Let Food Lift Life

Cooking: general and oil-mediated – an overview: Our cooking modes are any one or a combination of some of the following: Cooking by boiling is essentially heating food in direct contact with water, e.g. rice, khichadi, Rajasthani gatte. Par-boiling of potatoes, blanching of tomatoes and spinach and cooking of kheers, porridges, firni, chickpea flour mass for Gujarati ‘khandvi’ or ‘patavadi’, daal making etc are versions of boiling. Dry roasting, e.g. peanuts, fennel seeds, dry spices before grinding, aubergine (brinjal, eggplant)…

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Introduction: Edible oils have a tainted, distorted and misinformed image in our life. It probably stems from their wide-spread association with heart disease, obesity and diabetes and vaguely accepted association with illness in general. A detailed case has already been made about their necessity in our life. This creates a dire need for an exhaustive series of posts, spot-lighting how we use oils, how we should be using them, what happens to oils when they are used in a particular…

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Cancer is autonomous, uncontrolled and limitless proliferation of cells at any location in the body that grows by attacking surrounding tissue and spreads (‘metastasizes’) to other tissues and organs. It can be caused by a large number of factors but generally, a change in the immediate, in-contact environment of any part of the body (e.g. nicotine and other tarry and incompletely oxidized chemicals reaching the lungs) is believed to be the primary cause. This can also be viewed as sustained…

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An overview causes and remedies of diabetes: Unless you are (i) hereditarily predisposed, (ii) determinedly obese, (iii) averse to physical exertion, (iv) given to frequent or extended bouts of emotional events and (v) obsessively fond of fatty-sugary sweets (it is difficult to consistently burn away such a calorie load in today’s times), you can certainly hope to stave off diabetes. Note that only the heredity is inevitable; otherwise it boils down to mindful food consumption combined with a cheerful disposition…

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(This post became large as it needed to be coherent and complete; do stay with it). We saw obesity as a rampant chronic condition that creeps up on us thru a series of factors and is measurably reflected in our BMI. (Ref. post 21, Obesity and food – accumulation of the unused: Part I, Understanding obesity). Diabetes is strikingly similar though it creeps in invisibly and is measured only thru analysis. A staggering close to 11 % of world’s adult…

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“I have BP”, has become a damning and, unfortunately, a common confession. Ironically, life is possible only because blood has pressure which sends the blood to the nooks and corners of the body. What we  shouldn’t have is hypertension or excessive BP. What is pressure? It is the force exerted by a fluid (liquids and gases) per unit area of a surface at right angle to it. The atmosphere exerts a pressure on everything on the earth because of the…

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Notes: 1. Do go back frequently to the previous post for reference. 2. As always, this post uses basic science and technology to simplify anatomical and physiological complexities thru ‘models’. The critical and vulnerable nature of the coronary artery: It should be clear that: 1. The coronary is the first branch of the aorta but a lot smaller in size which directly takes heart’s systolic pressure and has to bend and branch profusely as it supplies blood to the heart…

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Introduction: There is no ‘hierarchy’ of importance of our organs; they are all equal, right? But then some are ‘more equal than others’. A kidney is donated, liver and brain are lobotomized (i.e. parts cut off and removed), limbs are amputated, blood is donated, bone marrow is transplanted, reproductive cells are extracted and stored, gall bladders are removed, uterus is excised, the prostate in men is ‘down-sized’ (benign) or removed altogether (malignant)…. and life goes on. But the heart must…

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The best starter to a practical self-help obesity reduction program is to recognize that controllable obesity reduction [-m = (-dm/dt).∆t] is a direct function of your planned food intake, aerobic activity level and time span of sustaining it. (Ref. post 21, OBESITY AND FOOD – ACCUMULATION OF THE UNUSED: PART I (UNDERSTANDING OBESITY)). Obviously, a large dm/dt and ∆t will enlarge m. This m should be derived from the envisaged reduction in BMI.  It is best to adopt this approach…

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(Not surprisingly, sophisticated controls are built into our diet intake and metabolism of its products to rein in unbridled obesity. But various factors – some of them autonomous – can override and nullify these controls. Even if you find the details intricate, do grasp that continuously controlling what you can, can be life-saving as we will see in the next post). It may sound laughable that there could be any intricacy in feeling hungry and stopping eating when satiated. What…

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