Modernising traditional Indian butter churning process

Abstract

According to the annual Food & Health Survey from the International Food Information Council, more than four out of five consumers say the coronavirus pandemic has changed their food habits (for good), driving them to cook, eat, shop and think about food differently. The increasing preference for clean foods and home-cooking creates a space for innovations to emerge in the cooking space.

Churning fresh butter in the mornings is a part of Indian culture and tradition, and is done by a large number of families. Readily available packaged butter is laced with trans fats, excessive salt, and unnecessary preservatives, but is still preferred over consuming freshly churned butter which has the goodness of higher milk proteins, saturated fats and vitamin D and A. This is due to the fact that only a few modernized hand-operated devices are available on the market, and they perform inefficiently. While the traditional Indian butter churner is efficient, it still requires complex setup, and leaves the equipment messy.

Through practice-led research methods, the project aims to determine a suitable mechanism which could simplify and convert the traditional Indian butter churning mechanism, make it easy to set up and use while ensuring that the new device requires less physical effort to operate, like the Indian technique. The selected topic thus also aims to give a more general sense on the design process in the industrial design discipline and emphasises the importance of prototyping. Therefore, the thesis is mainly positioned as a practical work of industrial design.

The result of this research validates the efficiency and convenience of the traditional Indian butter churning technique. The end outcome of the thesis is a simplified version of this technique, which is highly functional by making use of a simple power spring mechanism. The new device requires less time and arguably does not feel as tiresome as the other hand-operated devices available on the market. Lastly, the device requires only two parts to assemble to make it operational, thus being easier to set up and clean.