Food [vor]acious

Some boring disliked vegetables were synonymous to us not eating in childhood. Novel schemes were cooked to make us eat those vegetables. My sister would eat only if sweets were served, but her stomach would be ‘full’ if she was to eat vegetables. Then we had a new rule at home, sweets only after vegetables. Slow but steadily she started enjoying vegetables and eventually learnt to ‘eat’. Rules of eating were then essentially practiced and inculcated at home.

We never realised when the passion to cook and eat apt and food as an essential requirement was taken over by 2 min cooking. Our culture is abundant with recipes of vegetables, chutneys (grinded fresh sauces), salads, boiled/steamed pulses as dal, flavored pulses, poli (Indian bread), rice and so on. Along with these we have some specific indications of what should be included in diet for every aspect/events from life, from birth, birthdays, weddings, festivals, celebrations; food even for last rites after death. But these were overthrown with illusions of ‘party, celebration’. Delicacies reserved for special occasions now were served whenever wished for. Stomachs were strained with random overeating for the sake of ‘let’s get out and have some fun!’.

Culture evolves organically with collective observations, impact of weather on our body, geographical temperament of regions, subsequent crops, all these are tried and tested for centuries which finally makes a food culture. How this food is to be eaten, its effect on not just our body but also our mind is generally considered in then. In fact Annapurna, the goddess of food is worshipped in every household in our country. But unfortunately, an actual visual of the saying ‘you are what you eat’ can be witnessed around us in recent years. Quite often we see a ‘burger’ driving a car round the corner, or a ‘pizza with loaded cheese’ on a bike next to us on the road. A bean or a ladies finger although are a rare sight. The real reason behind this is our recent habit of munching away merrily, everything, all day.

We reduce our diet if we put on weight and eat more if some kilos drop. But our culture anyways has advised a moderate diet. Moderate means limited, consuming the required calories only. But today we casually turn a blind eye to this concept, saying that ‘life is too short’ we live each day in party mode. Eating whatever and as much as the heart wants has become our assumption of happiness. May be thus, we have so conveniently adopted unlimited thali and unlimited buffet systems. We plan to munch on fried pakoras or fries while watching our favorite program on television, what if we enjoy one of these pleasures at one time rather than combining them? The definition of happiness equal to food is harmful for our body.

“No upma in Punjab, no chole in Karnataka, even though I work in another country I have only my Maharashtrian (regional) food!” People proudly boast of doing so… but ones believing that only their type of food is best tend to neglect the fact that food culture doesn’t depend on some caste or religion, but evolves around the experience of weather, lifestyle and natural resources. Coastal regions like Goa, Konkan have fish while plateau regions have food grains in their staple food, and these are beneficial for the health of those respective regions. The ones who migrate to other countries should ‘……do as the Romans do’ i.e. eat whatever is the local food cuisine.
Twitching your nose for food that you don’t like, and eating for time pass even when your stomach is full makes one feel that the need for food is lost in time. Maybe owing to our attitude, food is no more a source of life, it's rather eating us away to death.

Why do we need food? It can be well illustrated with Einstein’s principle e=mc² Through the burning of mass matter goes through the process of dissemination and digestion takes place. The energy required for our body is thus created. Energy can neither be created not destroyed, it can only be converted from one form into another. We can acquire energy but there are many ways to do so. We get solar energy from the sun, also energy from the wind but we cannot consume such energies, we require elements of nature but we get them through our food.

We have been repeatedly told 'उदर भरण नोहे जाणिजे यज्ञकर्म' (don’t eat to fill your stomach, eat to burn like a rite), but rather than eating food to consume and burn in calories, our voracious eating is letting the food consume us. Our faulty eating habits are consuming our life, food that keeps us alive is eating us away from our own ridiculous habits, will we ever be able to overcome this paradox? We seldom think of this twist. We invite lifelong problems of preposterous weight gain, diabetes, blood pressure imbalance, metabolic syndrome and many more for our momentary pleasures. We need to imbibe ‘only as much required’ in place of ‘whatever and wherever’. Our wrong food choices are eating away our health, we need to change our thinking to stop this consumption…. ‘Are you hungry? Just 2 min’….or ‘At your doorstep in 30 min’ is not going to work. We have to reinvent our idea of happiness.

Do we wish to pass on the hybrid culture of food formed of our bad food habits to the next generation? Let’s tell our coming generation how to eat instead of them getting eaten.

Dr. Vinita Deshpande