. Desi diet gurus are now advocating a return to traditional Indian foods and granny’s nutri nuggets for good health
Till the late seventies there were no diet divas. If you were too fat you went to local slimming centres with names like Figurette and Figurine where weight loss involved being slapped around vigorously in the middle by dubious contraptions. Then came Sheri Louise with its fruit powder-meal plan that ended ignominiously with a court case.
In the ’90s, the Atkins diet arrived, with its fear and loathing of carbohydrates. It opened up the doors for diet regimens that nixed the staple on which every Indian grows up, the dal-chawal-sabzi. Suddenly the oil had to be olive or nothing, the vegetables and chicken had to be grilled or stir fried, the salads and soups consumed in large quantities to shut a querulous stomach up.
The rice had to be shunned, the banana banned, and as for ghee and coconut they were vilified out of the kitchens of the health conscious.
“The problem was that an entire generation of dieticians had grown up on texts and ideas that came from the West, which had little connect with our food habits. You recommend blueberry and grilled chicken and salads, which Indians simply don’t eat. It was sheer torture to diet, which was why people went from one dietician to another, constantly regaining the weight they had lost,” says nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar who ferociously defends the wisdom of traditional food habits.
The Mumbai-based dietician has rebelled against almost every tasteless diet fad, topping it all up recently by totally backing a rice diet, including at dinner — a recommendation that sent up whoops of joy from those silently suffering grilled platters. “Are you sure?” Won’t we get fat? “I feel guilty when I eat rice” are some of the stunned reactions Diwekar ran into when she asked clients to get back to traditional thalis.
“We have started treating food like an enemy. In India, rice is used as an offering, a grain with a higher reality. If you eat it with awareness and enjoyment and not count calories but blessings it can do you a world of good,” she says.
It isn’t just rice that gets an enthusiastic nod from Diwekar, she is a vociferous advocate of regional cuisines, each of which, she points out, evolved from specific soils, climate and needs.
The coconut counts among her list of superfoods. “It is shreephal (the king of fruits). Sadly, anything the West didn’t have easy access to becomes a no-no. They didn’t bother to study the incredible qualities of the coconut. For example, it has anti-viral, anti-fungal properties. But we had all this as oral wisdom. The problem is that we have devalued everything that’s not been written down,” says the nutritionist.
The Mediterranean and Japanese foods had in the last decade become the ideal for all health conscious people to follow. There was a rationale to this of course — these cuisines were eaten by people who boast of impressive longevity and fewer incidences of cardiovascular diseases. So all elements that went into these cuisines began to grab attention. Whatever their merit, these diets were simply not sustainable.
“The moment you impose an alien diet, you will find bad compliance. We are an entire continent by ourselves, each region has a cuisine. So, a diet that works for UP won’t for Kerala. We had to learn to modify whatever was already on the table,” admits Rekha Sharma who heads the Indian Dietetic Association. T
he fact that most contemporary dieticians incorporate Ayurvedic notions about healthy eating into their formulae has also put the focus back on traditional foods. Fenugreek, ginger, garlic, turmeric, desi squashes, humble pumpkins, jamun have regained a lot of their lost glory. “We don’t have much statistical evidence about these items, but they are natural, easily available, find a resonance among Indians and don’t cause any damage. Every old system like Ayurveda or yoga has its virtues, we don’t deny that any more,” says Sharma This is not to say that it is okay to wade into the super deluxe thali without a care in the world.
The trick, the experts say, lies in how you eat as much as in what you eat. “There is no denying some facts — we do overcook our vegetables, we do pile on more starch on our plates and what we eat at home is very different from what we eat outside, and we do eat out a lot now.
But the basic constituents of an Indian meal, the grains, pulses, vegetables and spices, were absolutely fine. So all we needed to do was modify the food intake and balance the elements,” points out Ishi Khosla, Delhi-based nutritionist who again is very realistically Indian in her approach to eating.
Over the last few years, there has been steady research into Indian foods and eating habits. And the experience of the dieticians also indicated virtue in returning to desi foods. When she started recommending amla to young women at the start of her practice, Khosla remembers being met with puzzled stares.
Coarse grains like millets and barley were hard to find. Today, she says, people are becoming much more confident about returning to granny’s kitchen wisdom, and the local chakki offers every kind of mixed grain. Diwekar, who has been leading the return-to-roots march in Mumbai, says the trick is to make friends with your stomach and palate and listen to them. Eat what they need and stick with foods you grew up with. “I’ve heard a nugget of granny’s wisdom that I like a lot: only humans can eat ghee, if you don’t, you become a demon!” says the mind behind Kareena Kapoor’s Size Zero, very serious indeed about accepting the thought.•
- MALINI NAIR TOICREST29OCT11
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