TASTY : Visitors at the food festival in Tiruchi on Tuesday. more-in Ten stalls brought the flavour of ethnic millets and grains alive for staff and students of St Joseph’s College at in-campus Heritage Food Festival organised by the Extension Department, Shepherd, on Tuesday. “We wanted to motivate students to know more about native food grain varieties so that they can opt for a healthier diet,” S Lenin, coordinator, Shepherd Extension Department, said. This is the second edition of the annual food festival. Besides stalls selling soup, gruel and pancake readymix powders made from samai (little millet), tenai (foxtail millet) and kambu (pearl millet), the festival had a live kitchen run by local organic food company Mithraa Millet that served freshly steamed ragi (finger millet) puttu and moringa leaf tea. Explanatory stalls on Body Mass Index (BMI), herbal products and plant propagation hosted by the Departments of Biotechnology, Biology and Biochemistry were put up on the sidelines of the event. N Chellam, Associate Professor, Department of Nutrition and Dietitics, Seethalakshmi Ramaswamy College, spoke about the the need to integrate native foods in the daily diet chart. R Sundaraju, Government Siddha physician, explained aspects of traditional medicine and its benefits. Extension Department – ‘Shepherd’ is the outreach programme of St Joseph’s College that carries out rural empowerment projects in 69 villages with an overall population of 48,000 people located in the five development blocks (Manikandam, Andanallur, Thogamalai, Kulithalai and Viralimalai).

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