Changing eating habits
Manish Gautam, Ankit Adhikari
JUN 25 -
They say we are what we eat. But is our present eating habit helping us
to live a healthy life? Perhaps not. Experts say the food habits of
Nepali people have seen a paradigm shift lately. This ‘unfortunate’ shift, according to nutritionist Dr Aruna Upreti, is
evident in crowds lined up in front of roadside thelas (carts) to skip
their healthy family meals against deep-fried stick foods that come in
yummy-looking menus stuffed with items ranging from sausage to meatball.
Such food habits prevalent among the city dwellers may make people suffer from malnutrition in the long run, say doctors.
Healthy past
According to Dr Upreti, our traditional food habits, which have roots
in various cultural practices, were somehow balanced in terms of
containing types of food necessary for good health. For instance, the
famous combination of dal (lentil), bhat (rice), achar (pickle) and
tarkari (vegetables) for a proper two-time meal and other items,
including chapattis made from barley flour, were considered important
from a health point of view.
“Knowingly or unknowingly, our traditional practice of food consumption
was scientific if defined under the nutritional science,” Dr Upreti
says. According to her, while dal gave our body the necessary amount of
protein, bhat was meant for carbohydrate. Similarly, the consumption of
tarkari and achar provides other nutritional enzymes and vitamin C.
Besides that, the traditional food habits that come along with various
seasonal festivals and other religious occasions, too, carried a lot of
weight. While consumption of saatu (edible flour made of oat) gives body
the vital protein, sarbat (homemade juice) is important to prevent
dehydration during the summer. Among many other similar healthy
practices is the consumption of kwati (beans soup) during Janai Purnima,
a hindu festival which falls in the rainy season, is equally important
as it gives the body the necessary heat and protein at the same time.
Balanced diet
Jaya Pradhan, associate professor at the Central Department of Home
Science and Women Development, says researches have shown that around
70-80 percent of the calories needed for the body come from cereals and
grains. According to her, although people eat vegetables, the
consumption of fruits and other dairy products is extremely low.
She underscores the need for a balanced consumption of food containing
carbohydrate, protein, fat and oil, vitamin, mineral and water. Rice and
cereals are the major source of carbohydrate, while proteins can be
found in meat and other dairy products. Vitamins and minerals can be
found in fiber-rich food such as fruits and vegetable products.
“While the ‘healthy past’ gives us what we need, people are being
attracted towards something else these days,” says Dr Upreti. “Junk food
and other deep-fried stick foods contain excessive fat and cholesterol,
which result in imbalanced diet consumption.” According to her,
overeating of meat products, which come in almost all items popular as stick foods, is also a burgeoning problem now.
Factors behind
Doctors attribute this to a number of factors. The major driving force
behind the change in food habits is the changing lifestyle and busy
schedules of people. Various practices, including the restaurant
culture, increasing number of nuclear families in cities, among others,
are resulting in unhealthy food practices. “People are taking food more for taste or just to satiate hunger than
for nutritional purposes,” says Dr Upreti. “And when it comes to taste,
the advertised foods become the first choice instead of home-made
healthy foods.”
Dr Upreti maintains lack of nutrition and the way foods are consumed
are responsible for a large majority of the births of malnourished
babies. She says the increase in non-communicable disease recently is
also linked to the consumption of low-nutrition food. “This will take us nowhere and these are serious issues,” Dr Upreti
says. “But we are yet to address it adequately. This can be done only
through public awareness campaigns.”
Nutritional guidelines
Nepal’s nutritional guidelines are determined on the basis of the
Dietary Guidelines prepared by the Indian Council for Medical Research,
which specifies the amount that need to be consumed for a health diet.
Hence, for our country it is believed that a food item should have 55 to
65 percent of carbohydrate, 15 to 20 percent of protein and fats around
20 to 35 percent. When it comes to saturated fat products, including
cheese and ice-cream, the consumption should be around 7 percent.
Experts say the tendency of not having breakfast routinely is harmful
for health, which affects the metabolism process when one consumes heavy
diet directly during the lunch hour. According to the guideline, meat
contains all proteins needed for the body, which for vegetarians can be
found only while consuming cereals along with milk. “However, one should
avoid visible fat portion of meat and the skin,” says Pradhan.
Source: The Kantipur Daily
