Food Woes

Is there enough food? How do we get it to people? What is its quality? These common questions all concern supply; people spend a lifetime addressing them, and if you closely examine any one, you’re ensnared in a complex web.

Like many professionals, I often succumb to the temptation to work late and eat out with friends. That experience, effortless and pleasurable in anticipation, is usually expensive — even when it’s at a theoretically inexpensive restaurant — and frustrating; more often than not it’s unsatisfying. (Note that this means it’s also sometimes satisfying, which is why I keep doing it; it’s a gamble.)

 When I cook, though, everything seems to go right. I shop an average of every two weeks in a supermarket, and make a couple of trips a week to smaller stores. I’m aware that my choices are mostly imperfect, but I rarely conclude that I should make a burger and fries for dinner or provide a pound per person of prison-raised pork served with fruit from 10,000 miles away, followed by a cake full of sugar and artificial ingredients. Yet, for the most part, that describes restaurant food.

This time of year, I’ll buy local greens and local fish and wind up eating half or less of the food I would have if I had eaten out. Dessert only happens if someone else buys or makes it because it’s just too much work.

That’s pretty much it. The investment is minimal: A quick shopping trip takes me a half-hour, including the walk or drive. The time spent eating is relaxing and uninterrupted by the insipid ritual: “Is everything tasting to your liking?” or “You guys O.K.?” It takes 10 minutes to clean up. And not to mention the happiness on the face of my husband because I cooked him a meal.

Compared with a restaurant, the frustrations and annoyances are minimal, the food is not all that bed, unquestionably healthier and more environmentally friendly, and much less expensive.

It’s not that I’m unconcerned about the supply side. I can’t help bugging myself with questions about whether the food I buy is “good” enough: pesticides? Fertilizer? Carbon footprint? Fair pay for farmers?
But that is easily taken care of really. Organic variants actually take care of those queries. And if you are worried about the slightly higher cost then stop cribbing!

Buy things that you feel answer to your standards, and you’ll be a cut above most restaurant food in every category. You’ll know exactly what you’re putting in your mouth and how much of it. You’ll move in the right direction, cooking and eating less meat and junk and more plants.

I recognize that I’m privileged with my cooking skills, though, in fact, I have friends who are better cooks than I am, who have access to better food and who have more leisure. I recognize, too, that there are many people for whom time and money and skills and even access are challenges. The thing, though, is not to discount this argument simply because not everyone is in a position to benefit from it, but rather to use it to benefit those it can, and to create the same possibilities for everyone.

Benefits of consuming dal everyday!

I am sure that our earliest childhood memory is that of our mothers shoving dals down our throats while we fantasized about junk food. Personally, dal is the only left over dish after every meal in my house! But just as I have insisted before, I insist again – our traditions were built on strong foundations that were designed for us to live in harmony with nature and our own bodies. Here is a snapshot of all the goodness a bowl of dal has to offer:

Get more iron: Beans and Lentils are good sources of iron, which is required for the production of hemoglobin in the blood. Iron deficiency can lead to anemia. Combine iron-rich legumes with good sources of Vitamin C (such as oranges, lemon, tomatoes, guava etc) to increases your body's ability to absorb the iron. One cup of beans and lentils provide 30 to 37 percent of the daily value (DV) for iron.

Maintain your weight by reducing food cravings: A research published in 2008 found that people who consumed beans regularly had a 22 percent reduced risk of obesity as compared with people who hadn't regularly eaten beans. The research also found that bean-eaters had a greater probability of having a smaller waist size. According to researchers, the soluble fiber in beans slows down the rate of digestion and this allows the feeling of being full to stay for a longer period of time.

Get More Protein: Legumes are considered as good-quality sources of proteins. When combined with a whole grain such as brown rice, legumes provide protein comparable to that of meat or dairy foods without the high calories or saturated fat found in these foods. One cup of cooked lentils provides around 35 percent of the daily protein requirement, and one cup of cooked beans provides around 30 percent of the daily requirement.

Prevent Birth Defects: A woman who is trying to conceive should consider including sources of folate in her diet. Folate prevents birth defects, and you can get more than 80 percent of your daily folate requirement from one cup of cooked lentils! Beans also contain significant amounts of folate. For example, one cup of cooked kidney beans provides 57 percent of the daily folate requirement.

Bring Down the Risk of Cancer: Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health examined a dietary data of 90,360 women who fell in the age group of 26 to 46 years. The data revealed that the women who ate beans and lentils for at least twice a week had a 25 percent lower risk of suffering from breast cancer than those who ate legumes just once a month. Legumes fight obesity and this way it prevents the development of obesity related cancers. Refined carbs fuel the cancer cells with sugar and when these foods are replaced with legumes, the body would develop the immunity to fight cancer.

Lowers the risk of heart disease: Beans and lentils, being high in soluble fiber, can help lower total cholesterol as well as LDL ("bad") cholesterol. Soluble fibers binds to bile acids (necessary for fat digestion) made by the liver from cholesterol and carry it to intestine for defecation. As a result, the liver must use additional body stores of cholesterol to manufacture new bile acids. A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that people who eat the most fiber, 21 grams per day, had 12 percent less coronary heart disease and 11 percent less cardiovascular disease compared to those eating the least, 5 grams daily.

Now that we are all “grown up” and “independent” we totally have the choice of not choosing dal as part of our meals. But if we did that who is losing out in the end?

The bitter truth

We often read about the “staple diet” of various regions and marvel at the variety the world has to offer. But one particular food item has crept into the lifestyles of very geography, without us even realizing that it now influences almost every dish we prepare. It’s the new staple of the world, it’s devil’s own – sugar.

Its presence is irrefutable. Be it the morning cuppa or the glass of milk or satisfying a craving, sugar plays the vital ingredient. So addicted we are that we blissfully ignore the perils that come with it: obesity, rheumatism, pyorrhea and the occasional but large bills from the dentist. What is worse, if we analyze sugar as a food, it is little more than a cocktail of chemicals. All its nutrients are sacrificed at the altar of consumerism. And what we get are crystals bathed in sulphur dioxide, lime, phosphoric acid, formic acid, bleaching agents and viscosity reducers to name a few.

All that whiteness makes me suspicious

 So what is one to do? We will, under no circumstance, compromise with the taste nor will we give up the traditional yummness that form our early memories. So I googled “substitute for sugar”. Yes, I know what you are thinking. Artificial sweetener was my top bet too. But Google did surprise me, that too pleasantly. The answer it threw at me was jaggery. So I googled jaggery and I stumbled on the following nuggets:

• Ancient medical scriptures dating back to the period 2,500 years ago state how jaggery purifies the blood, prevents rheumatic afflictions and disorders of bile and possesses nutritive properties of a high order.

• Mahatma Gandhi in 1935 exhorted everyone to put gur in their milk and not refined sugar. Gur has a mild laxative effect. It has calcium, phosphorous, iron, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, absorbic acid and a host of other nutrients.

Jaggery or "Gur" is a pure, wholesome, traditional, unrefined, whole sugar. It contains the natural goodness of minerals and vitamins inherently present in sugarcane juice and this crowns it as one of the most wholesome and healthy sugars in the world. It is rich in vitally important minerals. Magnesium strengthens the nervous system and potassium is critical to conserve the acid balance in the cells. It is very rich in iron and prevents anemia. The natural processing of jaggery requires no chemical treatment  but an organic variant can ensure that you totally eliminate it. 

Phew! I don’t remember the last time I had such a long list of virtues for anything. But living close to nature does have its perks. It remains only for us to find and recognize the treasures buried in our traditions.  

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.

Pop goes the myth

Few things really capture the heart and soul of the movie theater experience like a stranger patting your back every time the hero cracks a joke. In the same ballpark is movie theater popcorn. It's an iconic snack associated with the film-going experience and, when chewing gum are not available, it's the next best thing to buy at a 900 percent markup to keep your hands and mouth busy for the next two hours, provided you're not in that back-patting crowd.

Aah, who needs snow!

Since theaters make the majority of their profits off the concession stand, it's no wonder they need to keep costs down as much as possible, which is why most employees seem to have flies buzzing around their heads, and it's also why butter was long ago sacrificed to the gods of conning.

Lately, most places have taken to calling what they put on popcorn "topping" after word got out that butter hadn't seen the inside of a theater since Citizen Kane. The popcorn is often popped in coconut oil and then bathed in hydrogenated soy bean oil, much the way we imagine any super model’s legs right before the ramp walk.

The new mixture, while packing all that delicious butter flavor, also packs your arteries with heart stopping awfulness, so the cost benefit analysis worked more in favor of the theaters than you, supposing you were planning on staving off a heart attack. A large popcorn with this pseudo-butter has as much saturated fat as eight Big Macs.

Take a good look at what you might lose anytime

If you eat too much microwave popcorn, you can wind up in the hospital with popcorn lung. That's right, the popcorn spilled out of his stomach and filled his lungs.

No, just kidding. The truth is much weirder. The "totally not butter" flavoring in microwave popcorn contains the chemical diacetyl, which creates poisonous fumes that can almost totally kill you if you breathe too much of it.

The effects are mostly seen in popcorn factory workers. In fairness, the man who got it from eating popcorn was eating two bags of microwave popcorn a day, so it seemed inevitable some debilitating illness finally caught up with him.

Do you have the freedom of choice?

Buying "free range" eggs is one of the easiest ways to feel good as a consumer -- they are at least as readily available as "normal," mass produced eggs from those horrible giant chicken prisons. Hell, they even cost pretty much the same. There's literally no reason not to buy free range.

According to law, the definition of "free range" is that chickens raised for their meat "have access to the outside." OK ... so that's not quite as free as we assumed, and it appears to only apply to chickens raised for their meat. But at least they still have some freedom, what with the outside and all that.

Words have power, and "free range" in its original sense means unfenced and unrestrained. That makes it a powerful phrase that, no matter how smart we are, conjures subconscious images of freedom hens, riding tiny little freedom horses out on the plains, wearing hen-sized cowboy hats and leaving a happy little trail of delicious freedom eggs in their wake. There may be mandolin music.

But the reality is there are absolutely no regulations whatsoever for the use of the term "free range" on anything other than chickens raised for their meat. The bar of chocolate in your hand could be free range for all the government cares.

Freedom redefined

The industry knows this full well and happily makes us lap up the free range myth, even though in reality a free range hen lives in pretty much the same prison as battery cage hen - except its whole life takes place in a prison shower, rather than a cell.

Awareness of the free range myth is slowly increasing, but although a manufacturer that has been pushing his luck a bit too much does get it back from animal rights every once in a while, that doesn't do much to the overall phenomenon. In fact, Europe is set to ban egg production in cage systems come 2012. Shall we too?