Changing eating habits

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