something that you may not have seen or
eaten unknown or otherwise but the
organizers made sure that all of you get
thousand quinoa grains in your bag can
quinoa and malnutrition malnutrition is
imbalance of taking food nutrition in
French it is bad nutrition we need 150
nutrients to keep our body healthy if
you take less or more or imbalanced
wrong ones attender ends up in
malnutrition less of nutrition more if
it is obesity diabetes and so on and so
forth and most of this is affected by
the food that you take with your own
hands with your own resources you don’t
need more money you need only good
knowledge and most of the people who are
affected are women in children
government has a program in India called
midday meal and I went to a school to
see how it works
I found a small cardboard box in the
corner of a classroom there and it has
these vegetables wilted vegetables I
asked what is this because the money
that is given for the midday meal is not
sufficient teachers are asking students
to bring vegetables this is what they
are getting compared to the previous
slides they definitely have to be
malnourished Government of India
actually gives midday means 200 4.2
million students every day spending
grain and 1.3 billion dollars on just
one program Wow
mind-blowing numbers but realities it is
four rupees per child per meal that’s
the major problem in the country because
this is affecting the GDP India’s
malnutrition is not just a poor man’s
problem or rich man’s obesity it is the
GDP of India at the same time I have a
personal thing I was diagnosed as
diabetic person has a new diabetic
person I have to stop eating rice that’s
when the whole story started both
malnutrition and diabetes as the
previous speaker miss Ichiko slaw
identified and explained so much about
diabetes I will not go into it can be
directly avoided by managing your food
ancient grains do give good health so
one of the ancient grains is quinoa to
learn about quinoa I went to Bolivia and
met several people and got quinoa
knowledge and wanted to bring to India
but there came a problem when I came
back to New York
my routine urine test showed positive
for cocaine what’s the connection
Bolivia high altitude regions have
headaches people get headaches so tomato
tea is given I got it I loved it I did
not do it I did not do cocaine
but I’m high on quinoa I’m high on
quinoa because me and Director of
National Institute of nutrition in
Hyderabad and another scientist
published a book on this not only that
it has so much of wonderful information
and other proof dr. Schultz from NASA
whom I spoke with on this subject they
have approved quinoa for space missions
but the problem is India is selling at
the time came over 2,000 rupees a kilo
how can I make it affordable that’s when
I planted that’s when I planted quinoa
in India I’ll skip the planting and the
farming and I planted fully knowing the
importance of forming in India if this
is the glass of water that is required
for growing rice only a third of it is
needed for quinoa therefore it is not
just malnutrition diabetes it is
important for Indians not only I started
growing I got the machine to process it
now many many
people are growing several parts are
done by me including late India has the
potential to grow 25 million tons per
year in the lands which we are not using
now can you believe it you may not but
who believed that Indians will deposit
so much money billions of dollars in the
banks and one more additional point I
want to say exactly 60 70 years back
Norman Borlaug came to Delhi and pleaded
with government in drag on D and the
ministers plant better varieties of
wheat there’s a big parallel I would not
take this as a news actually Julia Birla
told me his granddaughter that India
needs this again now one simple idea
that I want you to take home is quinoa
can give you freedom from rice help you
with diabetes and reduce malnutrition
thank you [Applause]