 Hi, everyone. I'm really honored to be back here again. Kiltr has been fantastic for my growth as well and my learning as well. I don't ever think that we stop learning, but it's very, very important to learn from the right teachers. And it's very important to have critical thinking as well. Yogita and I actually met because both of us were clones for Daily Dump, which is a composting company and which keeps tons and tons of organic or wet waste off the streets of Bangalore right now. And we actually propagated it in our own cities when I was in Hazarbha. Then Yogita was in Goa. She's still in Goa. So let's get started. The reason why I thought of this talk is because of this. This is Brian. He's my operations manager and his wife is pregnant. She's due in October, actually. And we were discussing nutritional supplements for his wife, Apeksha. And he said, yeah, I'm buying this women's special Horlicks and I'm like, okay, that's interesting. Why are you buying it? And you know, when you're already getting ragi malt from the farm and he's like, yeah, because you know, it has the necessary vitamins and minerals and the person at the hospital recommended it. And I'm like, okay, let's take a look at the label. And he took a look at the label and what we found was I do have a jar of it right here. I actually got it from him specifically. So this is Brian and Apeksha's jar of Horlicks over here. And the first ingredient is cereal extract 47%, which means there's barley flour, not even barley malt. Barley flour, wheat flour, malted barley, which is about 8% and malted wheat, which is about 1%. So when he took a look at this, he was just like, and then you know, there's 36% milk solids and then there's hydrolyzed corn solids, minerals, salt and vitamins. So essentially it's Ata and a vitamin tablet. If you want to like simplify it further. And when we broke down the cost because we're a food manufacturing company, we do understand that there are associated costs with manufacturing food, which is why the industry standard is that your basic input cost, which is just your raw materials or your raw ingredients should be approximately between 30 to 40% of the total cost, which is your MRP. So if you're selling something for about 100 rupees, just the raw material or the raw ingredients without the labor, without the processing cost about 30 rupees or so, the labor, the rent, the machines, the utilities, all of them, and then your profit margin, all of them make up the rest of the 70%. This is his face when we calculated the price on the retail prices that are available in the market online. We just went to Amazon and we checked out everything. And this is just, and then he looked at me and he's like, you know what, the ragi malt and the jawar malt and the barley malt that she gets from her farms back home is just so much better than this. And there's no sugar in it. So yeah, let's get started. This is the anatomy of a food package. Now a food package has two basic parts to it. One is called the PDP, which is the principal display panel. And one is called the IPR information panel. Now the information panel comprises of the nutrition facts, which is your nutrition table as well as the ingredients. And then you have your regulatory information, which is where it's manufactured, what is the batch size or batch number and you know, the FSSAI or whatever licensing it needs to, it requires and whatever GMP code it needs, which is good manufacturing practices code. The PDP on the other hand is a free for all. It's not really well regulated in India or at least across the world. Globally, you have some amount of leeway because it's considered as creative and you can basically just display anything that you want on it, which allows, but that has the majority of the real estate. If you can see the box over here, the majority of the real estate is given to advertising and claims that can be explained away with a little asterisk or a little hashtag or a little arrow. I've just, I've encountered so many little superscripts of a variety of symbols and numbers. It's mind boggling. If you have your hands on a milk supplement like a Horlicks bottle, bring it over and just take a look at it. Take a look at the fine print while I'm talking to you here. These are the symbols that I came across. I was unfortunately unable to copy paste superscript numbers because it's a Mac and for some reason it didn't translate well on Kendo. But you have these little arrows and asterisks and little dagger signs and double dagger and hashtag. Just take a look at all of them. On the women's Horlicks, I can count approximately eight little superscripts. So you also have to go, sorry about that, you also have to go and find the information which is used to backup that claim but also used to sort of creatively display that claim on the principal display panel. Here we go. So these are your claims over here. Taller, more bone area, more stronger muscle, better concentration. And this is for the children's Horlicks. I do have a box over here. So I will refer to it over here because I couldn't get all of the information and there's just a lot. There's a lot of it over here and a lot of claims over here as well. So let's take a look. Here we go. So children having Horlicks every day were taller, stronger, plus mark and sharper compared to those who did not. And this is everyday consumption of Horlicks. Now these are the claims. I'm reading this out here verbatim. These are the claims based on a study conducted in 1999 to 2000 comparing micronutrient enriched beverages versus non-fortified placebo. What does non-fortified placebo mean? Non-fortified placebo basically means that there are no vitamins or minerals that are artificially added to this. And the placebo could be just milk, but I highly doubt that it is or it could be water. We don't know because it just says non-fortified placebo. However, this can be interchanged with anything. It doesn't have to be Horlicks. It can be boost. It can be Milo. It can be Bonvita. So it's not necessarily just this brand one and two. Anything is going to be proven to give you stronger, make you stronger, taller, sharper if it's compared with non-fortified placebo, which could essentially be just water. Take a look at the ingredients over here. This is not too bad. So malt is a process. Malting is a process which is controlled germination of a cereal grain. And what occurs over here is that the germination happens under a specific temperature and to a specific extent, which allows the enzymatic activity to break down the starch as well as the proteins in the cereal grain. And this allows the starch and the proteins, which are broken down by the enzymes right now because of germination, to be more bioavailable and more easily available to digest. So it's the nutrition that will also be absorbed better, but it also digests better and you take up less energy digesting it. This is malted barley, 39%. And then there's 25% Ata. So in 100 grams of, in 10 grams of your powder, 2.5 grams is Ata. 14% milk solids, sugar, again, wheat protein, which is wheat gluten. And then you have your minerals, emulsifier, and vitamins. Soy protein isolate as well, but that is so tiny because I know how much impulsifier actually goes into this. And the soy protein isolate is actually lesser than the salt in this. Ingredients are listed in descending order, which means that the largest is first. So the largest first ingredient here in the children's horlicks is malted barley. The second largest is wheat flour. The third one is milk powder. The fourth one is sugar. And sugar, you don't get a percentage over here. But what you can do if you can actually go back to the per 100 grams nutrition table over here and you scroll down, scroll down, scroll down. And you can see it in really tiny font over here. It's of which sugar sucrose, which is a disaccharide made up of glucose and fructose, is 13.5 grams, which means it is 13.5%. So it was okay to say milk solids are 14%, but sugar is 13.5%. They don't want to mention that in the ingredient list. It's not great. 200 ml of milk, three heat teaspoons, and then you mix and that's how you get a milk supplemented or fortified milk in this case. What we do not get to see over here, sorry, what we do not get to see over here is the nutritional information with milk or without milk. We don't know whether this nutritional information that is there is with milk or without milk. This is a nutritional information for milk. So you can take a look. I just require a little bit of math and I'm not going to lie. It is very confusing and it's just a lot easier to believe that no added sugar, calcium, the bone nutrition specialist over here, which we'll see in the next one. You can see it over here. It's just much easier to look at the advertising panel because it just takes up so much more real estate and it gives you all these claims and we tend to believe them rather than not. I mean like the key to actually reading food labels is to be suspicious of everything that's on the principle display panel. Like over here you can see this little asterisk over here or this hashtag over here. You can see this little superscript one over here. You can see this little arrow over here, 100% RDA of calcium. Just to give you some perspective over here, 100% RDA of calcium can also be achieved by powdering half an egg shell and consuming it with a little bit of acid like lime juice or tamarind juice. That will give you 100% RDA of calcium. So RDA is required daily allowance. 100% RDA of vitamin D over here and then 100% of RDA of vitamin K2. Now vitamin D, they're not very many dietary sources. We primarily get our vitamin D from sunlight and UVB sunlight, which is recommended you get about 10 to 30 minutes, maybe a little bit longer of midday sunlight and that will be enough vitamin D for your body for that day. Vitamin K2 is something that is found very easily in a lot of greens and is not necessarily lacking in most people. Vitamin K2 does actually help in bone absorption, bone development and bone health by helping vitamin D help absorb the calcium better. What is the role of calcium over here? The calcium helps build your bones and helps keep your calcium channels ready and working within your skeletal muscle, but vitamin D allows for the absorption of calcium from your gut. Otherwise it takes it from the bones to actually maintain the calcium channels that are required for your skeletal muscle to work properly. So these are the claims that you have on your principle display panel. Here we go. After the age of 30, bone mineral density may start to decrease. True. Why? Because you don't get enough vitamin D, which will then not allow the calcium that you are eating to be absorbed by the body. So it's vital for you to go out into the sun and get your vitamin D. So what happens if you don't get enough vitamin D? Because you don't go outside, it starts taking it away from the bones. Calcium for strong bones is in an asterisk over here. And let me just find that over here. So I'm not sure if you can see this over here, but you know, this is really fine. And my eyesight is fine. They make it very, very difficult for you to actually find all the claims that are available. And it's just like, it's very, very difficult. And I've seen this multiple times. It's just very difficult for me to find it as well. So it provides 100% of it contains. And then you can see this little dollar sign over here. Now this dollar sign I've actually contains calcium as much as in half a liter of milk. But they don't, I mean, like you might think that this is per serving, but it's actually for 100 grams of product. And if it's for 100 grams of product, take a look. They're asking you to do twice a day. And that's 30 grams of product over there. And they're also including the nutrition of the milk, which is not, which is not disclosed over here on the packaging. But then this claim, it's just there. It's very easy to pick and choose the numbers as they see fit. It's not necessarily that it's for 30 grams serving or if it's for a 250 ml serving or if it's for 100 ml of milk. You do need to definitely be suspicious of these little guys over here. And you definitely need to do some amount of math to see what kind of nutrition you're actually getting. Now let's go to the ingredients over here. The small extract, again, 47%, milk solids, and then there's hydrolyzed corn solids. Now hydrolyzed corn solids are basically made from concentrating corn syrup and then hydrolyzed with enzymes. They're essentially sugar in that sense. And that is how they get away with staying. That is how they get away with saying no added sugar because they're replacing it with hydrolyzed corn solids, which is made with concentrated corn syrup to less than 10% of water and then hydrolyzed with food grade acids or enzymes. They're used as a sweetener in a dry baby formula, powdered coffee cleaners and powdered drink mixes. And the regulations don't make them say that, you know, this is just as bad as sugar or this is just as effective as sugar in providing glucose to you. Let's go on to a particular topic of interest to me, just primarily this. Now this is used for elderly people. And this is a particular interest to me because my father was diagnosed with late stage prostate cancer, which metastasized to his stomach and his lymph nodes and his bones. And he went through intensive chemotherapy and then intensive radiation therapy. And then they just said, oh, yeah, just, you know, there was no nutrition chart given. There was no diet chart given. They just said avoid sugar, avoid carbohydrates. And they said, okay, you can, you can maybe have inshore. And when I took a look at the label, I was quite surprised that they would recommend something like that. But then I realized that doctors are human as well. And it's not their job to prescribe the diet chart or the nutrition chart for us. And they to just see the principal display panel versus the actual nutritional facts and the ingredients. Let's go. There's the strength with the little asterisk over here. Let's go discover what that is if we can find it. Ensure has complete balanced nutrition with 32 nutrients like high protein, calcium, vitamin D and iron, provides 100% RDA of vitamin A, E. This is also something that is easily replaced with a multivitamin or with a really well-balanced salad. But you do need to know what contains what, which a lot of people do. I mean, we do learn it in school. We do learn it in college to some extent with regards to vitamins and minerals and what foods contain them and what foods don't. Here we go. All claims. You can see the little dollar sign over here. Take water or milk. And these are the claims over here. And this is vital nutrients to support strength, immunity and energy. If you can look here, it says all claims are applicable to mixing six scoops of Ensure with water. 150 ml, 190 ml, six scoops is required. And it's not intended to be used as a sole source of nutrition. Here are the ingredients. Skimmed milk powder, which is basically spray-dried milk without the fat. Multidextrin, sucrose, sugar, edible vegetable oil, FOS or fructose or the gocaccharide, mineral vitamins. Minerals and vitamins are available one pill. They'll basically cover your RDA for the day. Multidextrin is a polysaccharide and that's used as a food additive. It is produced from vegetable starch, again like corn starch, and it has a higher glycemic index than sugar. How do they manage to slow down that absorption is by adding fructose or the goccharide. So this is essentially milk powder, sweetener again, and then sugar on top of it and then you have sunflower oil. It's just easier to give them a ragi malt or a wheat malt or just badam powder with a little bit of milk. This has so much sugar in it and my father was advised to not take any sugar and to reduce his carbohydrates intake and to make sure that he had non-refined carbohydrates. If you take a look at the per 100 grams over here you can see sugar, sucrose, because multidextrin isn't considered sugar again. It's 14.7% of the total package over here with regards to the powder. What I'm trying to get at is that there will be professionals that will recommend things just on the basis of the PDP, which is the principal display panel. But whenever you see a symbol over here, they have to have to buy law, back up the claims that they are speaking of, and that is when you can trace it back to the kind of claims that they're making. And that is when you can trace it back to the study that's been done with regards to a comparison with a fortified beverage versus a non-fortified placebo, which could just be water. I mean, you will have to dive deeper into it, but take the time to do it if it's something that you're going to be using on a regular basis. These are just some breakdowns of the hydrolyzed cornstarch. Multitol, again, sugar alcohol, it is used as a sweetener, but by regulatory law it doesn't need to be labeled as an added sugar. However, you can take a look at what it comprises of. You have the carbohydrate. 100 grams of multitol is 100 grams of carbohydrate. The only thing that is that it's actually 210 calories versus regular carbohydrate, which is about 400 calories for every 100 grams or four calories per gram. Multitol is also a watch out for it because it also has, it also basically breaks down into glucose and has higher fiber. But that also has laxative effects because it draws water from the walls of your large intestine and can cause some amount of dehydration. What are the alternatives? Now, I'm not recommending this brand over here. I just, this was the first one that came out that actually had some information about it. But try and find co-ops. We now are understanding and realizing that, you know, nutritionally dense foods are available locally and there is some wisdom behind it. I mean, when our parents were making baby food, they were, they were germinating, they were roasting, they were grinding to a fine porous and they were adding it into milk. If milk is your choice of beverage and if you want to fortify it, try and find co-ops, try and find local people, try and find local manufacturers that actually do something like this. For example, in Bangalore, Navdarshanam is an incredible co-op and you can see the ingredients right here. It's sprouted, ragi, wheat, green gram and vadaam. That's it. Four ingredients. There's no emulsifier, there's no soy protein isolate, there's no artificial flavors. You can and you can control the kind of sugar that you want in this. I use this when I mix it with cocoa and one teaspoon of sugar, which is approximately about five grams and this makes about a 250 ml glass of milk, fortified milk and this is perfect for me. It gives me what I require on a nutritional basis and if I have, if I'm lacking something or if there's not enough sunlight for me to go out and get, I take a multivitamin tablet. Multivitamin tablets, this is 60 tablets for about 295 rupees, approximately 300 rupees. It's five rupees a tablet. One kg of ensure is 1,058 rupees. You're going to have to do the math and really try and understand whether a little bit of skimmed milk powder, some auto and some amount of germinated cereal grain is worth with five rupees worth of five or 10 rupees worth of multivitamin tablets is worth 1,058 rupees. And it can you, I know it's convenient, but can you actually find an alternative that is better for yourself, for your children and for your elderly. These are some of the references I've used. The FSSAI website is actually quite comprehensive and they are constantly taking in feedback and getting better. So if you do want to make a change from a regulatory perspective, take a look, pay attention to the labels and then right into the FSSAI and they will actually go ahead and see what it's about. And if it's not according to regulations, then they will find the company. The rest of these are articles with regards to hydrolyzed corn syrup or hydrolyzed corn solids, multi-tall, multi-dextrin, and with regards to vitamin K2, vitamin B, and their uses and their sources, et cetera. So I'm happy to take questions or if you guys have food packages that you would like to discuss. I'd love to be able to learn with you.