Recently I read a
wonderful article by Santosh Desai titled “The Fear of Food” which was
forwarded to me by a close friend. The author has very beautifully described
the attitude of our generation towards eating - the almost obsessive
consciousness about calorie intake, vis-à-vis the carefree enjoyment of a good
meal in the days of yore.
Going a step further
than what Mr Desai described, we all these days seem to be suffering for
cibophobia. We are increasingly becoming cocooned in our own small worlds, as
we feel uncomfortable in social situations such as holiday gatherings, where it
would be rude not to accept food.
We start eating
healthier for our future. It’s not eating healthy food that is the
disease, but the vice-like grip of the mind on the idea of only eating healthy
food - it becomes an obsession. Seemingly innocuous life limitations can be
vital clues to discovering crippling food anxiety before it irrevocably impacts
health, either physically or mentally. These are some warning signs, - like, if
it matters what the menu is before you can accept a dinner invitation, if you
can't travel because you will be faced with unfamiliar food, if you can't eat
wedding cake at a birthday party, etc.
But I wonder, is this “super
- consciousness” about what we eat and how much we eat totally unjustified?
Cut to two decades or
so back, and chances are our grandparents had a much stricter routine for food
consumption than we do now. Then it was typical for a family to have their
meals at the same time every day (breakfast at 8 - 9 am, lunch at 1 - 2 pm and
dinner at 9 - 10 pm) so their body was accustomed to knowing when to expect
food. This sort of discipline helped to keep waistlines slim and food waste to
a minimum. In the modern day, however, a lot of people have lost this
disciplined approach to meals and no longer stick to the 3-square-meal-a-day
rule. Skipping breakfast, snacking and several cups of coffee a day are notions
that our grandparents would have neither considered nor approved. Foods were eaten
only in season. The soil was naturally nutrient rich, and fruits and vegetables
were picked when ripe (when nutrients fully developed). Naturally-occurring
species filled our dining plates and animals ate their natural diet.
It goes without saying
that eating habits have changed in the last couple of decades. Many things get
added to our foods to enhance the taste, to colour the foodstuffs and to
preserve the food for longer. Fast foods, pre-cooked foods and many other
foodstuffs contain huge amounts of saturated animal fats. It enhances taste,
but excessive consumption of this can lead to atherosclerotic changes. This can
lead to heart attacks and strokes.
With the accelerated
tension of modern day lifestyle, countless cups of tea/coffee, cigarette and
alcohol intake has become a way of life. Both tea and coffee contain caffeine,
but so do chocolate, cocoa and cola drinks. Caffeine overload makes it
difficult for our bodies to absorb essential nutrients and it can make us
suffer from nervous tension, irritability, insomnia and headaches. Excessive
tea and coffee drinking was uncommon a hundred years ago - today every
workplace has a tea club, atleast my workplace does! Many of the foods that
contain sugar and saturated animal fats also contain much salt. We generally
eat between 10 and 20 times the salt our bodies need. High salt consumption can
contribute to high blood pressure.
Foods like soft drinks,
processed foods, canned, prepackaged and convenience foods as well as
ready-made sauces are high in phosphorus which impedes the absorption of good
nutrients and also interferes with calcium absorption by bone tissue. Also, many
of the foods available contain chemical additives which are used as flavour
enhancers, colourants and preservatives. Some are harmless, but quite a few are
not. And anyway, our bodies are not designed to deal with these additives.
Recently, during a holiday
trip to New Zealand, I was impressed with the symmetrical, almost perfect vegetables
which were comparatively cheaper than the vegetables found in the local markets
in Guwahati. The attendants in the store told me that those were “GM”
vegetables, genetically modified to suit our palates. The chillies were seedless,
the onions were “manufactured” to give a “tearless” chopping experience, the tomatoes
were an ideal red, etc. So, every naturally vegetable and fruit under the sun
is now genetically modified to contain genetics and chemicals with unknown
effects. Also, there is year round availability of everything. Crop rotation is
no longer practiced and chemicals kill the microorganisms which otherwise
support nutrient value. Contaminated with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides,
waxed & irradiated, every food item is now customized and presented in such
a manner that we have almost forgotten how the worm inside litchis and mangoes
looked! Antibiotics are sprayed on vegetables, and all fresh fruit, cereals and
vegetables are sprayed with pesticides at least once. It is almost impossible
to avoid this, unless we buy organically grown fruit and vegetables.
Even meat animals are
bombarded with antibiotics, often to the point where they become resistant to
them. They are also often used to promote growth and prevent illness in the
animals. This overload is passed on to us when we eat their meat.
The point is, while Mr
Desai is right about our generation’s failure to enjoy food and mechanically
counting calories after each bite, one cannot deny the fact that there is a sea
of change between the “food then” and the “food now”. Add to this our sedentary
lifestyles and daily routine, and food ceases to be a pleasure. Much physical
work has been taken over by machines, and generally we need less energy than
they did before.
Ask any man who is
atleast two generations older than us, and you will be told that active
lifestyles were required then to get food. People ate their dinner and went to
sleep when it was dark – unfortunately, fast food joints, electricity and
television changed that…
But yes, food should continue
to remain an experience to cherish, not something to fear.
“There is no love sincerer than the
love of food.” - George Bernard Shaw
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