The document discusses establishing "healthy kitchens" to help address issues around access to healthy food. It outlines key values of quality, taste, and hygiene for food. It then lists common barriers people face in accessing healthy food like time, resources, and hygiene. To solve these problems, the document proposes creating model kitchens that meet standards for cleanliness, storage, cooking practices, and waste handling. These healthy kitchens could be run as community, institutional, private or individual enterprises to provide food to groups like children, families, and the elderly. Finally, it presents two models for operating these kitchens - through independent assessment and certification or by establishing new enterprises employing women and youth for cooking and delivery of food.

1. HEALTHY KITCHENS
Food is the basic need. Access to healthy food is a major concern globally. The core values of ‘Healthy
Kitchen’ are:
 Quality of food
 Taste of food
 Hygiene of food
There are many who are not able to access healthy food for various reasons.
 Time required for cooking
 Right kind of fuel / energy required to cook
 Use of right ingredients
 Cost of the ingredients
 Time required for choosing and fetching the ingredients
 Unhygienic conditions in the kitchen due to bad practices
 One does not know cooking well
 Due to age factor they are not able to cook
 Unable to serve the fresh food – food is cooked once in a day or less frequently
 For health reasons different types of food to be served in a family
 The cost of food to buy is high
 There are not hygiene and good food outlets in the vicinity
Healthy kitchens would address all the above issues through various approaches. Some are like:
Model one
Creating healthy kitchen (would have various parameters of a Healthy Kitchen)
- Fire source for cooking
- Lighting at the cooking place
- Cleanliness of the premises and utensils
- Food Preparation area and cleanliness
- Food storage area
- Cooking food method
- Storage of spatula
- Cooked food storage
- Serving room and place
- Cleanliness of the stove area
- Waste vegetables storage
- Waste food storage area
- Waste material such as plastic covers, etc.
- Regular cleaning of the kitchen, no visibility of pests
- Cleanliness of the person cooking
- Apron and other accessories a must while cooking
- Hands should not be used for tasting the food
- Other habits of the cook – scratching, rubbing, etc.
- Methods of converting or value addition of kitchen waste, such as composting
Applicability of Healthy Kitchen concept

2. - Applicable to community kitchens
- Institutional kitchens
- Private enterprises
- Local door to door vendors
- Individual enterprises created
- Open House Kitchens, etc
Outreach of the food cooked
- Children in schools
- Youth
- Old people
- Destitutes
- Families
- Working people, etc.
Two models of serving the food
A) Valuation or ranking of the kitchens for declaring as “Healthy Kitchens”, independent
assessment of the existing enterprises.
B) Creating enterprises using women and youth for cooking and delivering (the model would be in
between Swagruha and Dabbawalas.
Concept note by: Dr. N. Sai Bhaskar Reddy, saibhaskarnakka@gmail.com