Is sugar taboo for diabetics?
Will alcohol keep your arteries healthy?
Will coffee put you at risk for heart attack? Cancer? Miscarriage?
Can you get all the nutrient you need from just the food you eat?
Depends on whom you ask. And that sparse, and admittedly unsatisfactory, reply is a nutshell representation of the cataclysmic confusion that pervades the aisle of Nutrition today.
Depends on whom you ask. And that sparse, and admittedly unsatisfactory, reply is a nutshell representation of the cataclysmic confusion that pervades the aisle of Nutrition today.
There is no market as rich in hype and hokum, ignorance and befuddlement, as that whose raison d’etre is to tell the rest of us what we should be eating.
Nutritional experts want to improve the state of our health, of course, but not only do they often disagree on the nitty-gritty, they also haven’t has much success in transferring their fat percentage formulae and dietary pie-charts to practical use in our kitchens and on our dining tables. Manufacturers and snake-oil peddlers, on the other hand, are driven more by commercial incentive than by concern for our arteries or our carbuncles. The research establishment is plagued by God’s own confusion, with today’s “finding” being contradicted by tomorrow’s “confusion”. And the government is often pulled in so many contradictory directions by so many diverse lobbies that is generally ends up doing nothing (should non-iodized salt be banned? Should salt be fortified with iron? Should Gutkha be outlawed?)
Nutritional experts want to improve the state of our health, of course, but not only do they often disagree on the nitty-gritty, they also haven’t has much success in transferring their fat percentage formulae and dietary pie-charts to practical use in our kitchens and on our dining tables. Manufacturers and snake-oil peddlers, on the other hand, are driven more by commercial incentive than by concern for our arteries or our carbuncles. The research establishment is plagued by God’s own confusion, with today’s “finding” being contradicted by tomorrow’s “confusion”. And the government is often pulled in so many contradictory directions by so many diverse lobbies that is generally ends up doing nothing (should non-iodized salt be banned? Should salt be fortified with iron? Should Gutkha be outlawed?)
Bombarded with inconsistencies in the nutritional messages he gets, the consumer at the receiving end of it all adopts one of three philosophies of personal nutrition.
(i) The You might get hit by a track at any moment Philosophy. So eat up today, and don’t pay a paisa’s worth of attention to all those nutritional trigger-words: fats, triglycerides, cholesterol, sodium.
(ii) The Live-to-eat-moong-sprouts philosophy. Its acolytes have made the study and practice of nutrition the sole focus and chief end of their existence; their conception of nirvana is steaming bowl of yellow pumpkin soup. Their idea of the perfect birthday gift is a three year subscription to vegetarian times.
(iii) The Hem- and-haw and hedge-and- hum philosophy. Its choristers make mounds of dietary resolutions, worry in spurts about whether they really should be eating more vegetables and fruits, and generally end up homing in only on the advice they think they can live with. (Drinking only mineral water in a restaurant is fine, but having your tea with skim milk doesn’t sound so do-able.
Even if we try to grasp the fundamentals of good nutrition, realties on ground can trip up us on daily basis. Fiber helps to prevent constipation, you know that, but does an apple contain more fiber than a pear? Are some” good” cereals better than other “good” cereals? Which cheeses are lowest in fat? If you’re dining out, how do you calculate the calories in a mushroom moussaka or an eggplant almond enchilada? And even if you exercise personal control over what’s going into every morsel you eat, how do you know whether you are getting your daily requirements of a score of nutrients unless you convert your kitchen counter into a data processing center?
In a word, is there a way to healthy eating that is not rigged with calculation, contradictory advice, research babble, anxiety and guilt? Can we cut the pedantry and talk about real eating in the real world?
In a word, is there a way to healthy eating that is not rigged with calculation, contradictory advice, research babble, anxiety and guilt? Can we cut the pedantry and talk about real eating in the real world?
In a word, yes. You don’t have to wade through an encyclopedia of nutrition or be frozen by realization that you’ll never be able to work out whether you’re getting to much fat in your daily diet because you were looking out the window when they were teaching percentage in school . In this, my next posts we will discuss all the nitty-gritty you need to make wise nutritional choice to ensure that food becomes your ally rather than your adversary in the fight against disease and aging.
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