Monday Titbits

Few of the interesting news items on this Monday of May 2018:

1. One news which caught my attention was ” Soon, you can count your calories while eating out.” In today’s world most of us are having sedentary life style, and easy access to Junk and high calorie food has led to increase in people who suffer from diabetes, hyper tension, cardiac problems, bone problems and even certain types of cancers. Along with these diseases, with obesity and its subsequent affects becoming alarmingly frequent in both adults and children. The Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has decided it is time to make people count the calories, they are consuming when they are eating out.                 The FDA has decided that Restaurants must start mentioning the calorie count of each item mentioned in their menu card. This is brain child of  State FDA Commissioner Ms Pallavi Darade. She stated that it is been shocking to see rise in obesity among children and young adults. This plan may not be the ultimate remedy, but it is a start in right direction. She hopes that Hotliers and Restauranteurs will come out voluntarily , and start stating the calorific value of food items in their Menu. In a short time FDA will hold meeting with representatives of Hotels and Restaurant owners, Food  and packaging industry,nutritionists, dieticians for their suggestions and after that the final proposal will be sent to govt for approval. People in general are getting  more conscious of their health, but  they are not aware of calorie intake of each item, which they order in Hotels and Restaurants. If the calorie count is written on the menu against each food item, then patron/customer can make decision which item to eat. Even doctors and surgeons are also complaining about the increases in diseases due to more calories being consumed by the people, and it is basically due to eating outside food, and they are welcoming the proposed step of FDA.                                                       I do not know whether this plan of FDA will succeed  or not, because for drastic step like this, there will be stiff opposition from all the affiliated Associations of Hotels and Restaurants, and for any action of govt there will be political agitations also, as in India the work of opposition party is just to oppose any thing proposed by the govt, these politicians never consider the proposal mooted by govt is good for public health, but they will oppose it. I hope this proposal should not die prematurely,  just because of opposition. The general public in principle should support this proposal.
2. Cricket- IPL- The league phase of IPL is complete, as yesterday all the competing teams completed their 14 matches schedule, and the biggest surprise was , last year’s champion Mumbai Indians (MI) failed to  reach the next round. The four teams which get qualified are Sun Risers Hyderabad (SRH), Chennai Super Kings (CSK) Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Rajasthan Royals (RR). Now SRH and CSK will clash in Qualifier 1 and winner will go straight to the finals, KKR and RR will clash in Eliminator, and winner of this match will clash with losers of CSK/SRH match for place in the finals.                                                            This year IPL tournament meant end of the IPL career for few Indian stalwarts like Yuvraj Singh , Harbhajan Singh, Gautam Gambhir, and to the certain extent  the performance of certain other stalwarts like Rohit Sharma, Ajinkya Rahane, R Jadeja, Hardik Pandya was not  matching with the prices for which they were bought by the respective owners. The most positive aspect of this year’s IPL was that India has  found  a Wicket Keeper/Batsman for limited overs games in  Rishabh Pant. One most fascinating aspect of this year’s IPL ( till league phase ) was that the winner of Orange Cap and Purple caps  were the players from the team which did not qualify for the final rounds. Orange Cap went to Rishabh Pant of Delhi Daredevils (DD) who scored 684 runs, and Purple Cap went to  Andrew Tye of Kings XI Punjab( KXIP) who took 24 wickets. Any how till now the tournament have been quite entertaining, and some of the catches which were taken by fielders were quite exceptional. I hope the balance 4 matches will also provide good and exciting entertainment.

Waiting for your views/comments/feed backs.