If we start to eat to live instead of die — just imagine, you may never have to go to a hospital like we increasingly do nowadays and often in vain!

A RECENT visit to Goa’s premier public hospital, last week in fact – the historical Goa Medical College & Hospital – brought home a couple of things. One is that no matter how much the government keeps urging people to mind their drinking and eating habits, if the infrastructure is not supportive for this miracle to happen, it’s not going to happen at a pace faster than that of a tortoise. Even if people know better in their heart of hearts they will still behave like they don’t know any better. Why!
This is to say last week I was at Goa’s premier public hospital — the Goa Medical College & Hospital the Goa Medical – anew and to my disappointment I once again saw this scene at Sodeco’s Yoo canteens both at the old GMC block cafeteria (which is a hole in the wall), and also at the new imposing multispecialty GMC where there’s a most inviting cafeteria. Only, not foodwise! Here were piled up neatly in the cabinets such fryums as samosa, bread pakoda, sweet confectionaries like sweet roll, pastries, biscuits and by way of combo meals spicy curries with mounds of white rice and/white bread of course (the ubiquitous Goan pau of 100% refined flour maida)!
Here were all the refined industrial carbohydrate snacks with their high glycemic index, which most of us (including the medical fraternity) must know is what sets the stage for obesity, which in turn sets the stage for more inflammation and wear and tear of body beautiful. It rapidly becomes un-beautiful if we constantly stuff the wrong or contraindicated in our mouth from morning to night and late night.
When the government was promoting millets some two years ago with great seductive campaigns for a time, there were ragi idli, freshly made chutney and veggie redolent sambar at the GMC’s Yoo food cafeterias – I reckon that’s all gone with the wind now as in public paisa vasool or something like that. It’s back to eat bread or cake and be damned.
How difficult is it to also offer patients and their relatives and even the hospital staff, the option of a ragi roti (nachne millet) or jowari roti or even rice roti to go with more wholesome curries, less oily, less spicy, less salty? Why is baked white bread available in plenty in Goa but not the country’s very own flatbreads as easily?

The thought occurs, India’s and Goa’s high urban obesity and diabetes epidemic setting the stage for disease, and hospitals cramming up with diabetic patients with eventual dialysis needs and kidney problems – is because of the high amounts of high glycemic food we consume morning, noon and night. That means refined carbohydrate foods filled with the sugars of refined breads, white rice, fried foods of “bajies” – way too much food we consider tasty and filling, but it contributes nothing to keep our nutritional status as in how strong our immunity.
THIS is to say I wish I could hear a morning bicycle horn like the poder’s boy distributing Goa’s famed loaves of white baked bread…also distributing the flat breads of this country, say Rs5 per nachne or jowari or rice bhakri/chappati? Or even the Maharashtrian “thalipith”…done, I’ll take two every day, even if the price is R10 or Rs15 or Rs20 per roti (not double roti!)…just don’t stretch the profits too much to be greedy. And don’t dilute or adulterate the whole millet nachne (ragi) flour used with 75% refined white maida!
In my latest reading up glucose expert Jessie Inchauspe has this wonderful graphic explanation of how the faster we cook from the inside out, the faster we suffer and die! Is your diet making you age faster? Yes. Her analogy is see what happens when you put a chicken in the oven, it browns as it cooks, that’s glycation. Same as while doing toast, how beautifully it browns. That’s more or less what happens inside our body too.
We are similarly cooking ourselves depending on what we put to cook inside body beautiful…glycation is browning ourselves slowly or quickly, which in turn depends on glucose spikes small or big. With every glucose spike the message goes out to the pancreas…yo pancreas! Please send hormone insulin to store away excess fat in fat cells, in muscles, in liver. So we grow fat. Right from the time we are born we’re cooking and fattening away and when we’re fully cooked, we die. Kaput. Meaning, when we’re fully glycated, say goodbye cruel world!
When there’s too much glucose and glycation happening courtesy these glucose spikes, wrinkles happen, organs are damaged, the engines of our cells mitochondria get tired…big glucose spikes are not good for us. Insulin is the driver of body beautiful, we have an internal glucose monitor. At diabetes and insulin resistance set in it becomes hard to manage metabolism and a vicious cycle sets in, continue to eat like we’re eating, more and more, and the faster we glycate or cook — the more the damage control doctors have to do. Doctors don’t come cheap anymore (a basic consultation now is Rs500 plus,plus even at the local GP’s clinic).
Many of the young doctors can’t even read all the high tech diagnostic tools at their disposal to tell you for sure if you’re cured, half-cured or quarter cured or not cured at all, for something else is happening and you must rule this, that or other out…the moral of the story being if you want to live and love happily ever after, make the lifestyle changes being waxed out in the media print and online nowadays. Eat less or don’t eat at all our plethora of industrial junk food, cooked refined carbohydrates.
Instead think of eating a bowl full of French fries (so fashionable on menus everywhere, the slender fryums are priced as much as Rs300 depending on the flavor of the fries, salt and pepper or pink salt or cheese or peri peri)…children love to guzzled on them. Instead, how about boiled chickpeas tossed in bit chaat masala, lemon juice, green herbs? Do I hear “Oh puleeze!” from someone out there?
HEY, vegetarian is not always great just as non-vegetarian is not always great either. Today we see such fantastic makeover recipes online, they’re a real boon to swing a change for the better. Stay away from drugs which all work on the principle of diminishing returns. Shravan- ka-mahina is here, go on a one good meal a day fast; hey, my dears, get into a slow cooker pronto! From today.