Revival of mahua is taking place not only in bottles, but also in boxes and jars.

 

Mahua laddu, pickle or raisin are entering the mainstream and enticing people from all walks of life. A quick search of mahua laddu in Google will lead to an array of options (Wild Harvest, Bastar Foods, Jash Pure, Chhattisgarh herbals, Forest Post, Aazol, Aranya and many more) ready to serve such delicacies.

 

And the real importance of such value-added mahua products is not how well these are getting integrated in the mainstream but how much value (both social and economic) it is generating for the mahua-people who are involved with mahua for generations.

 

Few of the concerns we highlighted above may be still valid, but transparency is relatively much better here, as the involvement of the community is higher. Self-help groups, rewriting their fates with mahua laddus can be traced across rural India. And the best part in such livelihood efforts is the problem of alcoholism is absent here.

 

Now, here is one word of caution and the same word for relaxation (depending on who is looking for what)!

Mahua laddu or any edible product of it won’t make you high!!

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So, if you are looking at it for recreational purposes, you picked the wrong one. To clarify further, mahua flower is no different from grapes or barley in this matter which are regularly used to make alcohol. Until and unless, mahua is fermented, it’s not alcohol.

 

Now, one more word of caution:

You may not like the taste of a mahua laddu! Don’t get disappointed, we request you to give mahua laddu another chance, it may be that particular recipe that might have disappointed you. The recipes differ a lot from region to region, our taste buds have preferences suiting our regional demand. So, give it a try.

One thing we can vouch for is when even the Michelin star chefs are using mahua flowers as a key ingredient for their recipe or replacing liquid chocolate with mahua syrup, then there must be something special about it.