Metro Plus
Chennai
Sugar-free and fit!
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Run by six students of The Ashram, Only Fresh sells no and low sugar confectionery
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ONLY FRESH, Chennai's first health food café is here. `Only Fresh'on Velachery Road offers low-sugar-and-no-sugar cookies, ice creams, fresh fruits, juices and buttermilk for the health conscious and those with dietary restrictions.
An enterprise of the Research and Development wing of The Ashram's Specialised Curriculum (TASC), a team of six Business Management students runs the show. According to Latha Rajnikanth, Ashram founder, what started as a student's project just grew beyond the campus. "As there is no competition, it seemed an ideal opportunity and Only Fresh materialised. Though run by the students, this is no half-baked affair. Professionals act as consultants to help students on the production side. Dieticians and health experts provide guidance."
Ice creams with only fructose and fruit extracts minus artificial colours and essence seems exciting. Cookies with ragi, oats and soya flours and health mix powders like the fenugreek sprout powders are on sale.
Juxtaposed with the low-cal stuff are the cream laden, cholesterol-packed black forest, pineapple cream, nugget and chocolate pastries in the bakery counter of the café. Sanjay Vijayaraghavan, one of the students behind the venture explains the apparent contradiction with the tri-colour food concept of Only Fresh. The green range of products like certain cookies will have no sugar at all, while the yellow line feature those with low sugar. The orange group is the heavy-duty one with butter, ghee and cream. Interestingly, on the inaugural day, it was these that did brisk business! The proceeds from the enterprise go to Dayaa Foundation for the underprivileged students and to help juvenile diabetics. A juvenile diabetic student of The Ashram school, Guhan, opened the sale at the café.
Another very interesting display at the healthcare café is the Baba merchandise and Rajani-25 (Mayaa jaa lam) and Latha Rajnikanth's own Saran audiocassettes. This is to give it a `fun' twist as Sanjay puts it.
MARIEN MATHEW
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Metro Plus
Chennai
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