Beauty, indeed, is only skin deep

India has an undeniable affinity towards all things shiny. If you don’t believe me, check the quantum of revenue generated by gold jewelry in India or the fact that the fairness creams were the only recession proof products in India. Have you noticed how, even when you shop for groceries, you automatically move towards polished and uniform looking products?

As a result all pulses shine, all grains shine, all fruits shine, even vegetables, you guessed it, shine. But that is not how Nature designed it. Pick anything fresh from the field and it will not dazzle your eyes with polished awesomeness. But beauty, indeed, is only skin deep. Today we pick one such unfortunate basket that lost its sheen to the race of superficial beauty – unpolished wheat products.

It is sad that only well-heeled Indians switch to unpolished food when they are on a diet. Few realize that, apart from the lower fat content, there are many compelling reasons to eat this way. Quoting from a story published in The Hindu, a doctor once asked his students, “What was the single most important factor for the health of the nation at the beginning of World War II?” The answer, “Raising the amount of the grain used to make bread flour from 70% to 85%.” His next question was, “Who do you think made the most complaint about it?” The answer was, “The laxative companies.”

In 1880 the English flour mills began to produce a very fine white flour consisting purely of the endosperm of the grain, sans roughage, vitamins and minerals. The introduction of this very white flour and its very white bread was eagerly taken to by the masses of the country, as it was only the well-to-do who had white bread heretofore, it being very expensive to sieve out through fine muslin.

In 1900s, some twenty years after the introduction of this special white flour, there was this interesting new illness, coronary thrombosis, along with constipation, gastric ulcers, diverticulitis, varicose veins, gall-bladder problems and general ill-health. The one section of the community who knew something has changed was the grannies of English society who could not understand why they were now constipated. So worried were they that colonic washout clubs were formed to deal with the problem.

The other wonder product from the family is brown rice. Brown rice basically refers to unmilled and unpolished rice that we used to eat before rice started coming packed almost to our doorstep. Only the outermost layer, the hull, is removed to produce brown rice. This makes the rice retain all the natural nutrients. The most important benefit is that it prevents heart diseases because it tackles obesity, diabetes and cholesterol. Since the bran is never removed, it is also rich in essential oils and also helps maintain insulin levels.

Coming to the laxative properties, it prevents food from just sitting in your gut and letting the poisons and toxins to be produced by unhealthy anaerobic bowel bacteria. If you allow that to happen it can cause illnesses from acute appendicitis to bowel cancer especially of the large intestine and rectum.

Off late we also see a lot of effort to add the leached original goodness back to the products and sell them under “fortified” or “added fibre” categories. But that is, and can never be, as good as the real thing.

Coming back to beauty being skin deep, brown is rice is great for the skin. It is rich in vitamin E and the bran layer contains zinc and magnesium which can make the skin glow. Oh boy, I love irony.

Be the coolest Mom on earth

Being a mom is the toughest job on this planet. There's nothing like the love surge of a full-body hug or the amazed pride you feel when your toddler takes its first steps! But all this comes with those inevitable pains of feeling exasperated, unnerved, or just surprised. You're ready and willing to do anything in the world to make your child safe and happy. But you see your charm and control slipping away with the growing years.

Going through your child’s adolescence years can be stressful (I agree that is an understatement). Not only do their escapades give you heart burn, you are also worried about what is giving them acidity. Eating junk and unhealthy food, sadly, is what kids equate with cool. No amount of telling them will drive the point home. And a little more telling will drive them to rebellion and you to the nearest mental hospital. Every time they tell you they are “hanging out with friends” you feel like hanging yourself, right?

Now that we are speaking of ropes, let me suggest a better use for it: The tight-rope walk – a fine act of balancing. Many a wise men and women have raved about the virtue of balance. It sure comes in handy. If you think about it you will not have to worry about your children eating unhealthy junk once in a while if a large part of their diet is healthy.

Feeding them organic food regularly will give them a healthy enough lifestyle to combat the occasional evil of temptation. Organic food lends more nutrition to the body helping it develop a better immunity. Not to mention the fact that it is tastier and will help build your reputation around the kitchen simultaneously.

Now let us imagine a scenario. You are telling your children, “It’s been a while since we ordered pizza. How about we order tonight?” Your children are looking at you with a wave of elation in their eyes before breaking into shrieking excitement. Next day the Facebook status of your kid reads, “I have the coolest Mom on earth!” Isn’t it paradise?

Protecting Our Children From Chemical Exposure

Chemicals are all around us. They are being used ubiquitously in our convenience-filled lives today. Is it any surprise then that exposure to these chemicals begins in the womb itself today because of the intrusive farming methods that we have used all these years!

The cord blood that we trust will keep supplying nutrients and oxygen to the developing child, today also supplies many potentially harmful chemicals to the child. Even once the child is born, various persistent organic pollutants (POPs) which are present in pesticides and attach themselves to fatty tissues in humans, reach the child through the mother’s milk.

Pesticides also contain various persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that rather than being flushed out of our bodies, attach themselves to fatty tissues in humans and accumulate. Those fatty tissues are a source of nutrients for mother's milk, so as a mother's body calls on its reserves of fat for lactation, the pollutants go along for the ride, invading mother's milk, and in turn, the baby.

All this exposure to pesticides puts an entire generation ahead of us at serious health risk and switching to an organic diet significantly reduces this pre-natal and neonatal exposure to harmful chemicals. We know that the most rapid development in an infant is in the neonatal stages and exposure to hazardous substances during critical periods of infant development can disrupt the signals of normal development and lead to health problems later in life.

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So how do we protect our children and coming generations from this exposure to chemicals? While policies need to be devised around all sorts of chemical exposure in our daily lives, as individuals the least we can do is switch to organic food and organic products. It could be clothing and our cleaning products, our gardening, how we handle pests in the home, but we need to look for more natural and effective ways of doing things. Every such change, no matter how small, will increase the odds for a healthy life for our children. 

ProNature helps you do that by trying to make organic food accessible easily for adapting into your lifestyle. And we hope to make a significant contribution to healthier lives and happier people in our own way.