Acquiring Healthy Local Food Security through Village-Temple Interaction

Abstract

Offering the best righteously earned food to Lord Buddha and clergy has been a sacred and well-devoted activity of disciples since the origin of the Village-Temple Interconnection (VTI). Based on the secular and spiritual Knowledge, Skills and Attitude (KSA) gained through VTI, they developed Diverse Traditional Healthy Local Food (DTHLF) practices, which had started degrading presently upon acquisition of Modern Food Practice (MFP) giving rise to adverse health and economic outcomes. Therefore, with the objective of fulfilling healthy local food security and the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), an in-depth multidisciplinary literature survey at local and global levels coupled with an interventional study by means of organizing DTHLF Alms giving (DTHLF-Ag) followed by a comparison with conventional MFP alms giving (MFP-Ag) were done.  The historical multifaceted positive impact of strong VTI on the wellness of the villagers were confirmed through literature study. The interventional study has shown that a vast majority of Main Ingredients (MI) and culinary preparations (CP) in DTHLF-Ag could be reliably categorised as DTHLF while none of them in MFP-Ag could be done so revealing the strong potential of VTI in escalating the availability, accessibility, preparation and consumption of DTHLF within the village. This highlighted the trustworthiness and righteousness among laymen and clergymen in the upliftment of this sensitive and compassionate activity. It further reveals three (03) basic characteristics of DTHLF; Suitability, Adequacy and Reliability (SAR) with regards to its source, method of production and method of cooking. It paved path also towards the righteous food trade based on small-scale entrepreneurship.

KEYWORDS:  Village, Temple, Diverse, Healthy, Local, Food