YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

In my childhood we used live (as was very common at that time for middle class families) in a big house with a big compound. Separated from the main house was the location of the kitchen and pantry. 

Kitchen was quite a big room with shelves for keeping utensils , an area for cooking and an area for eating food.

There was no dining table, no chairs. There were half a dozen low stools for Thali (large mixed alloy plates) and katori (metal bowls) were placed on these stools as we sat on a cushion on the floor for eating food comprising of cooked vegetables

boiled rice, roti (flatbread), Dal (lentils) and a couple of vegetables.

There was also a bowl of Dahi (Indian yogurt) and some pickles and a chutney.

The food was freshly  prepared on wood fire in a brick-and- mud choolha (stove) and served hot. 

Our fast food was always prepared at home. Fried crisp chyura (rolled rice) mixed with roasted or stir fried peanuts ; rice puffs (murmura), roasted chana, simple roti with Achar (pickles) etc.

There is a sea change in how and what we eat today. There is a craze for Maggi,  pizza, burgers, a variety of biscuits and other ready to  eat snacks  full of  chemicals for preventing fungus and humidity, enhancers for flavour, taste and appearance, lots of artificial sweetners, cheap oils and possibly some amout of pesticides. And instead of nutritious drink of lemon water, lassi, aam panna, or fresh fruit juices there is a craze for variety of colas loaded with a huge about of sweetners and preservatives and packed months back in plastic bottles. 

Another problem now is how we get our food. In  the westen countries and particularly in USA people generally don't cook food at home particularly the bachelors or small families. They get their food online and this food is prepared in large commercial kitchen where God only knows what are the ingredients used for cooking these eatables. Generally these food items are prepared weeks back and kept in deep freeze to be heated and  delivered by delivery boys. 

The milk that we drink is full of oxytocin injected to cows and buffaloes before milking them. Herbivorous animals like cows are given meat as feed in some of the western countries. There are lots of chemicals, pesticides and herbicides in the crops we grow and the fruit we eat right from the time the land is prepared for sowing , up to the time of the ready standing crops. There are chemicals like carbide to enhance the looks of fruits and vegetables even at the point of sale. The table salt that we eat also contains chemicals like ferro cyanide as an anti humidity agent. The loaf of bread that we eat at breakfast is full of variety of chemicals. It is no longer the bread that our grandfathers ate in their youth. There are taste enhancers and color additives and so called preservatives in almost every packet of food item sold it the market.

Unfortunately this  malady has caught up in the so called developing countries also, particularly in the  cities where there are modern market complexes and where super fast home delivery is available.

It has been said that YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT. When you habitually eat junk food your body goes into a silent and deep protest. The result is a variety of  troublesome diseases. The western countries are for a long time suffering from obesity because of a heavy and persistent dose of junk food. People in South East Asia consider the western countries as role models and try to imitate them. the result is a prolification of obesity in the rich and middle class population of these countries.

There was a time when the home- visiting family doctor was sufficient to cure you of most of the diseases without any expensive tests or expensive specialist doctors . But now there is such a heavy dose of harmful food items that each city is full of not only general practitioners but specialist for each part of your body. These doctors prescribe expensive tests and medicines, the cost of some of which runs into thousands of rupees. And while there were very few hospitals apart from the civil hospital or dispensary a few decades back, we have good number of super speciality hospitals in most cities. In India cancer was disease which rarely afflicted people some decades back and a person who got this had to go all the way to Mumbai (then known as Bombay) for treatment. Now in all big cities there are  half a dozen or more hospitals catering to specialised treatment for cancer, so rampant has this disease become because of unhealthy living and a life of junk food. One in three Australians are at present suffering from skin cancer according to several reports. Colon cancer has the highest percentage of patients in USA. Breast cancer has become very common among women

It is time people all over the world woke up and understood the relationship of food and health. otherwise with unethical commercialisation of our basic food mankind as a bleek future.

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