If he sees what we eat now though, chances are he probably won’t be terribly impressed with who we are....
Healthwise
In his 1825 magnum opus The Physiology of Taste, French author Anthelme Brillat-Savarin famously wrote “Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es”: “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.”
If he sees what we eat now though, chances are he probably won’t be terribly impressed with who we are.
“In the last 100 years or so, our diet has changed considerably,” Dr. Muhammad Arif says. “Most people are now eating processed foods – food that has been prepared not in a natural way but is chemically modified and highly processed. Our bodies do not know how to deal with that. We have evolved over millions of years but suddenly we have had this industrialisation of food in the last century basically, and that’s what has caused metabolic changes in the body.”
Our bodies have been struggling under the weight of this dietary change, leading to diseases and health issues. In the Pakistani context, Dr. Arif feels there are a few factors in our diet that are giving us no significant nutritional value and are just making us unhealthy and more susceptible to cancer.
Sweets
We as a nation have a bit of a sweet tooth, and it isn’t doing us any favours.
Dr. Arif sees this as the number one flaw in our diet. “We tend to eat a lot of sweets in all forms – mithai, halwa, bakery items,” he says. “It’s an addictive food – when you eat it you want to eat more and again. That’s where your control comes in. Your body just cannot handle that much [sugar].”
So an excessive amount of sweets are best avoided.
Cooking oils
The second issue with our diet? Vegetable oils.
“Oils, vegetable oils, cooking oils – they are very processed,” the doctor says. “If you look at normal sarson ka tel [mustard oil], it has a colour, a taste, a smell, and if you don’t keep it preserved, it will rot. But the oils which you see in the market for cooking, they have a beautiful colour, no smell, no significant flavour. They are processed, like 7 or 8 times with different chemicals to modify them and increase their shelf life. That is basically a toxic byproduct which sells well but is dangerous.”
A better alternative? Desi ghee or butter, and if you can’t afford that, you might want to try simple mustard oil instead.
Poultry and meats
“The meat which you eat in burgers and other things – in some of them, the animals were killed, like, six months ago,” the oncologist explains. “The meat has been preserved with chemicals. It has basically lost all its nutritious value, but it’s still maintained in an artificial way.”
The chicken available in Pakistan, the doctor warns, is also problematic. “Broiler chicken is almost a processed food already. The birds are being fed chemicals, antibiotics. If you have a normal desi chicken, a chick takes around 4 to 6 months to become a full chicken and then you can eat it. But this artificially grown broiler chicken is ready and available in the market in around 4 to 6 weeks, and it weighs three kilograms whereas a desi chicken will weigh hardly one kilogram or so. That is all because of chemicals, growth hormones, antibiotics, and all those things which help this animal grow very quickly. You can imagine, all its meat will be made with this food.”
Indirectly we are eating what the animal is eating. So a chemicals-fed chicken is clearly not a very healthy choice.
Same applies to farm fish versus normal river fish. “In broad category, the river fish is much better than farm fish. Obviously if the rivers are dirty, that is another issue.”
It is even very hard to find pure milk, he says.
And more
Dr. Arif points out that we – especially youngsters – consume a lot of “processed food, fast food, junk food, foods made in factories, food that comes in a packet or box”, none of which is good for our health.
So it might benefit us to check our diet and embrace better eating habits.
