Why natural food is best
When I travel by air and the ’plane I am in takes flight, I am awestruck by how this over-sized lumbering contraption filled with passengers and luggage takes wing. This unnatural steel bird winging its way is more amazing to me than a bird swooping down to catch a crumb in mid air. More amazing because although mother Nature’s creations are as incredible, we have come to accept them as part and parcel of our daily lives.The human body is another creation of Mother Nature we take for granted. Because it’s with us constantly, most people aren’t aware what a fabulous machine it is in its own right. It has taken man eons to discover the workings of the human body and millions are spent on trying to learn more about it and/or to disprove information the R&D labs once thought was true. All this only confirms what Mother Nature already knew in her supreme wisdom.
Which is why when people doubt nature and take their cues solely from science, it makes me wonder about their short-sightedness. Perhaps because I have made nutrition natural health centred, I take my cues from nature rather than science. So whereas a lay person is exasperated when his body experiences an ailment, I tend to look for the message Mother Nature is sending an ailing body.
In case of acute health problems, the body is telling you to rest or make changes in your lifestyle, so that it can regain its natural equilibrium. Chronic ailments are an indication that a potentially acute problem was not heeded as a signal. The body’s signals were simply palliated with drugs for temporary relief.
It’s really upto each individual to decide how to live and care for his/her body. Every individual can learn to take care of her own body or to neglect it, without heeding vested interests who make life and living complicated. The media alas, compounds — rather than clears — the confusion. Details of types of fat, cholesterol, the properties of individual foods (proclaiming one food as a miracle cure until next week!), fear of bacteria and viruses, need for vaccination, etc are all grist for the media increasingly dabbling in health issues.
Recently a customer called me to enquire if my company marketed oatmeal. When I queried her sudden interest in oats, she said a newspaper article had recommended oats as an antidote to high cholesterol. I knew the newspaper had singled out oats because it had been fed with a research study conducted by an oatmeal marketing company. But such fragmented and motivated research doesn’t tell us that oatmeal is just one of the foods good for lowering cholesterol. Neither the study nor the newspaper told us about preventive measures which would help lower cholesterol in the blood stream. Prevention is always left for people to stumble upon by luck!
Years ago, as a nutrition student, when I would look up my Nutritive Value of Foods bible, I learned that every food is a combination of many nutrients. The popular belief is that rice is carbohydrate, eggs are protein and carrots are vitamin A. This is only partially true. These are the predominant ingredients of rice, eggs and carrots supplemented by a host of other nutrients. And so perfectly, each food is a combination of ingredients. Nature, indeed, plans only for perfection.
Further when the lab research of a milk foods marketing company informs the public that milk contains calcium, it omits to tell you that calcium in milk is not easily assimilable by human beings. Nor will it tell you that spinach and other green vegetables are also rich in calcium as are a variety of nuts and seeds like sesame. The plain truth is that there’s no super, miracle food. All natural foods ingested in moderation will contribute to the fuel needs and well-being of your body.
It is often contended that all natural foods are not healthy. True, but nature gives enough warning about harmful natural crops. For instance, tobacco is natural but its bitterness makes it a non-food. Therefore it is promoted as an addictive weed to be smoked. The only ones who benefit from humans puffing away are cigarette manufacturing corporations who seem to have no sense of accountability. Of course they wouldn’t be able to get away with it if law-makers around the world would care enough about the well-being of citizens they are meant to represent.
It could also be argued that ayurvedic medicine is bitter. But ayurvedic herbs are prescribed to be taken as medicine, not food. Nature gave us taste buds to tell us to what foods are meant for the human body.
Last but not the least, we are not told that there is much much more to discover about healthy nutritive foods. Thus all packaged, processed (including so called nutritive drinks) and preserved foods are to be viewed with suspicion. Until we can replicate natural food in a laboratory we will not discover the true essence of natural food. Since that is unlikely to ever happen, we would do well if we choose to eat foods in their natural form, with as little processing as possible. And only then will you have the best that nature can offer including the life force which is never replicable in a laboratory!
(Kavita Mukhi is a Mumbai-based eco-nutritionist and director of Conscious Food)