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| Health: The Good And Bad Of Indian Food |
Dr. Jyoti Ramakrishna
03/20/2007
As Indians we are very lucky people. Our ancestors figured out things that modern science is just beginning to discover. This applies in many fields but for this article I will stick to the topic of health and nutrition.
Our staple diet consists of roti or rice with some daal (pulses or lentils), legumes (chickpeas, raajma etc), vegetables and yogurt. Fruit is a staple dessert. Protein is in the form of milk, yogurt, lentils and legumes for vegetarians, and additional eggs, meat, chicken or fish for others.
The Good Stuff
Lentils and legumes top the list. You get protein, complex carbohydrates that do not cause swings in blood sugar, and fiber. The dark ones even have some iron. The West has not discovered the magic of this food group and hence they suffer from multiple gastrointestinal maladies.
A variety of vegetables and fruits on a daily basis.
Yogurt which has protein, some fat, some good carbohydrates, and most importantly, good bacteria that keep our gut healthy.
For those of us who eat eggs, chicken and fish in moderation, they are all good sources of protein. Red meat such as beef or pork is forbidden in Hindu (beef and pork) and Muslim (pork) households, thus keeping us away from these unhealthy foods. The Indian non-vegetarian is one who eats non-veg two or three times a week at most, and this is another good thing that we do. Even a non-vegetarian person eats vegetarian food most of the time.
Peanuts, almonds, cashewnuts etc are traditionally considered healthy in small daily servings, and modern research shows this is a good idea to get our omega-3 fats!
We use vegetable oils such as sunflower, safflower, canola etc to cook in.
Whole wheat in the form of rotis/chapattis (Indian flatbread) is another good staple.
Even our snack foods, though fried, have lentils and nuts, we have banana and tapioca chips, the samosas and pakoras have vegetables and chick-pea flour, and many sweets are milk, cream of wheat and chick pea flour based.
The Bad Stuff
A lot of the bad stuff is what we imbibed from Western cultures, although we have a fair share of our own!
One Indian thing is Dalda or other such hydrogenated cooking mediums. And just ccoking with a lot of ghee or oil is bad as anyone can guess.
Anyone can guess that the fried foods such as pakoras, samosas, pooris, paranthas etc in excess are bad. It is one thing if you are working hard in the fields, but with our mostly sedentary lifestyles we have to be careful not to eat too much in this category.
And fried or high fat sweet foods have probably been our downfall leading to such a high rate of diabetes. Jalebi, gulab jamun and other milk based sweets, almost any sweet dish in frequent and large amounts is bad for us, but it is hard to stop when something is so delicious! Halwa usually has a lot of ghee, and around Diwali time shops pride themselves in ‘pure-ghee’ sweets.
Anything else Western with processed and over-purified foods – white bread, cakes, pizza, fries, macaroni and cheese – is bad for you.
Soups with a lot of salt, especially from cans, and canned foods with preservatives are not good.
White rice in large quantities is not a good thing, one can actually get brown basmati or jasmine rice in the Indian stores.
The concept of only drinking whole milk and taking full-fat yogurt etc, if options are available, is hard to shake. It is a very un-Indian concept, but when the middle-age spread sets in it is time to reach for the skim or 1% milk and yogurt! Actually this is recommended over age 2 if a child is healthy and growing well.
Portion control is another thing we Indians are not good at. We love people by feeding them, the more they eat the better we feel. However there is a reason we designed katoris (steel cups) – it is a good way to measure portions.
Yes, researchers in the UK and US have determined that Indians are at risk for the metabolic syndrome including weight gain and type 2 diabetes. And much as you love to see chubby children, we must watch out for our children from the get go. A little chubbiness is fine, but don’t laugh it off when your Pediatrician warns you that your child’s BMI is on the high side. Childhood overweight leads to problems in adulthood, and our children will not thank us for that.
So - enjoy the good stuff, yes, spices are good in moderation – but draw the line and use the bad stuff sparingly, you will be doing yourselves and your family a favor!
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