FOOD : Lets Revamp Its Understanding.

  “Annam Brahma Raso Vishnu, Pakto Devo Mahesvarah
   Evam Gayatva Tu Yo Bhunkte, Anna Dosho Na Lipyate”

This Shloka verbalize “the creative energy in the food is Brahma, the nourishing energy in the body is Vishnu, the transformation of food into our consciousness is Shiva and if we know this, then any impurities in the food we eat will never become a part of us”.

Now why am apprising this with you all because ofttimes I scrutinize, our mindset towards food is paradigmly changing. Today each one of us want to acquire a healthy life and unequivocally myriads of us are diligently working their fingers to the bone- be it physically active through exercise, yoga, walk, running etc; chomping a healthy diet like: living on salads, soups, smoothies by following many fad diets but still we are unfit somewhere and the contestants of weight loss journey programme have also wearied themselves by starvation, still not procured the expected results or if so then that too on short term basis.

Let’s ask our own selves- Where we are falling short? I mean if we are following a healthy lifestyle then why we are still in this endless loop of not getting actually fitter.

Firstly understand, being healthy doesn’t mean you are merely free from any illness or if you look slimmer then that will depicts how much fitter you are. But being healthy is all about our physically, mentally and social well being, that’s it. No matter how much time you are draining your energy in gyms and galloping extravagance foods but up till-until our familiarity towards “food etiquette” not mutate then we can’t acquire a good health status.

Do you know “Okinawan people” are the longest living and healthy people on earth. They have strong beliefs and practices about food & diet. According to them “food maketh the man” and the food they eat is “nuchi gusui” or medicine for life. Not only this according to our Indian civilisation and Old literatures, every community that lived here have clear abundant separate food beliefs systems- they considered food as a source of strength & gift from god.

Food is one of the most important aspect of our life. According to many researches, food plays 80% and exercise 20% for a person to stay fit and healthy. Understand the whole human body is designed in a very complex form, everything works in a systematic manner. Our body tailored somewhere with our ancestor genes which need some kind of foods but our marathon on becoming fitter have lost the essence towards our traditional beliefs like “Ayurveda” whose sole principles are being followed by all over the world except us and traditional foods over exotic foods which are not only native to our land but also provides round about the same amount of nutrients than our own land grown local foods.

Here I want to draw your attention towards the most important ingredient of our life “food” which not only gives us energy and stamina for work but also gives emotional stability and security. And please don’t forget the right kind and amount of food gives us the appearance and feeling of radiant good health through good nutrition.

What is Food? More than you think…

Food is something which nourishes our body (our brain, muscles, bones, blood, skin, appearance etc all are made of it) or should I say it is the raw material from which our body is made.

Even “Shreemat Bhagwat Geeta” our holy book also affirms, “ Anant Bhavani Bhootanee”- which means human being is made from food. If you are still not compelled then do notice how we get developed from the single cell our mothers conceived to the present size ( It’s all because of food). Not only this it provides lot of functions:

• Physiological Functions: It builds your body, provides you energy, regulate all the activities of body and protect from infections also.
• Psychological Functions: It satisfies certain emotional needs – have you wondered how much secure, love, attention we felt when familiar foods are served and when we share our food with our friends then we express acceptance & friendship by experiencing such foods which are unfamiliar to us.
• Socio-cultural Functions: We know the importance of food in our culture. Indian culture is full of festivals, celebrations, religious times and days which becomes the source of family & friend gatherings. Through this, food helps to strengthen our social and cultural ties.

Concept of Balanced Diet:

Now we know being healthy means that we are following healthy diet, agreed, but that can not only achieved by having salads, soups, smoothies or by loosing your cultural Indian diet. Please understand, Balanced diet means, when you are taking different types of food from all food groups in such quantities and proportions so that the requirements of calories, carbs, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals & other nutrients are adequately met and a small provision is reserved for extra nutrients to endure short length of leanness. Simple concept!

Let’s Enlarge our knowledge about Basic Food groups:

1. Energy giving foods: From this group our body majorly obtains carbs, fats with fair amount of vitamins and minerals like: wheat, rice, bajra, root vegetables, fats & oil, sugar, jaggery etc.
2. Body building foods: These foods are rich in protein, with good amount of vitamins, complex vitamins and generous amount of minerals like: milk, milk products, meat, fish, poultry, pulses, nuts, oil seeds etc.
3. Protective foods: These foods are the excellent source of minerals and vitamins. These food contains large amount of antioxidants like: green leafy vegetables, yellow/orange rich fruits and veggies, dairy foods, eggs etc. This food group protects our body from infections and diseases.

Present scenario of our food understanding:

You will be agree that in this era of globalisation, there is interdependence of the worlds economies, cultures and populations by cross border trade in goods and services, food, technologies, cultural practices etc all over the planet. And with this we the health conscious species are opting the foods from other food traditions by displacing our food cultures from their roots by making them unhealthy.

Disagree, I know. Let me tell you what we are following:

• Nutritious is not always expensive: We are living in the myth that the food which is highly expensive is highly nutritious. We all agree how enthusiastically we buy exotic fruits & veggies like: kiwis, imported berries, dragon fruit, avocados, broccoli, zucchini, red cabbage, etc with a thought that they are more nutritious but do ask yourself is it so….because the time it arrives to your plate from its journey ( plucking, storage, preservation, transportation) from its native place, will it give you the same amount of nutrition than your local & seasonal ones?
• Starving is not the solution: Many of us think being healthy and fit is something related to starving yourself from food. Thanks to all who are following unreligiously fad diets- keto diet, paleo diet, atkins diet, south beach diet, juice cleanse diet and lot of different variants. Congratulations they are just lowering their metabolism, getting fatigue & nutrient deficient. In short playing with our gene expression (or how our cell responds to their changing environment).
• The so called “cheat days”: I mean seriously this one day of celebration of eating unhealthy foods have different impacts on each individual. For some it may satisfy the need or may boost their metabolism and aid weight loss according to research but for others it leads to uncontrollable and continuous binging for multiple days and even weeks.
• Healthy ready made foods- Is it so: There are lot of food industries which are selling their foods through advertisement by labelling them healthier or sugar free be it yours easy to make any cuisines, breakfast cereals, packed juices, nutritious healthy drinks, sugar free snacks, baked bakery items, canned foods etc. But actually these are the foods which are responsible for your all sort of lifestyle disease. Mind not your traditional foods.
• Inappropriate meal timings: Many of us are eating our meals in completely inappropriate way, like: Most of us are doing our breakfast in the noon and lunch in between (3 – 4), and then dinner probably, when we should sleep. To my surprise, we still think that why we are obese or with full of diseases.
• Wrong food combinations: This might irritates you but it’s a bitter truth- the way we are eating varieties of fruits / vegetable & fruits combinations / raw & cooked ones together in one go (or) adding milk, creams to our curries preparation etc, is completely against the Ayurveda because these wrong combinations are accumulating the toxins in our body and many form of health issues.
• Forgetting our rich and diverse traditional foods: We are living in a menace that we might get obese, diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiac problems, cholesterol etc because our Indian food is linked to high sugar and high carbs and with this we are ignoring our staple diet and traditional foods which is a combination of varieties of nutritious cereals, grains pulses, our local vegetables with combinations of spices.

Tips for long term achievement :

   Suddham Sumadhuram Snighdham Udarardhavivarjitama|
    Bhujyate Surasam Pritha Mitaharamimam Vidu:||

It means, pure, sweet (natural) & cooling (easy to digest) should be eaten with pleasure to fill half the stomach and leaving the other half of the stomach empty is called Mitahar ( moderate or balanced food). Not understood, let me briefly tell you:

1. Eat mindfully and peacefully without any distractions (mobile, T.V, talking, working etc), this will make you not to overeat. Always have a right quantity and quality of food. By doing so we are lightening the burden of our digestive team and in return they gonna do their job in more enthusiastic way like: digestion, absorption, assimilation of nutrients from your food to the fullest.
2. Try to have fixed meal timings like: breakfast- should be before 9, lunch- before 2, dinner- before 8 (2-3 hours prior to ours good night sleep). Trust me half of your health problems will get plummeted.
3. Say no/eat less/use mindful approach towards processed & packaged food stuff. Believe me they won’t backing you in any type of nutrition but yeah responsible for diabetes, obesity, hypertension, heart ailments, high cholesterol and even cancer.
4. Eat a well-balanced meal with no fear of eating chappatis, rice, homemade ghee( in moderation), dairy foods, fruits, vegetables, nuts, etc. Understand our body needs everything in moderation and the love, affection, care and hygiene a person avail oneself while cooking homemade foods, even our 5 star or 7 star hotel can’t beat it.
5. Enlighten yourself by simple food combining rules: Best way to eat fruits: alone or empty stomach; don’t eat acid fruits( lemon, Lime, grapefruit, orange etc) with sweet fruits; melons should be eaten alone; don’t take proteins ( coconut, nuts, seeds) with oily fruit( avocado) or with carbs (potatoes, sported beans/ grains, squash etc); cheese not works well with fruits, beans, egg, milk, yogurt, hot drinks & so on.
6. Why we are forgetting our traditional foods like- fermented foods( idli, dosa, dhokla, ambali, selroti etc) which aid our gut with Homo & Hetero fermentive lactic acid bacterium, essential vitamins, minerals, antioxidants etc; dahi (potential source of B- complex vitamins, folive acid, rich in lactic acid bacteria); Rabri (it is a lactic acid fermented milk product with pearl millet (bajra) which has lower glycemic index); ginna (a colostrum based Indian sweet- rich in vitamin A, minerals, zinc, lactoferrin protein etc).
7. Understand traditional foods have less calories which are essential for weight management; less saturated fat- so better for heart; more iron- better for muscles and bones; more zinc- better for wound healing and fight against infections.
8. Go for seasonal and local food, this approach will give you surplus amount of vital nutrients which your body will absorb easily with less preservatives, chemicals and yeah it is pocket friendly too.