Food is essential as our body wants to grow, for which it needs the nutrients which are created into energy
Suresh Chandra Sarangi
Karl Marx, the revolutionary thinker and proponent of Marxism and communism said, “That we must eat to live.” But at the present juncture, the world believes that we must live to eat. Our choice of the right kind of food for our well-being and vitality has landed us in an era, where craving food becomes the ultimate passion in life.
Though food is the most important factor of life, with the mindless application of fertilizers, chemicals, and pesticides, food called the elixir of life, has become a bane for life. We eat vegetables that are dust-infested, and the air we breathe is full of carbon particles beyond a permissible level, and this has affected our lifestyle. A man’s thinking, it is believed, is a result of our eating and still, we ignore that comfortably.
Couch Potatoes
The quality of soil, land, and water systems has deteriorated so much that we are affected physically and mentally, and there is a beeline before the doctor. We see obesity bugs rising like the waves of a sea, multiplying, chronic diseases that cripple our life gradually, so much so that we become couch potatoes and the virility of life is lost in the dreary desert of modern eating.
Our food choices not only our health but also our mental wealth and the well-being of the blue planet and the existence of life itself. Here comes a group of individuals, who believe that they can change the contours of our health, with greener habits, and vegetarianism, which is so crucial for environmental and ecological preservation. The newest fad is the race for wellness and how the homo sapiens are excessively obsessed with nourishing wellness, after damaging themselves.
Someone said, that in India more people die from overeating than due to hunger, which is a truism in today’s fast-paced life. Food is essential as our body wants to grow, for which it needs the nutrients which are created into energy. A good diet must provide us with enough energy, to rest, keep fit and active, and help a better metabolic process. We are aware that carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and many more minerals, vitamins, and chemicals build our tissues. The fiber helps in the process of better digestion and assimilation of food.
Of late, the craze for balanced food has reached an optimal stage in the event of rising diabetes, heart problems, and malfunctioning kidneys. We know that carbohydrates are our ultimate source of energy, but how much of that? The body breaks carbohydrates into glucose, a form of simple sugar, which is either assimilated immediately or, stored in our muscles. But how much is too much and an excess of glucose is converted into fats and then obesity.
Let us understand that carbohydrates contain molecules of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms, as well as starches and sugar. The hormone insulin is necessary for the oxidation of globose, the process that produces energy for the body, and the insulin helps open the cell membranes. Starches are good for the daily amount required for boosting energy from carbohydrates and are commonly available from breads, oats, beans, peas, and potatoes.
But if you take too much it’s bad for your health. God has created body mechanisms and body chemistry in such a manner, that an optimum utilization of the same keeps the biochemistry in proper balance. The proteins that are the basic elements of our life and in forming our muscles, tendons, and bones and help generate new cells and repair the tissues, are the most sought-after food ingredients.
The hormones and enzymes have the role of a regulator that plays a wonderful role in the biochemistry of the human body. Pulses such as beans, peas, lentils, oats, and wheat may be beautiful combinations for energy and muscle repair as well as growth.
Added Sugar
Sugar is required for the body’s function as it provides energy, but taken in excess, it becomes murderous and creates the dreaded diabetes and cavities in the teeth. In the modern food system, sugar plays an important role and creates more patients who fill the wallet of the doctors. Added sugar or refined sugar is more dangerous in aggravating so many health problems and even causing in development of carcinogenic cells that is cancer, as commonly believed by scientists and doctors. Saturated fats do have their role in the body’s biochemistry, but it is to be seen that it is cut down to the minimum.
Today’s fried food is the reason for more amount of degenerated fats as it is processed through the same oil time and again. Known as trans fat they are palatable and mouth-watering but they are the demons that spoil our body, killing the cells and finally killing us. Rather yoghurt is a better animal protein, that builds. Eating cream on the food or for that matter ice cream over the requirement of Carrie’s nonsense.
We need different vitamins and minerals but in smaller amounts, the total daily requirement may be 7 grams only, but we are ignorant and consume it like chocolate. The best sources are fresh vegetables or frozen mildly. Protein contributors like dairy products, cereal foods, meat, eggs, and fish are highly recommended but people ignore that it has to be consumed with circumspection. But this vital part of our food is sometimes completely unavailable or excessively taken breaking the balance. The best of all is the fiber, which helps in digestion and pushing our waste products. They are available in fruits, vegetables, and salads and we comfortably ignore the same.
What is needed for our body requires a balance, with proper combination, in smaller quantities. There was a time when we depended on juices, fresh vegetable juices which have been disturbed by cold drinks, full of sugar and additives, and Chemicals that disturb the natural biochemistry of the body and make us sick. The additives that are so attractive sometimes are such a craze that we are knowingly putting our bodies into damage mode.
What the body needs is balanced, wholesome food, not the refined one that is available from non-refined rice. The food industry is a multibillion-dollar industry today, and by purchasing their stuff, we are compromising our health and our survival. The labels they use on food safety, camouflage us. The advertisements they bring drive in our craze for food. Of late, there is an increase in our craze for frozen, processed, and stored food that lacks the originality, vitamins, and minerals and then we all are the sufferers, spending money, time, and energy in labs, with doctors, X-rays clinics, which have mushroomed in recent times, reminding us that all is not well in our food system. We lack exercise.
There are, it is said, three natural doctors, they are balanced food, sunshine, exercise, and finally, last but not least, good sleep, for rest and recuperation. In a tension-packed, fast-paced quick life, that is so disturbed today. We need a quick fix, or permanent solution, whether it is our taste or our health.
The food additives are real poison. These tiny amounts of chemicals improve the appearance and increase the life of these healthy pretending foods. But do they help our virility? in the Western world and now also in the developing world, food preservatives and added chemicals, sugar, and salt are spreading like a contagious disease that grips all of us. In the beginning, we ate food that was 100% natural, fresh, and juicy, and today 80% of the food that we take is from cold storage, absorbed in food additives, which has increased phenomenally in the last 30 years or so.
We are not even aware of what they are, what is their impact on our system, and how they affect our body mechanism and biochemistry and we just gulp it down, because some advertisement drives our carnal food craze. Let us remember that an additive is an ingredient that would never be taken as food. But still, we crave it without knowing how it usurps our body chemistry, and as a disastrous consequence, we are drawn into the vortex of a broken health system, cancer, fatty liver, kidney failure, and so on.
Food Choice
Spices are an invaluable ingredient of our food system. Besides being aromatic, that increases the taste, its therapeutic value cannot be denied. But today we eat more of spices and less of food items for which we have serious gastrointestinal problems that make a hole in our pocket. Diseases, mostly lifestyle, sometimes degenerating into terminal illnesses have become a way of life and we have welcomed it as we do not make appropriate food choices.
Nature has so much in abundance as food for us. But we have scant respect for that for which the young generation of today is crippled with diseases, tension, stomach upset, acidity, and many other lifestyle diseases which we have earned for ourselves by consuming excessive food. As a result, many of us are wrapped in a debt trap towards medical expenditure, which consequently leads to suicide.
That is a great challenge for mankind. Our kids are at a great loss. The aim is to make it possible to have people a nutritious diet all through. Additive spoils the peace. The multinational corporation or even the national company earns billions at our cost. This is a matter of understanding and implementation. The long-term worries are too many.
The food control mechanism is flawed and the authorities are selfish, greedy, and corrupt, who instead of being our protectors are harboring an exploitative eye witnessing how mankind in the purchased era of mass degradation of health. This has led to food poisoning and poisoning of our food and our health. The final word is balance and nature provided it and has kept for us in store all the ingredients we need to grow, live, and die peacefully.
(The writer is a former General Manager of Bank of India and currently a visiting professor at KIIT School of Management. Views expressed are personal)
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