Food or Calorie?

Food or Calorie?

How do you define food?

It is defined as any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth.

How is food seen today? merely as pure carbs, protein, fat and calories. Can you see your body in isolation as a skeleton, or mass or nerves of hair etc.? How can you look at food like this?

There will be foods which have more of any of these as majors and others as minors. Also, the way we Indians eat food is not in isolation, like we combine rice with daal, roti with subzi and dahi etc. makes it a complete meal.

Let’s start with a fruit or vegetable. It has nutrients and each fruit in itself has those specific nutrients which help satisfy human body’s certain needs. How can you just see it as a calorie and ignore it?

Next, what do you typically have in a breakfast in India? Poha, upma, paratha, dahi, pickle etc.? Can you tell me if any of these is only carbs or proteins or fats? Our Indian meals are cooked and eaten as such that they are wholesome. Our body need them in all our meals and our Indian foods have been designed accordingly.

Similarly, look at our lunch and dinner as well. Rice + daal  or subzi + roti or khichdi etc. You cannot see them as foods in isolation.

We should look to our food as PRANA and not as  calories. Now, how do you define PRANA of a food?

Prana is the measurement of how healthy and full of nutrition our food is. Now, there is not one or specifics of actual measurement guidelines to define that. However, the below are some of the criteria’s to help you identify and measure prana of your food and decide for yourself in case you need to have it or not.

      What is in it? Grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts etc.

      Where are those grains, fruits , vegetables , oils, ghee etc coming from? The more local the food, the better is its prana. The wheat, vegetables, fruits grown near you are more good for you than those far from you or imported. Also, the oils prepared in mills or villages near you have more prana than those you buy from malls in those packets/bottles. Similarly the ghee from our own home or from village somewhere nearby has more prana.

         When was it cooked? We should ideally have food cooked within 2-3 hours, however, there are times we cannot have it. Still better to have home cooked foods which can run longer. For example, we cook and take lunch for office and its not possible to have it within 2-3 hours. There are certain foods which can be eaten like roti cooked in the night can be had the next morning. Similarly, home made plain parathas, puri etc can be made and taken on travel and it’s a better choice than eating rail or airway food.

        How much quantity of food cooked. The larger the quantity, the less the nutrients and hence lesser the prana.

   

    How was it cooked? Roasted, grilled, steamed, tadka, boiled .etc. Cook it as like it was cooked by our dadi, nani and its has the highest prana.

Now, you still need to think for yourself and decide the prana and if you need to have it for not. Let me put forward an example here. Most of us usually are not prepared for the hunger that we feel around 4-5 P.M. and tend to have unhealthy food. Now, I have these options available or make it available for myself depending on how much time I got on weekend or weekday to prepare my 4-5 PM meal.

1. Home made chivda
2. Home made matri
3. Home made sandwich
4.  Bread and butter
5.  Sprout chaat
6.  Home made fried snacks
7.  Outside snacks

So here, the options with best prana are options 1,2,5,6 and next to that comes 3,4. The option 7 should be avoided . Think of how it is prepared with the criteria I gave above and see yourself. First, we do not know what quality raw materials were used, plus the oil they use must have been reused several times, plus they cook in large quantity etc. which is not the right option.

So, Be wise and look to the food as Prana.