NOURISH TO FLOURISH

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” 
― Hippocrates

Food nourishes us, emotionally, socially and physically and therefore has a great impact on our health. We love food and food is nothing less than a celebration for us, varieties of cuisines to fancy our whims, myriads of recipes to stimulate our taste buds, ingredients  basic and exotic to savor .From gourmet to fast food, Indian to Italian,  food is a part of Every occasions, happy or sad,  personal or community.  Our whole life revolves around eating food and it won’t be wrong to say we are what we eat, defines our personality; the foodie or the diet freak, the protein lover or a  fruit fanatic, organic mantra or a  junk dozer,  But one thing remains same; we all like our food to be tasty and appealing to impress upon our senses.

Food is not just something to be relished, but also a requirement of our body. Food that we eat serves as fuel to our body to perform all its various simple to complex function. Food is available to us, in various forms; fruits, grains, meat, milk, nuts, vegetables, oils  are all designed to assist the body in its diverse occupations; maintenance, and repair, growth and development. Each and every edible food in nature contains nutrients of importance like our vitamins, and minerals, proteins and carbohydrates, fats and fiber, which nourishes our body.

Each of these nutrients is critical to the body and the body requires them in varied quantities.  People often ask me, “Should we eat this? Can we eat that? , is it healthy?  And I always tell them that any kind of food available in nature is not unhealthy. It’s not food as we know that is unhealthy but our eating practices, our dietary practices that make it unhealthy. The error lies in the balancing part, we either eat too much or too little of one particular food and that gives rise to problem.

Let me give you an example to understand. Oil we use as a medium of cooking is important as it adds great taste to the food and more importantly is packed with calories and fat soluble vitamins. It offers a list of other benefits we will talk about it later. Oil, or any other source of fat is required by the body but we tend to eat fat or oil more than the body requires and can use it. This extra oil or fat then is stored in our body and subsequently leading to excess weight gain and in some cases blockages in arteries.

Similarly, nature offers us wide range of fruits, loaded with nutrients, phytochemical and antioxidants, available in great many colors and shades. However, we fail to make these varied fruits part of our diet. We eat same kinds of fruits or we don’t eat fruits at all. We eat chapattis made out of wheat day after day, wheat is good but we also have grains like ragi, jowar, bajra higher in one nutrient or other. There should be variety and a sense of balance in our diets.

When I said all foods are healthy, I specified naturally occurring foods and the junk food don’t come under the umbrella of healthy food. It is fine to indulge at times, as long as it doesn’t become a habit. We all need not be on any special diet unless required as in case of certain disease, all we need is eat a well balanced diet and be sure to be miles away from the rising metabolic and lifestyle related disease.

In conditions calling for special focus, diets can be modified; foods can be included and excluded depending on the conditions. In any disease, diet plays a very important role, along with the medical treatment because eventually you will stop your medication at some time; food is something you will always eat. Careful consideration and continued practice with proper guidance can help fight any complications, small or big.

To end, I would like to say our aim shouldn’t be to prolong life but to make living a better experience, full of memorable moments with our friends and family. We shouldn’t be the one at the window looking at the world dancing away; we should be the one dancing along.

“Wake up to a sunny mood

For labor never brood

Gently wish of a day too good

Pump up your engines with some food.”

To healthy living!!