21/03/2026

LYFE SATURDAY | MAR 21, 2026

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Iran-US conflict lands eateries in hot soup I NDIAN restaurant MadCo took the tough call last week to remove some menu favourites, including bone marrow – a As imports are disrupted, India has moved to ensure households and essential sectors remain adequately supplied, leaving restaurants, manufacturers and power plants in the lurch. o Indian restaurants close amid Middle East war in attempt to save cooking gas

beef bone cut in half and slowly roasted, in an attempt to save cook ing gas as the Iran war disrupts sup ply chains. Far from the Middle East, restaurants in the world’s fastest growing major economy are feeling the heat of the conflict with cooking gas shortages, reported AFP. “We saw it coming, but didn’t expect it to hit us this quickly,” said MadCo’s director Santosh Abraham, adding that the restaurant in the southern tech city of Bengaluru has also halted its lunch service. India is the world’s second largest buyer of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), 90% of which passes through the Strait of Hormuz, a key transit chokepoint where traffic has effectively come to a standstill. Cooking gas cylinders are a staple in millions of restaurants across India, as authorities have pushed them away from polluting coal or wood-fired ovens.

Guerilla Diner, a burger joint in Bengaluru, is usually fully booked within minutes when it opens reservations each Tuesday. But now the restaurant is “scrambling to do something to stay afloat” and figure out “what can be done without a gas connection. “I have 2.5 cylinders left. If I run the grill, I only have enough for a day and a half. If I just run the fryer, maybe four days,” sous chef Dhruv Thapliyal said, adding that it feels “a little scary”. Black market Prime Minister Narendra Modi said there was “no need to panic”, and the government has set up a committee to review industry pleas to boost cooking gas supplies. But Ananth Narayan, head of the local chapter of the National Restaurant Association of India in Bengaluru, warned black market

A chef makes pizzas in an oven fuelled by wood at the Pizza Bakery in Bengaluru. – PICS FROM AFP

expect nutritionally. And amid concern about the long-term health impacts of ultra-processed foods that are already commonly consumed, Vincent said safety assessments looked not just at what the products are made of, but also how they are made, “what is the production process and is it safe.” “What we do is a really thorough, holistic safety assessment that looks at things like allergenicity, but also at toxicology, at microbial contamination of foods. It looks at acute risks, so things that might happen once you eat food, but also at chronic risks, so there’s longer term potential risks, and that includes things like carcinogens, for example,” he said. – Bernama-dpa is headed. Our breakfast service is very busy, and even basic items like omelettes and pancakes could become difficult to make, which will definitely hurt business,” he said. In neighbouring Sri Lanka, authorities raised LPG prices by 8% last week, a day after increasing fuel prices by a similar percentage. The Canteen Owners’ Association of Sri Lanka said fears of shortages have sparked panic buying of electric stoves and rice cookers. “It is not easy to buy gas. We have to absorb the additional costs for the time being, because otherwise we risk losing diners,” spokesman Asela Sampath said.

But such technology could help create personalised foods, for example for people who have difficulty swallowing for medical reasons, the experts said. Thomas Vincent, deputy director of innovation at the FSA, said: “The food system is always evolving and as a regulator, we need to keep pace with that and keep pace with the industry so that we can help ensure new products are safe.” He said there was a need to ensure new production methods meet food safety and hygiene standards, allergies are considered as part of safety assessments, and nutrition and diet are considered – so if a lab-grown food is replacing meat it provides what consumers would family owns Gypsy and several other eateries. Other restaurants are turning to older sources of fuel. Gurudath, at The Pizza Bakery in Bengaluru, said its purchase of wood had soared. “We were using 300 kilos of wood a week, now it’s about 450 600 kilos,” he said, explaining they had turned off the gas burners that help the ovens retain heat. Additional costs Daniel Rodrigues, owner of Mon Petit Frere cafe in tourist hub Goa, said “the government really needs to step in”. “There’s a lot of uncertainty right now, and we’re not sure where this

lettuce in highly-controlled indoor spaces, with nutrients delivered precisely, to provide crops all year round. Further off in the future the UK could see technologies which use plants as tiny factories to produce specific food ingredients – and “gas fermentation” that uses microbes to convert captured carbon dioxide into single-cell proteins for use in food. The report also looks at “largely conceptual innovations” such as 3D-printed foods, which would allow manufacturers to build foods such as chocolate or mashed potato out of layering edible ingredients from a printer – though these are not expected to reach a broad market in the next five to 10 years. prices of gas cylinders were nearly double the usual rate and called on the government to do “something radical”. India’s top restaurant industry association, meanwhile, has offered a string of tips to save cooking gas. It recommends pre-soaking ingredients such as grains to reduce cooking times and cutting dishes that require long simmering, deep frying or slow cooking. Chinese restaurant Gypsy in Mumbai has cut its steamed dim sum dishes from the menu. “That takes about eight to 10 minutes per portion, the time that the gas has to be on continuously,” said Aditi Limaye Kamat, whose

Restaurants are choosing to close due to a shortage of commercial LPG cylinders in Chennai because of the disruptions in the supply chain amid ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

Report: Lab-grown foie gras, 3D-printed chocolate among future foods

LAB-GROWN foie gras, edible insects and 3D-printed chocolate are among the food innovations likely to reach the UK public within 15 years, German Press Agency (dpa) reported, quoting experts. A new report by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland (FSS) highlights the innovative food technologies that are most likely to transform UK plates by 2035 – and the steps they take to make sure they are safe. Among the technologies that could arrive on British plates soon are foods grown from animal and plant cells in a lab, such as steak, chicken and duck foie gras, with two products already being risk-assessed by regulators and others preparing for

the process. Edible insects can be sold as whole insects or used as ingredients such as powders added to familiar foods, with four species already on sale in the UK for food or animal feed, under temporary arrangements while they undergo safety assessments. The FSA said allergen proteins in crustaceans can also be found in edible insects, which means people with a shellfish allergy could have a similar reaction to eating bug products – making it one of the things that needs to be considered as part of safety assessment for the novel foods. Another food innovation that is already here and becoming increasingly mainstream is “vertical farming”, growing plants such as