recipes in the organic form and give you the best of all worlds. If this prospect of a great organic breakfast to kick start your day excites you, ProNature has your favourite breakfast foods available in the organic form for you to enjoy! We invite you to try them out and let us know your thoughts in the comments section…

Bon Apetit and Bon Jour!

A Testimony From The Father Of The Green Revolution

In the past 5 or 6 odd years, you must have definitely heard of the cases of farmers running into heavy debts and being driven to resort to extreme measure like even suicide after being unable to get out of debt. The government has been grappling with this problem and thinking of how to deal with it effectively. And much has been written or said about it.

One solution to the problem involves seeing the wisdom in our traditional ways of farming, and changing the farmer’s situation by going back to nature to seek help. As always, nature hasn’t turned down this request and been generous enough to help.

As part of an experiment called Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA) launched by Ministry of Rural Development in Andhra Pradesh, traditional farming practices are being revived and re-implemented to see if they are relevant even today. For example, farmers use Ghanajivaamrit, a mixture of cow dung, cow urine, jaggery, gram flour as fertilizer and microbes-rich clay for farming. That brings the cost down and also enriches the soil that has degraded over many years through the use and overuse of pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

Image Credit: http://www.organic-europe.net

The CMSA model involves a community approach to agriculture and an effort to make agriculture include the social aspect in addition to the economic aspect of the farmer’s life. Symbiosis with nature is employed to reduce artificial costs; for instance, by understanding the natural bug/pest lifecycle, the need for pesticides is minimized since the crops are planned accordingly.

And it is no surprise that the profit earned per hectare has, indeed, gone up dramatically after these practices were put to use. In fact, the father of the Green Revolution, MS Swaminathan, calls this next era and this awareness the Evergreen Revolution! And there we have the most authentic testimony one can get for what ProNature has always believed in – Back To Nature is the most effective way Back To The Future.

Read the original Forbes article on the topic at this link.

Have Your Cake And Eat It Too, With Organic Terrace Gardening

Anyone with a green thumb knows the joy of growing and seeing the fruits of one’s labour blossom abundantly. In fact, in the last post, ProNature talked about some international celebrities who have their own organic garden! So how would you like it if you got to experience the same joy and at the same time, eat food prepared from pesticide-free homegrown healthy vegetables? All of it is possible now with the rise of Organic Terrace Gardening.

If your mind is already racing to see how much area it would require and whether you have the space to even cultivate such a garden, let us tell you that you can start with as little as one or two pots. Once you feel comfortable with growing your own veggies and realize how easy it is, you can always grow your garden as much as you want. The only limitation is your interest and your time.

Image Credit: http://www.countryfarm-lifestyles.com

If you’re already into gardening and enjoy it, then this is just the next step for you and you will find it very easy. But even if you don’t have too much experience in gardening, workshops are regularly conducted to educate people about Organic Terrace Gardening, it’s ease and benefits. In fact, recently the National Seminar on Organic Terrace Gardening concluded in Bangalore and saw people from all over India come together to share their experience and learn more. For starters, Dr. BN Vishwanath’s book ‘A Handbook Of Organic Terrace Gardening’ is a good guide too.

To start with, you can try plants like mint, coriander etc which are primarily used for garnishing and flavouring. The additional advantage of this is that leafy vegetables grow faster and we’re sure that the feeling you’ll get on seeing the plants thrive and by using then in your kitchen will only encourage you to grow more plants. So you can start with leafy vegetables, chillies etc. and move on to other vegetables in due course of time.

Image Credit: http://smitha-myviewsonlife.blogspot.com

Maintaining such a garden also isn’t too difficult with it being possible to make strong organic anti-pest solutions right in your house, for example by combining Neem, tobacco, onion, garlic and chilli. If you’re using your terrace and not your backyard, only your roof needs to be free from seepages and leakages. And make sure that your plants get enough sunlight. That’s about it.

Once you start, you’ll realize how easy it is to grow your own vegetables that are free from any pesticides and packed with the pure goodness of nature. It will also make your home greener, adding a feel-good factor and also purifying the air around. Not to speak of the fact that you won’t have to run to the market everytime you run out of your favourite veggies but only run to your garden.

So the next time you cook, you can have your cake and eat it too by taking credit for not only the well-cooked recipe but also the well-grown, healthy, pesticide-free vegetables. Sounds like a win-win situation to us!