Healthy eating in the fasting and feasting season
Saturday, 5 September 2009
Ameer Hamza
Abdullah Abu Sayeed and his like-minded activists made news recently by ushering in the month of Ramadan, in full view of the TV cameras, with exhortations on healthy eating. They displayed packets of what constitutes 'good food', and people were seen scrambling to get their hands on them. It is not known whether the impact of this one-off campaign would be lasting enough on the target group, that is, on those who love to eat themselves sick rather than eat to live healthy lives. But such awareness raising activities do have their merit and deserve to be replicated as often as possible, although there is no guarantee these days about the purity of even apparently wholesome foods. What with carbide in fruits, formalin in fish, sodium cyclamate masquerading as sugar, neurotoxins like saccharine, aspartame, nutrasweet in 'sugar-free' edibles, monosodium glutamate or 'tasting salt' in Chinese and fast food, pesticides in pulses ---- you name it ---- people are surely poisoning themselves, even without deep-fried free radicals!
But what about those who are daily deprived of adequate meals ? Do such things matter to the Mumeen Mussalmaan in Bangladesh ? Most of the bottom half seem to be trapped perpetually in the vicious cycle of slow starvation , in terms of both macro and micro-nutrients. Coarse rice and salt is perhaps the only food security they can hope for. Although successive governments have been taking up feeding programmes for them ---- albeit, token --- one finds them being robbed of even these token entitlements. A recent report in a contemporary alleged that a ruling party parliamentarian in Dinajpur has appropriated a major portion of the Vulnerable Group Feeding (VGF) cards for his followers. This is just one small example of the ruthless attitude that the well-fed ruling classes have in general towards the poorest of the poor !
Be that as it may, eating practices among those who have purchasing power in the fasting season --- and in normal times for that matter --- are hardly conducive to health. Those who can afford to spend a little seem to prefer everything deep fried, rather than go for more-stomach friendly preparations. This is a sure prescription for acidity, indigestion and long term health conditions like heart and artery diseases, and should be shunned, particularly during sehri and iftar, warned the campaigners. Dr Bernarr MacFadden would have been pleased with Prof A A Syed. 'One should understand the subject of diet so completely that it becomes second nature merely to accept only healthful foods and in proper combination and to ignore those that are detrimental', says he, in his very down-to-earth, primary health care book called 'Home Doctor'. In the chapter, 'Eating to keep fit', the good doctor wonders, why the subject of diet has been ignored to such an great extent by the leading schools of healing over the past centuries. Science has no doubt today that most of our diseases are due to unbalanced diets, he says, ' with a great excess of some elements and a great deficiency or total absence of some others. This produces an encumbering surplus on the one hand and starvation on the other. As consequences, the chemistry of the blood and body fluids is unbalanced, the cells are bathed in unnatural fluids, organs are overworked……… and it is only natural that detrimental results will be produced.'
Dr MacFadden, like many enlightened nutritionists today, claims that 'foods in their natural form are superior to man-processed foods.' So, better to have the guava fresh rather than as jelly, and drink milk or natural yogurt rather than eat it as misti. Also, honey and molasses or brown sugar are recommended over the 'wholly devitalized, demineralised and devitaminised white sugar' if one wants to avoid acidosis. We are told that about 60 per cent of the food energy should come from complex carbohydrates such as grains, potatoes, fruits and leafy green vegetables. As for proteins, standard requirement about 40 years ago, was roughly one gram per kilo of body weight, although for pregnant and lactating women it was much higher. The proportion remains much the same today. Growing children and youth and labouring adults also need a lot more of both carbohydrates and proteins. The best protein sources are of course milk, lean meat, fish and eggs while nuts and pulses belong to the vegetable protein category.
A mix of both animal and vegetable protein is recommended by nutritionists for optimum benefit but Dr McFadden seems to see far more merit in nuts, which 'constitute one of our most natural and wholesome foods, being comparatively rich in proteins, fats, and having vitamins and minerals and some starch ……. and their protein is preferred to meats…..' Peanuts are fairly common as a crop in Bangladesh and it certainly is a food item worth promoting, not just as a snack in the sports gallery or at the bus stop, but as part of main meals.
In this regard the Consumer Association of Bangladesh perhaps could come foward and lend the healthy food activists a hand. And it would be a good idea to use afresh the talents of Dr Badruddoza Chowdhury who used to reach out to people with simple messages about healthy eating. Thanks to his pre-politician shows on BTV, ordinary citizens are now found enjoying carrots and cucumbers as snacks. Today the amra and anarosh and the kancha aam and peyara are common ready-to-eat items on sale everywhere. Of course the standard of hygiene among food vendors is still quite deplorable, but if sensitization starts right away, may be ten years from now, fresh fruit will be served from squeaky-clean, covered counters, and sellers and buyers alike will be wiser and in better health. With a little bit of creative activism and the gift of the gab, luminaries like the afore-mentioned men could do a great deal of good to both ordinary and extra-ordinary citizens in Bangladesh.
Abdullah Abu Sayeed and his like-minded activists made news recently by ushering in the month of Ramadan, in full view of the TV cameras, with exhortations on healthy eating. They displayed packets of what constitutes 'good food', and people were seen scrambling to get their hands on them. It is not known whether the impact of this one-off campaign would be lasting enough on the target group, that is, on those who love to eat themselves sick rather than eat to live healthy lives. But such awareness raising activities do have their merit and deserve to be replicated as often as possible, although there is no guarantee these days about the purity of even apparently wholesome foods. What with carbide in fruits, formalin in fish, sodium cyclamate masquerading as sugar, neurotoxins like saccharine, aspartame, nutrasweet in 'sugar-free' edibles, monosodium glutamate or 'tasting salt' in Chinese and fast food, pesticides in pulses ---- you name it ---- people are surely poisoning themselves, even without deep-fried free radicals!
But what about those who are daily deprived of adequate meals ? Do such things matter to the Mumeen Mussalmaan in Bangladesh ? Most of the bottom half seem to be trapped perpetually in the vicious cycle of slow starvation , in terms of both macro and micro-nutrients. Coarse rice and salt is perhaps the only food security they can hope for. Although successive governments have been taking up feeding programmes for them ---- albeit, token --- one finds them being robbed of even these token entitlements. A recent report in a contemporary alleged that a ruling party parliamentarian in Dinajpur has appropriated a major portion of the Vulnerable Group Feeding (VGF) cards for his followers. This is just one small example of the ruthless attitude that the well-fed ruling classes have in general towards the poorest of the poor !
Be that as it may, eating practices among those who have purchasing power in the fasting season --- and in normal times for that matter --- are hardly conducive to health. Those who can afford to spend a little seem to prefer everything deep fried, rather than go for more-stomach friendly preparations. This is a sure prescription for acidity, indigestion and long term health conditions like heart and artery diseases, and should be shunned, particularly during sehri and iftar, warned the campaigners. Dr Bernarr MacFadden would have been pleased with Prof A A Syed. 'One should understand the subject of diet so completely that it becomes second nature merely to accept only healthful foods and in proper combination and to ignore those that are detrimental', says he, in his very down-to-earth, primary health care book called 'Home Doctor'. In the chapter, 'Eating to keep fit', the good doctor wonders, why the subject of diet has been ignored to such an great extent by the leading schools of healing over the past centuries. Science has no doubt today that most of our diseases are due to unbalanced diets, he says, ' with a great excess of some elements and a great deficiency or total absence of some others. This produces an encumbering surplus on the one hand and starvation on the other. As consequences, the chemistry of the blood and body fluids is unbalanced, the cells are bathed in unnatural fluids, organs are overworked……… and it is only natural that detrimental results will be produced.'
Dr MacFadden, like many enlightened nutritionists today, claims that 'foods in their natural form are superior to man-processed foods.' So, better to have the guava fresh rather than as jelly, and drink milk or natural yogurt rather than eat it as misti. Also, honey and molasses or brown sugar are recommended over the 'wholly devitalized, demineralised and devitaminised white sugar' if one wants to avoid acidosis. We are told that about 60 per cent of the food energy should come from complex carbohydrates such as grains, potatoes, fruits and leafy green vegetables. As for proteins, standard requirement about 40 years ago, was roughly one gram per kilo of body weight, although for pregnant and lactating women it was much higher. The proportion remains much the same today. Growing children and youth and labouring adults also need a lot more of both carbohydrates and proteins. The best protein sources are of course milk, lean meat, fish and eggs while nuts and pulses belong to the vegetable protein category.
A mix of both animal and vegetable protein is recommended by nutritionists for optimum benefit but Dr McFadden seems to see far more merit in nuts, which 'constitute one of our most natural and wholesome foods, being comparatively rich in proteins, fats, and having vitamins and minerals and some starch ……. and their protein is preferred to meats…..' Peanuts are fairly common as a crop in Bangladesh and it certainly is a food item worth promoting, not just as a snack in the sports gallery or at the bus stop, but as part of main meals.
In this regard the Consumer Association of Bangladesh perhaps could come foward and lend the healthy food activists a hand. And it would be a good idea to use afresh the talents of Dr Badruddoza Chowdhury who used to reach out to people with simple messages about healthy eating. Thanks to his pre-politician shows on BTV, ordinary citizens are now found enjoying carrots and cucumbers as snacks. Today the amra and anarosh and the kancha aam and peyara are common ready-to-eat items on sale everywhere. Of course the standard of hygiene among food vendors is still quite deplorable, but if sensitization starts right away, may be ten years from now, fresh fruit will be served from squeaky-clean, covered counters, and sellers and buyers alike will be wiser and in better health. With a little bit of creative activism and the gift of the gab, luminaries like the afore-mentioned men could do a great deal of good to both ordinary and extra-ordinary citizens in Bangladesh.