Why I Switched Back to Millets

For years, rice and wheat dominated my kitchen the way they dominate everyone's kitchen. They are familiar, they are easy, they are what the supply chain delivers cheaply. Then I went back to the grains my grandmother used — ragi, jowar, bajra, little millet — and I understood what we lost when we stopped.

What millets actually are

Millets are not a single grain — they are a family. Ragi (finger millet), jowar (sorghum), bajra (pearl millet), foxtail millet, little millet, kodo millet. They were the dietary staple of India for thousands of years before the Green Revolution of the 1960s shifted agricultural policy toward rice and wheat. In the span of two generations, millets went from everyday food to something you find at a health food store rather than your corner kirana.

The nutritional case

Ragi has more calcium than almost any other grain — more than milk, gram for gram. It is gluten-free, high in fibre, and has a low glycaemic index, meaning it releases energy slowly without the blood sugar spike that refined wheat and white rice produce. Jowar is high in fibre and B vitamins. Bajra is rich in iron and magnesium. These are everyday foods with extraordinary nutritional density that we traded away for convenience.

What happened to my digestion

Within three weeks of making millets a daily part of my eating — ragi porridge in the morning, jowar rotis instead of wheat for dinner — my digestion changed. More regular, less bloated, less of the mid-afternoon heaviness that follows a rice-heavy lunch. The body responds to fibre and to eating less processed food. Millets deliver both.

How I cook them now

Ragi porridge: ragi flour, water, a pinch of salt, cooked slow until thick. Topped with jaggery and a drop of ghee. Five minutes. Complete nourishment. Jowar roti: identical technique to wheat roti, slightly more water in the dough. Little millet upma: cook the millet like rice (1:2 ratio), temper with mustard seeds, curry leaves, green chilli and ginger, fold in vegetables. Better than semolina upma in every way.

The cultural argument

These are Indian grains. They grew in Indian soil, shaped Indian bodies, and fed Indian civilisations for millennia. The ragi mudde of Karnataka, the bajra roti of Rajasthan, the jowar bhakri of Maharashtra — these are real food. The idea that wheat bread and white rice are the defaults and millets are the alternatives is a distortion that took hold in one generation. Reversing it is not nostalgia. It is correcting a mistake.

Where to start

Start with ragi. Make a porridge once. That is the only ask. The texture takes one morning to get used to. The energy it gives you — sustained, without the crash — will tell you everything you need to know.