Anyone who’s ever interacted with me, knows that I’m obsessed with animal rights. However, only a small circle of people are aware that I have a second love. Food.
I'm basically a fat chick in a slim girl's body.
For years I’d been dissatisfied with my size. The result of which, I’d either be scared to eat the food I love and constantly deprive myself of it, or I’d go on binges followed by guilt trips. Not fun. Completely unhealthy. I was unfit, hungry, lumpy in all the wrong places and had random aches and pains. And then I got bored of my own whining.
I decided I would stop hating food, and start loving it. That started with getting to know food a little better. I ‘d been vegetarian for about seven years, so I started exploring non-meat nutrition and how to get the best of what food has to offer.
And I asked myself, why, after endless dieting, repeated cursing and failed gym regimes was I still not at my target fitness level? What the hell was wrong with my diet? At this point, you must be thinking that this is one helluva superficial post, but I promise you, the problem with my diet is also a global problem (insert dramatic music).
Science has already established that weight loss is not as simple as calories in minus calories out. Not SUSTAINED weight loss at least. After exteeeeensive research into obesity and weight-related health issues, all the evidence seemed to reiterate this: It’s not particularly how much I eat that dictates my size, it’s what and how I eat it, that makes all the difference.
As complex as food nutrition is, I did one simple thing…wait for it…I started eating…FOOD! (I’ve lost my mind you say?)
To all those living in the 'western world', I ask, ‘What is food to you?’
Is it a Big Mac from McDonalds? A frozen burrito that you heat in the microwave? A box of cheerios?
If that’s what you call food, then, well, you haven’t been eating real food. What you have been eating are ‘food products’. A while ago, I saw a really great documentary called Food Inc., which explores where the food we purchase at the grocery store really comes from, and what it means for the health of future generations.
Michael Pollan, author of Food Rules tells us that ‘a healthy diet is a whole lot simpler than the food industry and many nutritional scientists would have us believe. After spending several years trying to answer the supposedly incredibly complicated question of how we should eat in order to be maximally healthy, I discovered the answer was shockingly simple: eat real food, not too much of it, and more plants than meat. Or, put another way, get off the modern western diet, with its abundance of processed food, refined grains and sugars, and its sore lack of vegetables, whole grains and fruit.
Here are some simple guides from his book:
1. Avoid foods you see advertised on television. More than two thirds of food advertising is spent promoting processed foods (and alcohol), so if you avoid products with big ad budgets, you'll automatically be avoiding edible foodlike substances. As for the 5 percent of food ads that promote whole foods (the prune or walnut growers or the beef ranchers), common sense will, one hopes, keep you from tarring them with the same brush.
2. If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don't. (Unless it’s a toxic plant!)
3. Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk. Such cereals are highly processed and full of refined carbohydrates as well as chemical additives.
4. Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself. There is nothing wrong with eating sweets, fried foods, pastries, even drinking soda every now and then, but food manufacturers have made eating these formerly expensive and hard-to-make treats so cheap and easy that we're eating them every day. The french fry did not become America's most popular vegetable until industry took over the jobs of washing, peeling, cutting, and frying the potatoes — and cleaning up the mess. If you made all the french fries you ate, you would eat them much less often, if only because they're so much work. Once a week, my mum grabs a bag of frozen fries from the deep freeze. I put them back. The same holds true for fried chicken, chips, cakes, pies, and ice cream. Enjoy these treats as often as you're willing to prepare them — chances are good it won't be every day.
5. Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored. We eat out of boredom, for entertainment, to comfort or reward ourselves. Try to be aware of why you're eating, and ask yourself if you're really hungry — before you eat and then again along the way. (One old wive's test: If you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you're not hungry.) Food is a costly and fattening antidepressant.
6. Never eat something that is pretending to be something else. If it’s supposed to imitate a flavour, then it’s probably some chemical crap.
7. Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. Does your dida know what gatorade is?
8. Don’t eat anything with ingredients a five year old cannot pronounce, ie- avoid chemical substitutes.
9. Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot. There are exceptions -- honey -- but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren't food.
And my contribution:
10. There is no such thing as good food and bad food, only real food. Aren’t you tired of the ‘carbs are evil, fats are evil, whatever food group is out of style at the moment is evil’ bullshit that periodically grips the food industry? Some strategically funded research gets published and/or celeb/fitness expert starts a fad and we all follow suit. I have never put on weight from eating whole-wheat grains (carbs). I have, however put on weight from eating one too many chips packets (again carbs). It’s about eating whole foods, and not processed foods that are so far removed from their original state.
This wouldn't be a Rohini Joseph post without a mention of animal rights. So. What’s even more ominous is that nowadays, whole foods like poultry, beef and pork, are no good for us either. When you’re purchasing a whole chicken or a pork chop, are you even aware of what that piece of meat contains or how it reached you? I’m not going to get into an extended debate over the cruel practices rampant in mass animal production. Because, as I’ve found, most people don’t care. However, you should care about what those inhumane animal rearing methods mean for you.
Firstly, if thousands of animals are cooped up in dark warehouses, forced to wallow in their own waste and fed unnatural foods to the point where they can no longer stand on their own feet; chances are, they’re going to get sick. So, they’re pumped up with antibiotics. So, you end up eating not a piece of chicken, but a plateful of chemicals. Lacking nutrition, taste and well, morals.
Still don’t care?
Well, as chicken breasts get bigger and tomatoes are genetically engineered not to go bad, more and more people fall ill from powerful new strains of E. coli every year, obesity levels are skyrocketing, and adult diabetes has reached epidemic proportions.
From the corporate viewpoint:
Mass food manufacturers argue that mass production (albeit not ideal for animals, the environment or even human consumption), is the only cost effective way to feed the masses on a large scale and meet the growing demands of an ever-increasing population. Seriously? Come on. The ‘demand’ for meat is ridiculous. Oversized portions, all you can eat, double decker, triple decker. How much do we need to eat, and how much of our diet needs to be meat?
Moreover, if you’re producing and selling so much cheap meat that people are actually becoming obese, maybe it’s time to stop producing so much cheap meat! Meat, corn and soybean production is highly subsidized in the West, making it cheaper to produce for the farmer and cheaper to buy for the consumer. Why aren’t more farmers given incentives to grow vegetables and rear meat in humane way through free range, grass fed farms? I smell a rat, and it reeks of corporate greed and political lobbying.
Decisions relating to what crops are grown and how they are grown are based on economic considerations rather than their environmental or social ramifications. This is evidenced by the production of high fructose corn syrup, an ingredient found in many cheap food products, such as fast food. Solution? Farmers need to start producing better quality food, and less of it. And the government needs to start enabling that process by subsidizing real food production. Maybe a health bill wouldn’t be needed then!
From the consumer viewpoint:
Fresh food is expensive and inconvenient in the West. That’s the sad truth. It’s common knowledge that whole foods are vastly better for us than are processed foods. But the food system makes it hard for most to get whole foods. If the food system made more whole foods at lower cost and made them more available, that would help public health. It’s so much easier to pick a frozen pizza off a shelf and heat it in the oven, than buy fresh produce and make a pizza from scratch. But think of the cost of convenience. High calorie, sugar laden processed foods coupled with bigger portions and our sedentary lifestyles is growing our waistlines and contributing to serious health issues such as diabetes, heart ailments and cancer.Till the time whole food prices come down, doesn’t it make sense to spend more on real food instead of medication to treat cholesterol and type 2 diabetes later on?
See how my diet problem affects the whole world?
Even though more Indians have started eating out and shopping from the frozen foods aisle, we still eat a lot of fresh and organic produce here. However, there’s still a problem with how we cook food here. We pretty much cook the hell out of it. Fried and cooked down within an inch of its life, I think it’s pretty safe to say that the average curry or bhaaji has little or no nutritional value.
So I changed things up.
I got into the kitchen and started preparing and eating food, the way it was meant to be eaten. I started eating fruits and veggies and freshly made cottage cheese and yogurt and peanut butter and wheat (actual wheat grains) and other foods that were minimally tampered with. Boring you say? Ask my meat eating colleagues about my peanut butter and spinach salad. Or my baby uttapams with home-made tomato pickle. Or my caramalised onion and grilled cheese sandwiches. Or my chilli paneer. Or my butter beans, mozzarella and cheddar baked potatoes. Or my Thai-inspired peanut salad. Or my chatpata cucumber-anda roll. Or my pesto, walnut and baby spinach salad. I make simple sauces and dressings and use spices that enhance and not overwhelm. The possibilities are endless! Which brings me to my other food rule. If it doesn't titillate my taste buds, it ain't going in my mouth. I work out 6 days a week, if I'm breaking a sweat to burn off the calories, the calories that go in better be worth the effort.
With a little care, patience and experimentation, it's amazing what you can do with simple ingredients to make them tasty while maintaining their structural(and therefore nutritional) integrity. I’m no raw food advocate, but if cooking something is going to destroy its nutritional value, I’d rather not eat it! What does it mean to eat real food? Well, think fresh mozzarella as opposed to processed cheese from a can. Start respecting your food, where it comes from and why you should eat it. It’s not about how many calories are in that food, it’s about if those calories are good for you. It’s about eliminating empty, or pointless foods.
Have I cut out junk food completely? Of course not. I eat it once a week. I live for the alu-do-pyaaza from Jai Hind Dhaba. Paneer butter masala and daal makhni with lachha paratha? ALWAYS OMG YES PLEASE. Because I’m human and that crap tastes good. But indulge occasionally. Because that crap is not good for you, nor is it good for the planet or generations to come.
On my fitness journey, my relationship with food has totally changed.
Nowadays, I can’t wait for my next meal. I eat 6 times a day. Carbs, fats, proteins and anything else the body needs to function optimally. I’m consuming more calories now than I’ve ever done before, and I’ve never been happier with my fitness level. So long hunger pangs, aches and pains and depression, hello good skin, hair and attitude.
And all I did to initiate this massive change, was start eating for real.
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