How much of a basic resource is food
Do you remember in childhood, science teacher taught us three important resources are food, clothing shelter. From that truth, we have traveled a long way, where you play tantrums with your mom or friends being a picky eater, eating just the right amount so you don’t show the extra loads of calories on your body or eat so much in a potluck dinner that you don’t feel like to eat anymore for the next day. But irony is you feel hungry when clock strikes lunch time the next day. Did you realize how amazing the human body works in digesting the food and getting ready to kick start the next day.
What about the new trendy diets like keto , whole 30 and lots more.
Do we really need those? Can’t we just go back to our age old roots like mom’s chapathi and rajma(kidney beans)curry or idli and sambar. I feel that life is a vicious circle and so is our eating habitat.We tend to start off with our roots while growing up, then try to follow a fancy lifestyle so to say like having a bowl of quinoa or brown rice, eating chia seed pudding for breakfast and then finally one day you get the realization what is that this is offering more and different, which the home cooked food doesn't offer.
What is the major difference between a white rice and brown rice?
A family who has eaten all their life white rice, why do they need to switch suddenly to brown rice? Because it has been marketed by the nutritionists and food chain industries that it has less calories. All the food chains have tried to en-cash the mindset of consumers and this fancy aspect so well, that people have actually stopped thinking and just blindly following the trend. Well the truth is farmers work so hard in getting the husk (brown stuff) off from the rice, refine it to be edible, which leads to the end product that is white rice. I am not saying to eat white rice just to value their effort, but to understand the need of it. White rice takes faster time in cooking and also easily digestible. When you eat brown rice, it does not go well with all the vegetables, it doesn't taste as good as white rice does. Then what’s the point of curbing our taste buds and not feeling good about what you eat. Instead just have small portions of white rice with veggies you love to eat and make it count. If you don’t enjoy what you eat, you won’t be able to maintain that diet for too long. One has to learn to maintain the same diet, but just try to do portion control. To keep it simple, we need to sustain with our value system and roots and try to maintain the eating habitats of the culture we have grown in. Let’s pick the local veggies and fruits available within our eco system and come up with eating habits according to that, instead of relying on a fancy named exported food product , which does not seem to be fresh and has a high price tag on it.
One might argue on the amount of carbs rice has. If your particular on increasing protein intake, try to increase more legumes in your diet like green gram sprouts, egg whites, nuts, grilled fish, lean meats. I have seen many people mention vegetarians are missing a lot on proteins and also have this notion that eating chicken daily is good for health. Contrary to that eating chicken once a week is a better diet plan and including more of veggies, fruits, kidney beans, green gram sprouts, chick peas, hummus is a better option. This diet holds good to people who have day jobs sitting all day at their desks , but athletes can regularly have high protein meat in their diets because their job consists more of physical activity and they get to burn the calories what they eat. At work hours try to have a balanced healthy diet which feels lighter to stomach and makes you feel active and lets you focus on work. I have heard people mention they eat a lot of food at lunch and feel sleepy in the afternoon at work and then gulping up loads of caffeine to get over the sleep. As the old wives tale suggests , one must try to eat dinner by 7 PM so the food gets digested before you sleep. I have been practicing this from many years and it feels so good.
Cooking also plays an essential part in our eating style. When you cook your own food , you know what goes into, how much effort you have taken and made the dish, what are the ingredients and you tend to value the food better and assess for yourself how much you want to serve in your plate. I have noticed people saying, they end up eating a lot outside in restaurants or in parties. We don’t know when to stop when there are lot of food choices.One can crack the code to it. It is simple!! Try to explore the options and pick three to four of your favorites.Serve yourself one serving of appetizer, side dish and main course and try to engage in a conversation with people and slowly relish the food. Always keep room for dessert and have it.Human tendency is to fill your stomach totally with main course and then have a dessert and we need to start getting better to control our self on that.
Studies and research have shown that one of the reason behind child obesity is involving in a lot of binge eating with friends while playing video games, sitting long hours in front of television while eating and having lot of junk food outside. We need to set rules as parents in house, to have dinner at dining hall and engage in conversations instead of watching television. I know its a tough job as a parent to come home after a hectic day at work and do the daily chores and then try to set these rules and put up with our kids. Lets try to concentrate on eating and allocate a separate time for that, as we give other activities. Because even as adults we tend to end up eating extra food while watching TV. Every time you eat a meal there is a specific point of time, where your mind tells you “that’s enough, your stomach is full”, but rarely do we listen to our mind.We listen to our stomach and just try to satisfy it over and over again. Its time that we stop listening to stomach and start listening to our mind on “How much of a basic resource is food ?”.
