With our meals getting King sized and eateries giving heavy discounts in buffets in malls, five star hotels and hanging out places frequented by youth, Gen X, especially those habitating in cosmopolitan cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Chennai, is overeating and that too Western junk food. The owners advertise these dishes as “best value for money” as they know that they cannot claim that it has health benefits. The fact that our indigenous food has health benefits is hidden under the carpet. Forget the taste part, consuming nearly umpteen fat laced dishes and the accompanying dessert is neither best for the eater nor his family. Sadly, most of us succumb to the temptation of trying almost everything when we get an opportunity to try a vast number of dishes. Food experts might like to justify such supersized meals in India on the grounds that they are in sync with the rest of the world. But facts speak otherwise.
Health Hazard
Supersized portions can be damaging to consumers; thereby leading to excessive body fats and hypertension. According to food and wellness experts, a culmination of factors are responsible for obesity. Exercise has reduced even though gyms are mushrooming across cities.
Factors Leading to Excessive Weight
According to Sujit Bose, head chef of Hong’s Kitchen, bad lifestyle habits are also responsible for obesity. “Generally, in our daily lives, Indians, particularly youngsters, are avoiding stairs or walking for half an hour. Exceptions, who burn out in the morning hours, are there. Most people are leading a sedentary lifestyle.” Another critical thing is that shelf life products harm the bodies. “Therefore, we need to realise that food products that have extended shelf life need to be avoided,” says Sujit Bose.
Imported variants of fruits and veggies must be shunned. If you observe a gleaming apple at a kiosk you do get attracted. “Washington Apples are preserved by using edible wax. So you are consuming wax. Pesticide, insecticide are more in imported fruits. The problem is that our food regulatory bodies are not checking,” he claims.
On the flip side, such extravagant meals are leading to heart diseases, lifestyle diseases like Type 2 Diabetes and even in some cases shorter life span. Economically priced dishes like cheese laced Pizzas, oily Burgers, French Fries, all cooked in extra butter, decrease life span. heart attacks, weight gain.
Fact Checking on Sugary Food
By any yardstick, sugar is unhealthy. In most food items, especially doughnuts and pastries, there is excessive sugar content. As a result, bad carbohydrates, lack of physical activities are leading to obesity. Western food doesn’t suit the present generation.
Like globally, our teenagers and tennyboppers too are becoming overweight with excess fat content in their bodies. “Excessive sugar and salt in food, known contributors to health problems, is the norm these days. Ultra processed foods, consumed by our large middle class, often contain high levels of sugar, salt, besides an array of chemicals, colorants and preservatives,” says a dietician.
According to Dr AK Banerjee, who had the distinction of treating patients for decades at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi, people, especially youngsters, are consuming more than they were in the 1980s and 1990s. “Firstly, Indians are overeating. Secondly, they are doing very little exercise. If they go to the gym then they later stuff themselves with excessive food. So we are witnessing a lot of diabetic patients.”
Rejecting Home Cooked Food
Moreover, Indians in big cities are increasingly shunning indigenous food like roti, dal sabzi, dahi and salads that their bodies are used to. Even if they eat, they don’t follow Bharatiya diet on a regular basis. They feel adopting foreign diet will make them look cool and they will be in sync with their icons and gym trainers.
Explaining why Diabetes syndrome afflicts Indians, Dr Dua, of Max Super Speciality Hospital, Vaishali, Ghaziabad, says Indians are genetically prone to insulin resistance and visceral fat, making Diabetes appear at lower BMI than in the West. “Thrifty genes and thrifty phenotype, low-birth-weight babies later exposed to rich diets—create thin-fat adults with hidden belly fat, fuelling India’s lean diabetes epidemic.”
Repercussion of Colonialism
Worryingly, there is also the colonial scar that the British rulers gave us. Bharatiyas have inherited physiological changes as their ancestors experienced the 1943 Bengal Famine that snuffed lives out of three million people due to the catastrophe. “Epigenetic scars from the Bengal Famine further prime today’s youth to gain fat rapidly and develop diabetes when consuming junk food,” says Dr Dua. Cut to the present. In eateries across Indian cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bengaluru, MSG, which is highly addictive, is used in most dishes.
As a result, dishes taste good but in the long run such food is problematic.
Concurring with this fact, Dr Vivek Nangia, Vice Chairman and Head of Pulmonology at Max Healthcare, says, “We need to make Indians more aware of the harm caused by excessive salt dishes. We need to introduce fun games that are educational in the sense that they get to use healthy recipes that are tasty yet incorporate herbs.”
Dieticians recommend millets like Bajra, Jowar and Ragi, seasonal fruits and vegetables, which give us a diet rich in fiber, carbohydrates and minerals.
Vegetarian Diet Is Most Suitable
According to dietician Bindu Khanna, formerly associated with Fortis and Ganga Ram Hospital, vegetarian food needs to be eaten by Indians as it gives them better sanskars. “If you eat a non vegetarian dish, what kind of characteristics will you have?”
However, city dwellers are influenced by multiple factors like emerging food videos and even Indian chefs who promote European and American dishes that are not suitable to our climate.
Pointing out that India is witnessing a big change due to the new social structure, Bindu Khanna says, “Earlier, women weren’t working. Nowadays, when husbands and wives are working, cooking has almost stopped. So, couples go in for easy to eat meals even if they are laced with bad fats and high cholesterol. Such kinds of food have less fibre, extra salt content that the body cannot bear. Now, nobody has time to make food at home.”
Illustrating other examples, Ms Khanna says growing up children and youngsters need to eat a fibre-rich diet, anti-oxydents like soyabean and nutrinuggets. “Indians need to follow basic safety food norms. We need better law.”
Noting that large meals are harmful for health, she says wrong food habits are developed due to consumption of junk food in schools.
Celebratory food chefs are encouraging foodies to try Continental cuisines. Nothing wrong with this but we need to develop conscious eating. Thankfully, both Indian Chefs Sanjeev Kapoor, Vikas Khanna promote foodies to try Bharatiya dishes.
Organic food is also the best solution for maintaining good health and keeping obesity and lifestyle diseases at bay. Our regulatory food body, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, needs to impose a clampdown on imported food items sold in Mumbai, Delhi and other big cities. Only during Sanatani festivals like Diwali, Holi and Rakhsha Bandhan do food inspectors “become overactive”.
Breakfasts in five star hotels and even restaurants are so elaborate that Indians are compelled to try not just dosas and chole bhature but also non vegetarian Continental dishes.
Consumers have to be selective in what they put into their mouths. “After 40 years, people including self confessed foodies need to eat less. This means two meals a day,” says Sujit Bose.
Obesity is leading to lifestyle diseases like diabetes, heart attacks, lipids, high BP and cholesterol levels. Western concepts, borrowed from ancient eating habits of Bharat, like intermittent fasting are fast becoming fashionable. But it is insufficient as the moot question is why our youth is overeating and that too meals containing extra fat items full of cheese and butter like Pizzas, Burgers, Popcorns, Cake and Coke.
Are MNCs like KFC, McDonald’s responsible for trying to become the pulse of the youth, with catchy marketing blitkrieg? And desi conglomerates like Haldiram and Bikanervala are lagging behindbecause they don’t have the financial muscle to match these behemoths.
From Joint Families to Food Apps
During the 1980s, India had mostly joint families with few eateries. Now, people can order from food apps like Zomato with the click of a button. Moreover, the air is unhealthy. If you don’t breathe, how can you walk?
Maida (white wheat flour) is prevalent in fast foods like Pizzas, Burgers and Sandwiches which are popular among the youth. Not surprisingly, restaurants offer Western food at affordable rates in their menus. However, oil is being reused and it’s dangerous in the long run.
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