TAKE PREVENTIVE HEALTH CARE SERIOUSLY!

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OFF late as I may have mentioned earlier I’ve been haunting Sodexo’s Yoo cafeterias at the old and new Goa Medical College & Hospital blocks. Much can be improved here for the aam aadmi or common folk who drop in here for a bite. The old GMC Yoo cafeteria is really a hole in the wall affair but there’s water on tap and the menu can be half way decent on a good day, depending on what’s available when you turn up for breakfast or lunch!
Sodexo’s Yoo cafeteria at the wholly air-conditioned new GMC block is of course a much cooler place to catch a bite or pick up something for a patient you may be visiting or a chat with a doctor who may like to speak to you about a patient in confidence…all that. But this is about the old GMC Yoo cafeteria which is just a half-baked cafeteria with standing room only at tables for those seeking a bite.
This is just to reiterate that I do believe that preventive healthcare must begin in a hospital canteen — be it a private posh hospital or a public not-so-posh hospital (the new GMC hospital is posh in comparison to the old GMC hospital, both a stone’s throw away from each other). Sodexo has long since held the contract for running the two Yoo cafeterias of both old and new GMC hospitals and has been doing a fairly good job, but for some reason the menu has deteriorated to include more junk food and fryums. Freshly cooked hot snacks and food is served only during breakfast and lunch window timings, in between one has to be content with junk food fryums like samosa, batatvada, puff pattice, cream rolls, burgurs, etc.
I’ve written about freshly made idli white and a smaller quantity of ragi idli too for breakfast but these are hot favorites which varnish quickly, the more nourishing ragi idli arrive in very small quantity as in say five or six dozen and quality too is variable…but the sambar to go with the idli is very good with veggies (mostly pumpkin). Rs40 per alumunium foil container of a pair of idli makes for a decent buy and sometimes there is coconut chutney, which I’ve observed before is something few want to eat and so it goes waste, mostly. Some folk just don’t like to eat cold chutney.
Even at the older Yoo canteen outlet at old GMC hospital there’s no separate beverages counter for tea, coffee, water bottles, aerated drinks, etc. At 1pm the lunch thali meal deal veg and non-veg for Rs100 plus is so and so and does not feature natural curd or raita, choose between chappati or pau. White bread sandwiches are grotesque and refined pau bread is everywhere. Better to choose the veggie biryani or pulao.

THERE’S little imagination going into the hospital cafeteria menu. Nobody is asking me for free advice but I do think the very first thing the Yoo powers-that-be could do is remove the fryums and confectionary junk, as well as the ubiquitous local white refined handy loaves of “pau” – I mean during visits one could only see visitors and resident doctors and medical students making do with pau-bhaji, omlet-pau, vada-pau, samosa-pau…pau, pau, pau is not the staff of health any more especially in Goa where the local serial range of refined bread loaves are no longer made of 100% wholewheat flour. This bread is high glycemic indexed as is factory sliced white bread.
The only local Goan bread marginally worth eating is the “poie” or “undo” and even here let it be known that bread is bread, refined white flour is constipating – unless you put in a whole lot of salad in between the bread. No, not batatvada, although this is a hot favorite, as is the samosa – two fryums stuffed with potato mash of various denomination good, bad or ugly.
Also, chuck the evil veg and non-veg puff pattice – all maida and hydro fat affairs. I’ve noticed how over the years the platters high with samosa, which so many make do with for a bite, have become terrible, no value for money even at Rs15 a samosa. Is it possible to have better quality smaller samosa with a squeeze of freshly made tamarind-date sauce instead of tomato ketchup? Biscuits, cookies, brownies, sweet fake cream pastries and cake, anyone? Sugar-stuffed confectionary is surely no no at hospital cafeterias?
Beverages, tea and coffee is fine. How about coconut water, nimbupani, buttermilk, melon juice? Hey, I spied boiled eggs in the morning for Rs10 or Rs15, depending on the attendant at the counter! Like the ragi idli the boiled eggs too disappear in double quick time by the time it’s 10am. How about adding besan cheela, onion uttappa and fruit juices and cut fruit at the Yoo cafeteria menu? How difficult would it be to make at least our public hospital cafeterias more health-conscious? I mean, look at all the wonderful posters that up at the premises of the air-conditioned new GMC cafeteria – full of insight into what makes for health, and then look at what is offered at the counters at ground level! If we eat most of this kind of junk food and gulp down the aerated bottled drinks, then naturally we will return to the hospital, as patients in its wards this time around… in time to come.
OKAY, to move on to something else equally annoying. Eating out these days is so frustrating! Like it’s mango season, May is for mangoes, Goa is about mangoes, the markets are flooded with mangoes – mankurad, malgese, bishop, pairi, afoos, neelam, dassehri, kesar, amrapalli, etc, and nobody thinks its a good idea to serve just pure mango “aamras” or mango puree – with or without puri/chappati, etc.

‘Southern Basil’ at the Fidalgo enclave of restaurants…there is a special mango menu placed on every table this month of May, but aam ras is not listed for money or for love of mangoes!

Someone told me go to Café Mira at St Inez, they’re doing aamras-puri, must go. But at the traditional Goan cafeterias of Café Bhonsale and Café Real and Café Tato and Café Ashiwini and Café Sheetal I sometimes call at for a bite…there’s mango juice, mango milk shake, mango ice-cream, mango falooda, etc, all heavyweight cold affairs. None are serving either just plain cut mango or mango ras…for a fine touch a bit of ginger powder or cardamom powder sprinkled atop!
I keep asking for it…but nowhere can get a bowl of plain pure mango aamras or aamras-puri combo. No mango ras, no cut mango. At Navatara they do mango treats come mango season but it doesn’t include mango ras with or without the hot, hot puri. And mind you places like Sheetal and the Goan eateries one finds some superlatively good hot puri…but these are eaten only with indifferent mixed potato or salad tomato bhaji or mushroom xacuti. If they were to offer me aamraas-puri, I would order!
Kamat’s near Panaji church doesn’t offer aamras-puri, nor do any of the other Udipi cafes. At Café Real where I’m familiar with the staff I appealed, “Arre, do aamras-puri baba, this is mango season. Put attractive big board outside at the door saying “We serve aamras-puri!” See how many tourists will come in!
Even at Southern Basil at Fidalgo, no aamras-puri although every table has a little placard listing mango treats (see pic here), just no pure mango ras or even the aamras-puri combo….what to say! They prefer to go more or less empty with poor business nowadays when the cost of living along with the cost of eating out has escalated beyond the budget of a lot of folk including me.
CRAZY story. Even Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant’s government doesn’t want to do a proper Mango Festival! Elitist Cashew Festival, but no Mango Festival. And how many mango orchards do we have in Goa, most every Goan ancestral home has a mango tree…Hilario, totapuri, and the little “gota” wild mangoes which go into mango curry. I’ve taken to slipping in cubed mango ripe into my dal and it’s…er…yummylicious, laced in hot ukdeche rice! Make the most of mangoes before the rains descend, my dears.