[RspecMAuthortah]

The author is from India. India has been experiencing a wave of changes in the face of a growing middle class. The pollution level in every major cities is just abysmal, there is very little regard for quality control - parts of India in the north are basically covered in toxic fogs for a decent part of the year. Add to that an increasing adoption of plastics, recipes involving frying oil in high temperature and western style take out meals, even the wealthy Indians are not leading as healthy of lifestyle as they might think.

Here is an anecdote - growing up we used to have local festivals in the temples where they would distribute meals in banana leaves almost exclusively in all the temples. Fast forward these have been replaced with single usage low grade plastics and cups which when served hot I honestly fear leech plastic into food. The number of cars in any metropolitan cities have exploded - older forms of transportation like rickshaws are almost gone (not that I am saying I condone the poor rickshawalas having to pull weights twice their own but just setting context). Traditional Indian meals involved less frying and using ghee, which has higher smoke temperature compared to soybean which is also very poor quality.