The incredible Indian diet
Many hundreds of years ago, there was a school in a village. And right outside it lived a cat. Every morning, as soon as the kids assembled and school was about to start, the cat would show up and meow, asking for food. The teachers and students realised that the only way to stop the cat from meowing was to feed the cat. So they fed the cat. The cat shut up. And they started school. The cat made a habit out of this and the practice of feeding a cat continued for so long that it became a tradition.
Many years passed and the school was shut down. A few decades later, the school was reopened. The villagers gathered to watch their kids attend their first day in the new school. Just as school was about to start, one of the kids’ parents stood up and said, “We need to feed the cat before we start school.” And the teacher said, “Which cat?” The parent said, “It is tradition to feed a cat before we start school and so it needs to be done.” But there was no cat. So, the villagers found a cat, brought the cat to school, fed the cat and then started school. Everyone was happy and the tradition continued.
Sometimes, traditions are solutions to problems that don’t exist anymore. They may have once been perfect solutions and may have served us greatly. But, with time, they don’t serve the same purpose. They need to evolve. Without evolving, they stop being relevant solutions and continue living on as one of those things that “we need to do because that’s how we have always done it”.
The carbohydrate-dominant Indian diet is an example. If we do a complete macronutrient breakdown of a typical Indian meal, we will learn that it contains mostly carbohydrates, with moderate amounts of fat and minimal protein and vegetables. But there was a reason for this.
Back in the day, life was much less comfortable and much more active. And so, our dietary requirements and food systems were quite different. First, we needed much more energy on a daily basis to be able to complete all the work (mostly physical) we had to. This was necessary just to maintain one’s body weight. Because everything required movement.
From sourcing water to doing daily chores to cooking to working to visiting, everything involved, or rather demanded, movement. Second, energy was not as easy to procure. Food storage and increasing shelf life were not as simple a deal as it is today. Commercial refrigeration was not invented till the 1850s, and the household fridges we take for granted today weren’t available till about a hundred years ago.
And third, since we had to consume more energy on a daily basis, we used grains and other calorie-dense (but nutrient-scarce) foods as vehicles to transport the required nutrients to the body. This is why every Indian meal contains a starchy food item along with which protein and vegetables are consumed.
So back then, eating a lot of rice or roti or other starch-dominant foods and making them the centre of the meal made perfect sense. This way, we got the calories we needed and we were able to get in the required nutrients from the sides, which were typically vegetables and/or meat. But today, this way of eating doesn’t serve us the same way. Because it is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist anymore.
Today’s problem is that our bodies experience an abundance of energy and a scarcity of nutrients. We are overfed but undernourished. The solution to this problem is what we’ve been discussing all along – mindful eating aimed at balancing energy and nutrients.
This does NOT mean that Indian food is unhealthy. In fact, Indian food, with its innumerable vegetable-based dishes, health-promoting spices and millions of traditional yet easily modifiable recipes, has the potential to be one of the healthiest ways of eating. The only thing – we need to evolve. We need to address the problem we are facing today instead of addressing the problem we were facing hundreds of years ago. And, practically, that just means eating more protein and vegetables and less starch and sugar. Simple, not easy. Wouldn’t you agree?
If it is homemade, it is healthy
Well, not really. First, it is important to differentiate between health and hygiene. Hygiene is about preventing infections through cleanliness. Health is about promoting well-being through nutrients. Home food can certainly be more hygienic than food from a store or a restaurant. This is because kitchens in homes are usually cleaner and ingredients are handled more cautiously. This will indeed help us with general safety and prevent us from picking up infections and food-borne illnesses. But how health-promoting a food is depends on the ingredients and the quality and quantity of each ingredient rather than on where it is cooked.
Typically, pizza is not considered health-promoting but a salad is. This is because when I say “pizza”, you’re imagining a decadent one loaded with cheese and all your favourite toppings. And when I say salad, you’re imagining a bowl of simple vegetables with a light dressing. But technically, a pizza can be made to be health-promoting and a salad can be the absolute opposite. How about a thin-crust pizza with a tomato sauce base, low-fat high protein mozzarella cheese loaded with grilled chicken and vegetables? And how about a salad that contains plenty of dried fruit and fried protein and is doused in a deliciously creamy dressing?
The deal with home food is the same. If the choice of ingredients is right and they are high in quality and optimal in quantity, home food is absolutely health-promoting. But if it is the opposite, then it doesn’t matter in which kitchen it is cooked and who cooked it with how much love the food will not be health-promoting.
Take, for instance, a plate of homemade biryani cooked with plenty of meat and just enough fresh oil. Compare it with a biryani that you order off the street. Which one is more health-promoting? The homemade one, of course. Why? Not because it was made at home but because it has a better nutrient split and fresh cooking oil compared with what you may get on the street or in a restaurant. Now, compare a plate of poached eggs, toast and a side of sauteed vegetables ordered from a restaurant against a homemade meal of poori and chole. Which one is more health-promoting?
The eggs, toast and vegetables meal. Though cooked outside, it contains ingredients that are more health promoting and is cooked using methods that are more health-promoting. So, while home food has a safe and comforting feel to it, do remember that health is less about where a meal is being cooked and more about what is being used, how much of it is being used and how it is being cooked.
Excerpted with permission from Simple, Not Easy: A No-Nonsense Guide to Fitness, Nutrition and Weight Loss, Raj Ganpath, Westland.
