(Continued from Post #2).

Obviously, dietary fiber, probiotic bacteria and most part of prebiotics  helping them grow selectively do not enter the blood stream and hence do not support life and growth thru consumption by body tissues. But they still constitute essential constituents of food as they support crucial life functions including immunity. The stand taken by this blog is that they should be considered part of ‘food’. A large part of the dietary anti-oxidants do enter the blood stream and play their critical role in keeping us  safe from dreaded diseases spurred by oxidative reactions. Their case for inclusion is a lot stronger.

Now we are ready to develop our comprehensive ‘working definition’ of ‘food’.

Food: It is an edible substance that consists of any or all of the constituents viz. oils/fats, nutritive carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, minerals, some indigestible but essential complex carbohydrates, probiotic microorganisms and antioxidants  which, in combination with water, sustains life and ensures growth. The literature is replete with detailed introductions to all the constituents but a separate blog post is planned to be devoted to pre- and pro-biotics given their currency, complexity and the potential to make a qualitative difference to life.

Having captured an understanding of health, happiness, life and food and their inter-linkages, let us now try to understand ‘nutrition’ as the essence of food that makes growth and life-sustenance possible.

Nutrition: The gradual transformation of food into constituents that support life and the actual mechanisms of making life happen are exceedingly complex. This fascinating material-to-abstraction transition happening without our conscious awareness is a manifestation of ‘nutrition’. Without any compromise on the utility of this blog, we can define ‘nutrition’ as the conversion of all the food constituents in our body into energy, growth-promoting constituents and factors facilitating life-sustaining physiological processes including resistance to disease. An interesting way to look at nutrition: it is a positive result of the interactions between food constituents, our anatomy and our physiology.  

This brings us to a practical question: what can we comprehensively do to make the most of food and avoid pitfalls?

The impossibility of good ‘food advice for all’: This blog is not about numerical values for specific nutrients translating into numerical values of which foods will provide those. Innumerable open sources exist for that. There are the following additional reasons for avoiding it here:

1. Working out your own food requirements can be a simple but creative exercise for you which can be validated by your preferred information resource and, most importantly, your own experience.
2. The variations in requirements on the basis of gender, level of physical activity, special anatomical/physiological status (e.g. pregnancy or illness of any kind), climate, age etc.
3. Availability and affordability factors.
4. History, cultural and individual preferences.
5. Individual levels of health and priority allotted to health.
6. Everybody’s innate GI physiology and immunology.
7. This blog is meant to multiply the benefits of your innate or worked-out understanding of your food requirements thru deep insights in what food is and how it works. It is meant to empower you to leverage food to uplift your life. However, here is some immediate advice for avoiding damages. 

Some immediately relevant food advice: Though it is obvious, it goes largely unnoticed that we engage with foods of 3 fundamental categories: (i) bought-out processed and packaged food that may occasionally be ready-to-cook rather than ready-to-eat, (ii) bought-out cooking inputs like fruits, vegetables, green and dry spices, oils and oilseeds, milk and its products, cereals and grains, pulses or lentils, etc. and (iii) food cooked at home.

We obviously have control over the first category only in terms of how much of what we buy. In order to make your decisions informed and involved, the next four posts will take you deep into the world of food processing. We will look at the implications of consuming those packets of ground spices, butter, bread, biscuits, jam, cooking oils, etc., the first and the immediate one of which is that it spurs their production. Not all food processing is unconditionally beneficial e.g. both industrial and domestic processing (which we call cooking), adversely affects our immediate and the distant environment that causes climate disasters. It is one of the stated objectives of this blog to initiate a debate on examining the possibilities of eliminating frivolous or avoidable processing and cooking. Of course, the benefits of food processing far outweigh the flaws; otherwise, it wouldn’t have survived for so long.

The second category is nature’s gift to us with little meddling by humans. The onus of ensuring that we use them efficiently is on us and a couple of blog posts will later be devoted to advice on doing that.

The third and the most important category is entirely in our control and tremendous value can be derived from managing it smartly. Several posts are planned on it including, believe it or not, how to use your daily cooking utensils – non-stick as well as ordinary!

But all that is in the future; here’s the here-and-now advice that can start working for you immediately:

(i) ‘Salt kills’ is the title of a book by a renowned American cardio-thoracic surgeon of Indian origin. Less is always better. Do your liquid or semi-liquid dishes thick with water that’s just enough. All the extra water needs salting! Remember that tomato ketchup, soy sauce, pickles (achar), papads, chutneys and salty-spicy snacks are great but they bring in salt that ‘flies under the radar’. Salty-savoury snacks, especially those with cooking soda (typically Gujarati ganthia and fafda) are seriously harmful if eaten consistently because soda is equally harmful. Very gradually decrease salt usage in home-cooked food till your taste buds get used to a roughly 30% lower salt levels and then firmly sustain it.

(ii) Variety is not just the spice of life, it is essential for life. Vary your vegetables, fruits, pulses or lentils (daals), legumes and beans (kathol), oils, oilseeds, cereals etc. regularly. We Trivedi’s cook a lot with mixed pulses, beans, vegetables, fruits and even edible oils! 

(iii) Make the most of seasonal availability. Juicy flat tomatoes, usually available only in the winter, can be used throughout the year if its puree’ is frozen. Ditto mangoes and strawberries.

(iv) Prefer cooking at home; it can be therapeutic. Nothing bonds you better than helping cook in the kitchen. Saves money. Stimulates, entertains and informs you. Win, win, win. Is it tough? Nah. If you really establish a wavelength with this blog, you should be inspired to do it. Watch Jamie Oliver do it!

 

(v) Sugar intake thru tea/coffee is inevitable; stay aware of all the sugar that ‘flies in below the radar’. Be even more aware of all the sugar that you use in cooking at home. Check your fasting and post-prandial (pp) or after-the-meal serum glucose levels (along with HbA1C) at least once every year. If all is well, no harm in enjoying your sweet dishes but ensure that all your sugar intake works for you. Prefer smoothies, milkshakes, halwas, protein drinks, chyavanprash, fruits, juices, fruit preserves, yoghurts etc. over aerated drinks, sherbets, toffees, excessive amounts of tea and coffee, biscuits and cookies, the Gujarati way of eating generous servings of sweet dishes as a part of the meal, etc.

(vi) Soybean oil is the only mainstream oil bringing in the omega-3 fatty acid (linolenic acid – an essential fatty acid) in significant quantity. (Canola oil started out as an oil that lacked the harmful constituents of mustard/rapeseed oil and had the linolenic acid edge. Unfortunately, it now has too many genetic clones with different fatty acid make ups. But its original version, still available rather expensively even in India, is a good source of that omega-3 fatty acid). Ensure that you weave it into your cooking – both pure and blended with your favourite unrefined oil like groundnut and mustard. Longer chain omega-3 fatty acids (mainly DHA and EPA)  can come from fish oils and flaxseed. The latter makes a great mukhwas and khichadi ingredient and its powder, a great addition to lassi’s, curds, khichadi, daals etc. Roast flaxseed only if moist; usually the act of grinding produces enough heat to dry it up. If you do roast, do it very carefully in a thick-bottomed vessel on a very low flame with continuous bottom-scraping stirring for a few seconds. Essentially, optimize time-temperature to dry up the seeds and develop a mild roasting flavor without damaging the delicate fatty acids. A separate post is planned on using your fingers as that scraper!

(vii) You will usually not go wrong with pulses or lentils (daals), legumes and beans (kathol), milk and its products – especially paneer (cottage cheese), curd/lassi/chhachh/mattha, green leafy vegetables, tomatoes, green spices, seasonal fruits and vegetables and millets. In quantities consistent with your requirements.

(viii) It is practically useful to adopt ‘super-dishes’ rather than ‘super-foods’.  A few examples of simple, imaginative dishes: 1. Leftover boiled chhole (bold chickpea)-spinach-tomato subji cooked your style. We never boil chhole (and Rajma and Black-eyed beans or Chauli or Lobia) for one-time dish; the deliberate left-overs make patties/salads/soups/subji/paratha over the next few days. There is also non-trivial fuel-efficiency in doing so. 2. Paratha made from leftover palak-paneer subji – stuffed or body-embedded.  (iii) Oats-nuts porridge in skimmed milk with sugar/stevia/sugar-stevia, flavoured your way and garnished with chopped seasonal fruit.

The comprehensive food-health-happiness-life link: Essentially, all the food components like carbohydrates, oils/fats and proteins ensure liberation of energy for all our work, maintain growth and keep our physiological processes including our natural immunity going. Thus food primarily maintains life and growth. That food can give us happiness in the process of eating and thru benefits of health is obvious. Thus the linkage of food with happiness is both direct and indirect.

 The importance of regular exercise, a positive and cheerful disposition, personal and community hygiene and a meaningful family and societal life etc. in healthy and happy life cannot be overlooked. The food turns out to be the ‘force multiplier’ that significantly enhances the effects of these factors; the total is more than the sum of its parts.  Because of its periodic and sustained role in our lives, food offers a unique opportunity to improve and sustain health thru habit. Not exploiting this tool, would be an opportunity lost in today’s competitive times which demand efficiencies all around.

(Visit ‘disclaimer’.)

Next post: Industrial food processing: Part I, Their evolution and present status