There were three interesting magazines, which started even much before

internet became accessible to the general public in 1995 in India [and even after
that almost ten years very few had access to internet], and those three magazines
were great source of useful information [fortunately they continue even today,
more colorfully].
Of these two were from Europe which were [available for members of British
Council Madras] and one from India. All these three magazines I literally
would memorize because they were packed with important and interesting
informations for general public and academicians alike, especially on non-
political issues like environment, health, food and nutrition and important topics
of great importance socially but were never the issues that were prioritized by
politicians and often never even blinked in the radar of their politicians’
attention [a global phenomenon].
These magazine were:-
1. Resurgence [Wonderful monthly magazine from UK that was started by an
Indian Satish Kumar -the founding editor, which ensured every issue had
articles on topics like Onion, Garlic –starting from giving details of their
etymology to tracing their history, indicating their biochemical properties, their
nutritional value to their prevailing utility and benefits to human health. I never
missed a single issue of that for almost 20 years in the 80s and 90s.
2. Down To Earth a magazine was started by Anil Agarwal from India which
had lot of informative articles on environment, the importance of native items [
I remember one issue titled ‘Cow pathis-mentioning the importance of cow
dung] but sometimes it had an excess of environmental activism [ I am not
saying right or wrong].
3. The New Internationalist on various topics highly informative in the pre-
internet era but predominantly [swinging between reasonable socialism to
extreme left].
In spite of their ideological affinities they brought out lot of otherwise, hidden
information on several topics and issues.
Why I mention these three magazines is, because they dealt mostly with food,
environment, and sanitation and even while discussing issues on
humanitarianism, economy, social justice etc., it was more about lack of access
to food, the role nutrition and malnutrition played in the life of children and
women, food habit, under-utilized native food items and so on.
While veering from these magazines for general public to domain specific
books on nutrition, food ingredients, food processing, and food recipes, later on
in recent years watching various Master Chef Programs and an inundation of
YouTube videos on health foods, food supplements and so on repeatedly reveal
these factors.
Irrespective of whatever food items that are offered to any society, the food
items available in nature locally and food habits of a society will be the
inevitable preferential choice and major aspect of food consumed by human
beings in different geographical locations and even within the same
geographical location by different socio-cultural groups. Therefore, food is
one thing that cannot be homogenized however one may wish to do so.
The same ingredients used in different parts of the world will have varying
degrees of intensity – saltiness in salts available, the sweetness of sugar
available in different regions will vary, the variation that the same quantity of a
particular ingredient will undergo when used for cooking in different items and
different ways of cooking and so on.
Therefore, except for industrial grade and quantity of production neither the
exact quantity and nor the method of food processing can be homogenized or
even regulated beyond a certain extent. Any chef and every cook will vouch,
that cooking any tasty menu is more instinctive that instructional and at best
one acquires some expertise over a long period of time through sheer practice.
Besides, all these the food that is consumed tastes differently for everyone and
is ingested and reacts differently for everyone.
Food habits, like mother –tongue is an important part of everyone’s nature
and how much ever one may move around and migrate to different parts of the
world, taste different food items and even if the taste buds put into forced
metamorphosis due to inevitable life style changes, at the earliest opportunity
one’s instincts crave for the food items one had as a child as one resorts to
speaking in mother tongue when in the company of people who can understand
and communicate in that language.
Having said, all these, as humanity has managed to predominantly adopt
globally certain languages for convenient communication and easy
understanding [this was, of course, achieved at different costs and for various
reasons], similarly, can, majority of human beings be made to adopt a few major
food items which can, [this being what goes onto take care of our health and
habits] be satisfying different tastes, easily available, easily digestible and also
help in one’s health.
If we consider these aspects, then among the 6 or 7 primary tastes that human
tongue can decipher Sweet, Salty, Sour Spicy /pungent/hot, bitter, and
astringent, umami etc.
Contrary to popular claims that food items get accepted through brand publicity
( which may be like temporary trend or passing cloud) what actually gets a food
popular, if we choose to observe, keenly are factors like first taste, second
availability, third affordability, fourth whether it fulfills the pangs of hunger,
then whether it can be consumed raw and if not, whether it is ready to eat or
easy to cook, all other factors like pleasant flavours, attractive colours, shapes
and sizes, easy digestibility, health benefits, nutritional values and so on
follow suite.
For example, let us take a globally known popular food Pizza. Though human
being may want to taste new food items they prefer to consume food
items that have some element familiarity and not totally
new. For example, anything that is wheat, corn or rice based with
thousands of permutation combinations can be served be it raw bread or
biscuits or pizzas or pastas or multiple flakes made out of them added
with nuts and dry fruits.
If we take pizza for example we will know how it originated and why it
has become popular.

It was just flat bread based, it emerged from the poor working class
known as lazzaroni who needed to be fed with inexpensive food that
would give them energy to work. It was just flatbreads with various
toppings, eaten for any meal and sold mostly by street vendors. Now of
course, it has taken many avatars with multiple toppings and seasonings,
flavours etc.

Our knowledge of tastes and smells are extremely limited and often restricted
by the prevailing vocabulary used in common parlance whereas, tastes and
smell are senses which are around not waiting for our vocabulary to define and
classify them. So, creative generation of tasty and healthy of food items is
limitless.
A fast reading of Chapter 8 titled Twenty-one Senses of Chemistry, Mind and
Spirit in the book The Seven Mysteries of Life by Guy Murchie [now available
on the net free] will take us into a journey of smells and tastes of life in general
through his information packed romantic and poetic prose.
More about smells when I get time reflect, recollect and render here.