Make your skin glow

We all agree that Indian kitchens are unique. Not only because of the wide variety of ingredients but if you go back to the permutation combination classes the sheer number of dishes that you can whip out because of these ingredients are astounding. But the beauty of the Indian kitchen is not limited to just satisfying your taste buds. They are also great for your daily skin care requirements.

Coming to think of it our grandmothers never had the luxury of a parlour, yet their skin glowed (part of it has to be attributed to the physical exercise they got doing home chores alone). But as a kid I have sneaked on my Granny applying whatever she was cooking with on her face (much to the amazement of my grandfather of course). 

Today we are bombarded with hundreds of products that promise miracles. So here I am rephrasing the questions Olay has been asking lately, “Do we need to smear chemicals on our face for a healthy and glowing skin?”

The latest in the cosmetic industry

Not really. Explore the corners of your kitchen and you will see that:
  1. A paste made with besan, milk and ground almonds is the best face scrub you could find
  2. Chandan with a little bit of camphor will fix pimples more naturally
  3. Rubbing tomato skin on your face makes it glow
  4. Applying a paste of neem leaves cleans and disinfects your face
  5. Massaging your skin with olive oil will keep it supple
  6. Massaging your knuckles with coconut oil will keep them from drying and hardening to a brown patch

In addition to all of the above, maintain a good diet and a do a little exercise everyday, even simple walking helps!

Our Brand Values

If you’ve noticed, we recently changed our look to align better with our brand principles and brand values and are here for you with renewed resolve to bring you closer to nature. And we think this is a good time to let you in on what our brand really stands for and how.

For any brand, its values are its essence. The foundation pillars upon which the brand is built and grows. If the brand were a person, its values really are the personality traits that we identify any person with. They determine what direction the brand may take and what it might become as it grows. And that is why brand values are crucial to any brand at any stage of its lifecycle. 

So what are ProNature’s brand values? They are:

• Integrity
• Passion
• Trust
• Friendly
• Competent
• Caring
• Inspiring

ProNature is completely transparent in all its operations and is quite open when it comes to sharing operational data. All this derives directly from ProNature’s belief in Integrity.

Easy access to organic food is one of ProNature’s highest priorities and it is our Passion for organic food and health that makes us believe that organic food must be easily available everywhere…not just is select ‘gourmet stores’ and large supermarkets. And we constantly strive to achieve this access.

ProNature does not offer even a single product that is not certified organic. None of the products are sold as ‘Natural’ or ‘Made with organic ingredients’. We would like to be a brand that can be Trusted to deliver the highest quality of products by our patrons, with eyes closed.  

We are a Friendly brand to the extent of patrons having a good amount of access to the team members including the founders. We are happy to reach out to people and to let them reach out to us so we can collectively take the cause of an organic lifestyle forward. 

All of ProNature’s products are certified by IMO Control, an internationally recognized Switzerland-based certification body. That shows just how Competent ProNature is.

ProNature has the interests of not only its patrons but its own members as well at heart. For instance, in times of political unrest in one of the cities where our sales team operates, no team member was allowed to venture out until the situation was absolutely safe. We are a Caring brand that takes care to protect the interests of anyone who is associated with us, be it consumers or team members.

With all efforts that involve Depth Distribution Strategy for easy availability of organic food, ProNature aims to be an Inspiring brand that can act as a messenger to spread awareness about organic food and an organic lifestyle among people. We aim to share as much knowledge and information as we can about this wholesome consumer concept that is the organic lifestyle and inspire people to adopt this lifestyle. Because this is about each of us, about our planet and about our future generations.

Turning Over A New Leaf

Have you seen a Neem tree? If you’ve lived in India for a while chances are that you have and more than once. The Neem tree is native to India and this fact reflects in its scientific name – Azadirachta Indica – meaning the free tree of India. It is phenomenal how this tree disperses its virtues to one and all, thus rightly earning its name, and let’s everyone enjoy the gift of purity and natural goodness, an example worth emulating.

So that’s what we are doing. Emulating this virtuous tree and seeking to disperse nature’s bounty to one and all. And not unlike the Neem tree’s young leaves that change colour as they mature, we are changing. We are turning over a new leaf ourselves.

In their own lifecycles, all brands mature and undergo a process of strengthening their foundations, their principles and their philosophy. They learn from their diverse consumer base and both evolve as per the other’s characteristics – the brand and its consumers. ProNature has reached that stage when it feels the need for a new identity that reflects this strengthened vision and consumer base. It is like a growing Neem tree with stronger roots and ready to spread its branches in new directions. And it is changing.

The immediate change you will notice is literally us turning over a new leaf in our logo…from brown to green like the leaves of the Neem. The new logo is also a reflection of our commitment and beliefs – a commitment to a healthier, happier life and concern for the planet. Like the Neem, we want to make nature’s goodness easily available to all for adoption as the way of life. And the logo denotes it all with its select colouring and typeface.

ProNature’s new logo uses the colours Orange, White, Green and Brown. These colours come together in the form of symbols in the logo that has a reversed out letter P that is held by a brown box the counter space of the letter P has a leaf that harmoniously blends in. The logo includes the stamp 100% Organic.

The brown box stands for Mother Earth and the environment. The letter P blends in to symbolize that the brand exists in symbiosis with Mother Earth. The leaf inside the P symbolizes the fact that nature harmoniously co-exists within ProNature and is the very essence of ProNature. The stamp reiterates ProNature’s USP of being different from other organic brands; we sell only pure organic products under this umbrella and absolutely none that are non-organic.

The colours by themselves communicate a vital part each of ProNature’s message. The Orange represents Vibrancy and Energy. It symbolizes our commitment to health. The White represents Purity, Cleanliness and Innocence. It showcases our commitment to be honest to the farmers and the consumers. The Green stands for life, growth, renewal, health and the environment. It is a sign of the environment being one of our highest priorities. The Brown denotes wholesomeness, earthiness, steadfastness, simplicity, friendliness, dependability and health. It denotes the foundation of life on Earth – the soil.

The assertive, friendly and confident Gotham typeface in the logo communicates ProNature’s brand values of Integrity, Trust, Friendliness, Care and Inspiration in an honest tone. 

Together, this combination of elements is the new identity of ProNature. It is our effort to reiterate our philosophies by aligning our identity with them. It is a symbolic representation of our commitment to you and to nature, to bring you together. And we hope that with this change we have become more potent in helping you get closer to nature…just like the Neem tree.

Enabling Healthier Choices For You

In our earlier posts and our story, we have shared with you the thoughts that went into starting ProNature and one of those thoughts was to make organic food easily available to the domestic consumers so that it can be adopted as the food of choice. We hope that through our updates we have been able to generate awareness about how organic food is better for your health, for the environment and for the society. And it remains our constant endeavour to reach you better on your neighbourhoods so as to allow your shopping to remain as convenient as ever while you make healthier choices for your family. 

Organic food is gradually opening up and becoming available more and more easily in India today. Most neighbourhood supermarkets stock organic food these days following rising levels of consumer awareness. This is equally a product of the efforts of certain conscientious individuals who have taken it upon themselves to make organic products accessible to the masses, be it food or otherwise. 

Image Credit: 2stepdiet.org

As regards ProNature, we are available in the following cities and stores to facilitate your shopping convenience:

Bangalore:

• Reliance Fresh
• Food Bazaar
• Smart retail
• Safal fresh
• Namdhari’s
• TOTAL Mall
• Mother Earth
• Fresh @
• SPAR
• Spencer’s Hypers
• MK Retail
• Nilgiri’s
• Many other stand-alone supermarkets

Hyderabad:

• Reliance Fresh
• Food Bazaar
• SPAR
• Other stand-alone supermarkets

Chennai:

• Fresh @
• Many Stand-alone supermarkets

We are also available in Pondicherry and Coimbatore. We close this post with the hope that we all soon see that day when availability and accessibility of organic food will no more be a hurdle in the way of a healthier lifestyle for all. Amen!

Is Your Favourite Food On The List?

It is the age of globalization that we live in. Where earlier we could enjoy only food varieties native to our land, today we can sample food from so many other continents and climates! It is fascinating how our taste buds have found a whole new world for themselves. 

It does bode us well, though, to be more aware as new worlds open up to us. Here are the top food items whose samples were found to have the most pesticide content among all. Maybe it’s the way they assimilate what they absorb, maybe their skins are thinner, but for some reason, these foods retain higher percentages of chemicals from pesticides when compared to others.

Food Item	Percentage of Samples Found To Contain Pesticides
Celery	94.5
Pears	94.4
Peaches	93.7
Apples	91
Cherries	91
Strawberries	90
Imported Grapes	86
Spinach	83.4
Potatoes	79.3
Bell Peppers	68
Red Raspberries	59

If your favourite food is on the list above, ProNature suggests switching to an organic variety of it so that you can enjoy the flavour without worrying about high pesticide content.

Taste the world in a healthy way. Go organic today!

Images Credits: http://www.fishpondinfo.com, http://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk, http://www.ireallylikefood.com, http://www.honeybell.com, http://www.bestfruitnow.com, http://www.statesymbolsusa.org, http://ayeshahaq.wordpress.com, http://www.averagebetty.com, http://home.howstuffworks.com, http://garciasfamouspizza.com, http://www.twincityfrozenfoods.com

Zen And The Art Of Machine Maintenance

A majority of us own some sort of a vehicle or another and we all know that vehicles need repair and maintenance. And for that reason, every once in a while, we tend to give our vehicles away for a servicing, to be overhauled and for the wear-and-tear to be compensated for.

There are other machines in the house that need such repair and maintenance, like various electrical and electronic items. And then there is the most important machine in the house – our body. 

The human body, in all its complexity, is no different from a machine that undergoes wear-and-tear with time and all the activities that it has to perform. There are organs and muscles whose tissue needs repair. The joints in the body need to be lubricated in their own way. As a function, the incoming food needs to be digested, absorbed and the remnants excreted. And enzymes are required for this process. Blood and antibodies need to be replenished (RBCs and WBCs). There are so many functions that this single body performs that it naturally needs its own form of reinforcement, replenishment and repair on a regular basis. And the one component of our diet that is necessary for all these functions to be performed efficiently is Protein.

Protein also is a source of energy for the body. Some of the sources of proteins that we can incorporate in our diet are:

Protein content per 100 gms of quantity

Food stuff	Protein gms	Food stuff	Protein gms
Bajra	11.6	Rice	7.5
Wheat flour	12.1	Wheat germ	29.2
Bengal gram whole	17.1	Green gram dhal	24.5
Lentil	25.1	Soyabean	43.2
Groundnut	25.3	Almond	20.8
Fenugreek seeds	26.2	Fish	21.8
Beef muscle	22.6	Egg hen	13.3
Chicken	25.9	Liver goat	20.0
Mutton muscle	18.5	Milk buffalo's	4.3
Milk cow's	3.2	Cheese	24.1

* Source: Indian council of medical research 1989.

To add to all the benefits that protein consumption has, consuming organic proteins is a toxic-free way of experiencing the replenishing power of proteins and for that reason, ProNature brings you the following important sources of protein in the organic form in its portfolio:

• Tur Dal                        
• Channa Dal                 
• Kala Channa               
• Kabuli Channa             
• Moong Green - Split and Whole
• Moong Yellow                        
• Rajma                         
• Black Urad Dal – Split and Whole
• White Urad Dal - Split and Whole
• Masoor Dal

Image Source: http://www.thelazyvegetarian.com

So what are you waiting for? Hit the nearest store to bring some organic protein home and give your body the best overhaul it deserves!

Why Organic - Because Health Is Wealth

In keeping with ProNature’s dream of making organic the lifestyle and food of choice, let’s look at some of the reasons why organic food is good for us starting with health.

Organic food is the best way to eat food that nature had intended for us to eat. Organic food products are free from any additives that can cause health problems such as heart disease, osteoporosis, migraines and hyperactivity. The foods are not genetically modified either. Organic food products are known to be healthier with a higher nutritional content as compared to food that is grown chemically. They also taste better, enriching the whole experience of eating. And that, in a nutshell, means that eating organic food is the healthiest and most non-intrusive way of getting nutrition for our bodies.

Organic foods are also free from any chemical fertilizers and pesticides. So no pesticide residues in any of the food on our dining tables. No artificial poisons on the skins of any fruits we consume. Organic food is not covered in any such cocktail of poisonous chemicals. 

The FDA approved many pesticides before research linked them to chemicals that cause cancer and other diseases.   Now the EPA a majority of fungicides, herbicides and insecticides to be carcinogenic. So eating organic food ensures a near-zero exposure to these carcinogens introduced by pesticides. Pesticides have also been linked to reduced sperm concentrations, cord blood contamination for the foetus and breast milk contamination among new mothers. All this exposure to pesticides puts an entire generation ahead of us at serious health risk and switching to an organic diet significantly reduces this pre-natal and neonatal exposure to harmful chemicals.

Go Organic!

There is strong and increasing evidence that just by choosing organic foods over conventional foods, you can decrease your pesticide levels. Whether it’s our clothing and our cleaning products, our gardening, how we handle pests in the home, people will be looking for more natural ways of doing it that are effective. We need to help close the loop for people, since every little change we make helps tilt the odds in favor of kids.

Organic certification is the public's assurance that products have been grown and handled according to strict procedures without the use of persistent and toxic chemicals. Only farmers who pass evaluation by other certified growers and by a trained independent inspector can label their products certified organic.

Even a 50% organic diet helps reduce your chemical intake significantly. So eat out and freak out, but at home switch to organic! Because health is the true wealth.

Our Story And Our Dream

It was when Varun Gupta was working with the Global Green Company at the turn of the millennium that he had his first brush with food exports. He was handling exports of spices to the US at the time. It was also the time he was introduced to the concept of organic food, a concept that appealed to him because of its holistic approach, and he was able to persuade the management of Global Green Company to allow the export of organic food. And that started a niche category of business for the Global Green Company.

Even after Varun moved out of the Global Green Company, his wife Nidhi realized his passion for organic food and tried to persuade him to take it up. Varun offered to support Nidhi in spreading the goodness of organic food around the world and in 2001 Nidhi started Organic Foods India so organic spices from India could reach other parts of the world. And Varun decided to join Nidhi in this endeavour in the year 2005.

Soon Varun and Nidhi realized that instead of exporting to markets outside, they should concentrate on the domestic markets and on establishing organic foods better in India. With this in mind, the ProNature brand was launched in early 2006. And it was registered as a company soon after.

Over the next the next few months, ProNature struggled with various delivery models in its aim to provide competitively priced organic food to the consumers despite its high production cost. These included direct-to-home and tying up with specialty stores to enter the niche segment. Over these months of learning, Varun and Nidhi realized that organic foods needed to become more easily available at the neighbourhood stores where people were used to buying groceries from.

With this learning ProNature Organic Foods started to enter the markets as an FMCG player with ProNature products being made available at major supermarkets in Bangalore. The idea was to educate consumers about the obvious advantages of organic food starting right from the taste by enabling them to try the highest quality products straight from the shelves.

It has been 3 years since the dream has taken off and today ProNature continues to support the philosophy of an organic lifestyle actively. Garnering more support for the organic movement is one of the things ProNature aims to achieve through this blog.

Our dream is to make organic food the food of choice for the consumers and integrate it into their lifestyles seamlessly. The dream is just taking wings and we hope it soars high in the sky someday soon.

Who We Are

Pro Nature Organic Foods is in the business of bringing to consumers good quality certified organic food products under the umbrella brand “Pro Nature”. Our mission is to promote and market certified organic foods so as to make it the food of choice for health conscious and environment conscious consumers and to make it easily available through a sound distribution network.

The company started in the year 2001 by foraying into the export of certified organic spices like White Pepper, Turmeric and Mustard to countries like the USA, the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. In the year 2006, we shifted focus to the domestic markets and moved into the organic retail space with our range of organic products that include:

• Breakfast Products: Broken wheat, Sooji/Rava etc
• Flours: Wheat Flour, Besan, Soya Flour, etc.
• Pulses: Moong, Urad, Chana, Rajma, etc.
• Spices: about twenty different spices and masalas used in Indian cuisine.
• Honey

All our products are certified organic and we aim to build a comprehensive line-up of products that allows the consumers to get onto a completely organic lifestyle even when it comes to products that are required in the day-to-day routine. Our products are available at your neighbourhood store across Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu. As of now we have one unit, certified organic by an internationally recognised Switzerland based certification body IMO Control, where organic products are stored, cleaned and packed in retail packs and distributed through distributors to retail stores.

Our strong contacts in the organic food industry help us to constantly build on our product line-up and ensure that all the products are certified organic. We work closely with farmers and suppliers to procure the best organic agricultural products for our discerning consumers. We are committed to:

• Healthy food for healthy living with a 100% commitment to certified organic.
• Environmental sustainability balanced with economic viability
• Localisation and bio-diversity.
• Integrity and fair dealing.

Through this blog we intend to keep in touch with you as we all work towards a better tomorrow. Let us all go back to the future, back to nature.