New Delhi, Oct. 17 -- People often find it hard to accept that ordinary dal, chana and rajma may do more to feed their resident microbes than a fancy probiotic. Probiotics feel like an intervention; fibre merely feels like eating. That active-intervention bias is powerful. A capsule or artisanal kombucha feels medical, while a bowl of rajma feels mundane. The rajma feeds an existing ecosystem; the capsule mainly feeds the nutraceutical company.

Traditional Indian fermented foods are often sold back to us as 'ancient probiotics', a framing that borrows the probiotics industry's logic and applies it backwards.

Commercial dahi is made with a defined starter culture chosen to produce the same flavour and texture batch after batch. Home dahi...