Understanding our evolution through the lens of diet and nutrition

The Community Nutrition Forum (CNF) in my home state of Kerala in India organized a “Webinarathon” in celebration of National Nutrition Month in September. 15 days of 1 hour sessions conducted by expert dieticians and nutritionists about a range of topics such as basics of good nutrition, diet for different diseases and diet for different age groups. I missed the first few sessions but since then have been listening to topics such as diet and nutrition for Alzheimer’s disease, women suffering from PCOS, lactating mothers and adolescent kids. One common factor has stood out in all the sessions. From children to elder people, every category of people has one basic requirement the lack of which is creating a host of health issues in them.

Vitamin D.

Where do we get Vitamin D from? Simply go stand in the sun. But there is a catch. Our body creates maximum Vitamin D when exposed to early morning sun, between 7-9 am. This is why most Indian temples are open till 9:30 am. What happens after 9:30? Sun’s radiation becomes stronger as it gets hotter and we get exposed to more UV rays which in the long run can cause cancer. But simply standing in the sun is not enough. With brisk walking we inhale more oxygen and the increased pumping of the heart sends oxygenated blood to all parts of the body triggering cell regeneration. More oxygenated blood flow rejuvenates the brain which in turn helps improve focus and concentration. Many schools are adopting 10-15 minutes of workouts or yoga before beginning of classes every morning. Circumambulation of banyan trees is common in Indian temples because banyan trees produce the best oxygen in the morning. Most traditions are rooted in science but people would ignore if they are asked to walk for the sake of health but would walk readily in the name of Gods, so Gods have been used to build healthy communities for thousands of years.

The dominant genes in all of us contain genetic information from our ancestors who were active and predominantly outdoor people. Our present lifestyles are in direct contradiction with the information contained in our genetic makeup. Moreover, fats, proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, sodium, potassium, magnesium, iron, etc all exist in a certain balance in our body. Imbalance in one of them can have ripple effect on the others. Such imbalances result in the release of hormones that can do the exact opposite of the so called happy hormones, making people moody and pushing them into spirals of negative thoughts. This in turn reduces our body energy known as prana and when that battery dies we die.

Vitamin D manages a host of body functions and is even said to protect us from cancer. But we are too busy for morning walks. Many people take Vitamin D capsules, unknown to the fact that absorption of Vitamin D through the gut is very less compared to creation of Vitamin D from sunlight through our skin. Then there are people deriding others for walking in the sun because it will make their complexion dark. Pitting staying healthy against looking white and (supposedly) good is not smart and it is born out of ignorance of our own anatomy.

I have observed dietitians advising people to shun junk food completely and eat only healthy food. We resist just like animals when we are forced to change something we like or adopt something we don’t want to. People who like eating junk food, especially the ones in the adolescent age group are going to laugh off such advices. The question here is how did we reach the point of addiction to junk food?

Animals eat food for nutrition and not based on taste. When we see a pride of lions hunting and devouring a wild buffalo, there are two aspects to note. Herbivores extract proteins from the vegetation they eat but protein content is low in vegetation which is why they need to eat a lot to satisfy their protein needs and consequently developed large appetite and large physique. Carnivores eat herbivores to get the proteins from them. Also, lions hunting a large animal means every member of the pride can eat to their full and they don’t need to eat again for some days. Hunting is an exhaustive and risky affair, zebra’s hind leg kicks have broken jaw bones of lions and starved them to death.

Our taste buds are far more in numbers and far more evolved than that of animals. Our preference for taste grew with time and this is how we started using spices. There were times when food was made with the balance of nutrition and taste, like the biryani. What changed those dynamics was the industrial revolution, concept of money and office jobs. Working for long hours became the norm and there was no time for sumptuous meals. This heralded the emergence of a new food industry, the fast food industry. Food items that can be prepared quickly, are tasty and can be eaten fast or on the go became the need and the fast food industry catered perfectly to the new dietary requirements. A large proportion of fast food items are fried and deep fried, have milk products such as cheese and butter and adding a sedentary lifestyle with little to no exercise has become the recipe for health disasters.

Dietitians have to understand the short and long term adverse impact of eating junk food and prepare totally new diet charts with healthy food items that can reduce the adverse effects of junk food. Fast food has become an integral part of the global food industry and junk food an integral part of our diet. Restaurants in India heat oil for deep frying a variety of vegetarian and non vegetarian food items in the same oil, reuse the same oil the next day and add fresh oil to it. Every food item fried in such oil is junk food for me. Dietitians have to accept this reality and evolve with their diet plans accordingly.

I have had problems digesting meat from my childhood so I never liked eating meat. My great grandfather was a Brahmin so I used to think my dislike to meat was genetic till my mom told me that she ate very less meat during her pregnancy. This is when I realized being not used to meat from my mother’s womb could be the primary reason. My friends keep telling me the need to eat meat for meeting my protein requirements but I believe everybody’s nutrient requirements are different based on many factors and my body may not have similar protein requirements like others.

Precision nutrition is an evolving and exciting area of study where one’s DNA, microbiome, and metabolic response to specific foods or dietary patterns are analyzed and evaluated to determine the most effective eating plan to prevent or treat disease. According to many religions, each human being is made up of genes from 7 generations. Considering 7 generations of genes on both father’s and mother’s side of each one of us, we are all made up of genetic soup and our genetic structure must be as unique as our fingerprints.

They say the way to someone’s heart is through their stomach. Healthy hearts are the key to our overall health and dieticians are best positioned to ensure this. The need for healthy diets are on the rise in every aspect of our lives so dietetics is an emerging field with immense potential. Looks like dietitians have a major role to play we move towards our next stage of evolution.

How Zomato’s & Swiggy’s business model is creating & choking food outlets

 

Online food delivery companies Zomato and Swiggy have completely changed how urban India eats it’s food. Sensing how Indian families like to eat home cooked food, Swiggy came up with a smartly enticing ad with the slogan “eat some home made food eat some from Swiggy”. Though several small local players have come up, these two companies have largely monopolized the market, Zomato going so far as to buy UberEats, the food delivery arm of Uber.

Both companies have very similar mobile apps with small variations in their features. The process they follow to add food outlets on to their platforms is also very similar. Create a new food outlet on the platform and list the items on the outlet’s menu in the app with the photos. Then a general template is followed to add options to turn on/off the outlet on the app and turn on/off individual items on the menu. Then the outlet is all set to start doing business on the platforms. All of this sounds well and good but then comes the tricky part.

When they created the option for customers to rate the food of food outlets, they chose an easy and clumsy way to do it. They simply added the option to rate the food outlets instead of the food their customers ate. This is the archaic method of rating restaurants based on the entire dining experience at their premises. With food delivery apps, there is no dining experience. There are only a few parameters to check such as if the food has been prepared with good and fresh ingredients and the behavior of the delivery executives.

Lets see how the rating dynamics plays out. So for example, a restaurant has 50 items on it’s regular menu and they are listed on the apps of Zomato and Swiggy and a customer orders 2 items from the list. Depending on how much the customer has liked the food, ratings can be given from 1-5, 1 being the least and 5 being the best. Let’s say the customer liked the two items immensely and decided to give 5 rating. But note that the rating is going for the restaurant and not for the food items he/she had ordered. On the flip side, if the customer did not like the food at all, the restaurant might get a 1 rating.

The fundamental problem with this rating system is, a customer who gives a lower rating in their first experience is less likely to buy again from the restaurant and this is irrespective of the fact that he/she has just tried 2 of the 50 items in the menu. Now let’s say the customer who gave 5 rating the first time ordered another two items from the same restaurant and didn’t like them. Where does this leave the customer? Should he/she rate the restaurant again? Giving a lower rating has the psychological effect on us of being less likely to buy from the same restaurant again.

Both Zomato and Swiggy mandate that outlets receive a certain number of ratings in a specific number of days to show as rated outlets on their platforms. Customers who give good ratings on their first order from an outlet is more unlikely to give ratings for further orders, even though they might be ordering different items on the outlet’s menu since they have already rated the outlet. This has adverse effect on food outlets with less items as they need more new customers to buy their items and rate them to stay rated on the platforms and they have no control over it.

Now what if the ratings are given for food items rather than the food outlets? One food item may have slightly different tastes in different food outlets. A customer may like it the most from one food outlet and not so much from the others but it will not have the effect of the customer avoiding food outlets because of one unsavory experience with them.

The inherent problem lies in the design of the apps. Food outlets are listed in the apps and under them their respective food items. Then there are some categories of food items listed, like for example Pizza. Inside Pizza, the food outlets selling pizzas are listed along with their ratings. Customers have to select an outlet to go to its menu. Now, how would the design look like if food items were rated instead of the food outlets? Under Pizza, types of pizzas will be listed. So when the customer clicks on, say, Margherita Pizza, the list of food outlets selling the pizza from the best to the lowest rating will be listed.

Even more bizarre is how customers are able to give lower ratings to food outlets by simply stating that the taste of the food was bad. They should also be given the options to specify what about the food was bad. Maybe the ingredients were not good or fresh, food was burnt or not cooked properly, etc. Simply allowing customers to give lower ratings because taste of the food is bad is ridiculous. Imagine going to a restaurant, ordering food off their menu and then telling them that the taste is bad. What they are giving is the taste of their food. They are not forcing anyone to go and have their food.

So what would be the benefit of rating food items? Competition among food outlets will increase on individual food items. Food outlets will start specializing on certain food items because it will become impossible to focus equally on all items on their menu. Outlets that cannot survive in the competition will close down. This is the reason why Zomato and Swiggy are rating food outlets rather than food items.

Both earn revenues by charging food outlets for using their platforms. Both are looking to onboard as many food outlets as they can on to their platforms to increase their revenues. They also provide option for food outlets to offer discounts for their customers which in turn will increase overall sales on the platforms. Moreover, when it becomes hard for food outlets to differentiate from one another, offering discounts become the last option. If Zomato and Swiggy decide to rate food items instead of outlets, quality of food items will improve and outlets will not have to offer discounts but number of outlets will decline considerably. With their business model and app designs and the concept of cloud kitchen, they have created the illusion that anyone can make food and sell on their platforms. Amazon and Flipkart have similar business models and apps, but selling food items is vastly different from selling other goods.

Many smaller food outlets that were catering to the student community and earning a large portion of their revenues through Zomato and Swiggy were forced to shut down due to COVID-19 lockdowns in my hometown. The fee that Zomato and Swiggy charge outlets for using their platforms is increasingly becoming unbearable for many outlets. There was a recent report that the hotels and restaurants association in my home state is planning to develop their own online delivery platform to escape from the steep platform fee of Zomato and Swiggy. No matter how many platforms come up, online delivery of food will not improve as long as the current business model of Zomato and Swiggy is followed.

Animal migration is not just a journey in search of food

 

Every year at the fag end of the extended monsoon season, birds start migrating to the wetland areas in my hometown. They come from far and near and more species of birds have been coming with each passing year, especially after protection of migrating birds has been strictly imposed.

Why do birds migrate?

The common answer is for food. Seasonal changes in the areas they are endemic to forces them to leave their homes in search of food. This is true but not entirely. There are more troubling questions here. Why do they travel so far? But what is more incomprehensible is their mortality rates. As they cross oceans and continents, many die due to predators, diseases, injuries and many other reasons. Why travel so far which exposes them to higher mortality rates? Why no self preservation?

All the above questions have changed my understanding of animal migration in general. To understand the mortality rates during migration, we need to look what happens after migration. Migrating animals return to their home regions and what they do next is reproduce. Procreation is the reason why migration is so important. The weaker ones in the herds and flocks have to die. Some will die due to predation, some by diseases, some due to injuries and eventually the ones that return will be the strongest ones, physically and genetically. Migration is a natural population filter. The farther they travel the better the filter works. I came across a research on Arctic Terns flying all the way to Antarctica and back during their migrating season. The fascinating part was, they travel a longer distance during their onward journey but return by a faster route with less stopovers. Then it all became clear to me. The return journey is all about preserving themselves – feeding for enough fuel to burn to reach home so that the stored fat in the body is not depleted and reaching home quickly with less mortality to begin reproduction.

It’s the same with the now renowned yearly migration of Wildebeest across the Masai Mara plains and river, known as the Masai Mara migration. Of the 1 million odd that migrate, just 1-2% die. Even if consider the worst case scenario and take the total mortality rate to be 5%, that’s just 50,000 deaths.

So why such a population filter?

Because of Nature’s rule of Survival of the Fittest. Every living being within nature’s ecosystem is being continuously tested. Only the ones that survive predation, diseases, injuries and natural disasters need to survive. Nature retains only the best. From eating their own infants to starving them to death to pushing the chicks outside the nest so that only the ones that fly survive, nature’s filters are cruel but keeps it’s ecosystem free of genetic diseases. This is why there is only nurturing and no love in nature. This is one critical difference between us and them. We suffer from so many genetic diseases because of the complex emotions we have for our children.

But there is a filter inside our mother’s womb which gets activated as soon as we are conceived. A series of tests are run inside the womb to determine if the zygote can be harmful to the mother or to any zygotes conceived in future by the mother. This is critical since the umbilical cord connects to the blood stream of the mother through which DNA of the child is passed on to the mother which can cause health issues to the mother or to future children. This is why the first 3 months are critical for the mother as well as the baby, why the mother’s health weakens and why chances of abortion are highest in this time frame.

Nature seems to work in mysterious and incomprehensible ways but it appears so because of it’s order and discipline. Specific mating & migrating seasons are why we get to photograph them in different times in different colors, plumage and behavior. If animals were to photograph us based on mating and migrating seasons they would get thoroughly confused because we don’t have any of both. We can have children any time and we travel wherever we want when we feel like. There is no order and discipline in our lives. The fact that we do not adhere to most of nature’s laws is the reason why we are no longer part of nature’s ecosystem.

The dark food stories

It was just another day which started with a jolt as I was reading through news articles. Out popped the news item about a substance that Subway has been using to soften their bread, the same stuff used to soften leather. My brain cells flashed back to all those times I had devoured Subway Veggie Delites and more than anything else, I felt cheated because Subway was vying to be a symbol of fresh, clean food for all this time. But it didn’t surprise me much. In India, no one can say when a meal can go wrong and take its toll on our tummies and health.

This is the age when most of the food items we buy, be it grains, vegetables, fruits or meat are born in our labs. Technological advances have indeed helped to make food production extremely simple, but all of this has been at the cost of choosing quantity over quality. A doctor I know taught me the “flies test” on fruits. Buy fruits that flies are attracted to and wash them thoroughly before eating. He replied to my wide open eyes that flies mean those fruits do not carry the effects of fertilizers. The raw food items are already compromised before they even reach the retailers.

The laugh riot Bollywood movie Delhi Belly brilliantly showcased the dark side of Indian food culture in a few scenes. On one of the busiest streets of Delhi, a street vendor is shown scratching over his dirty loincloth and then giving a grilled chicken leg to one of the protagonists of the movie with the same hand. If this is one side of the story, the other side isn’t any better either. A famous Indian tennis player was almost on the verge of death due to a mystery illness which was finally diagnosed to a worm in his brain. It seems the salad he had eaten from a star restaurant was made my someone who hadn’t washed his hands properly after going to toilet.

All of these issues with hygiene can be solved by creating more awareness. But the real danger with food in countries like India lies hidden right before our eyes. And the culprits are reused oil and adulterated food. Indians consume large quantities of deep fried and oily food. A typical Indian restaurant kitchen looks like this: huge frying vessels full of oil are working overtime frying vegetarian and non vegetarian items in the same vessels. The oil that remains in the vessels at the end of the day is kept for the next day. Different food items are prepared with different mix of spices, yet they are all fried in the same vessel, thereby ruining the taste as well. The next day, fresh oil is added to the old oil and the process continues. Mixing used and fresh oil causes the most damage. I am sure different countries have their own ways of reusing cooking items, primarily because this is one of the many ways how restaurants make good to great profit margins.

Food adulteration is another bane that continues to torture the people of countries like India. Chalk powder mixed with chilli and turmeric powder and limestone powder mixed with milk are a few of the many that I have heard of. Corruption plays a big hand in this and everyone from the ministers to cops to administrators get paid handsomely so adulteration continues unabated and the perpetrators never get caught or punished and they continue toying with the health of common people. Another one that I have been hearing is restaurants buying low grade or partially damaged vegetables at considerably reduced costs.

So how do we deal with all of this? The key to surviving in large cities is to keep eating from outside even if we fall ill till our body gets used to the food. Back in 2004, a couple of Norwegian guys who were client’s employees had visited Bangalore when I was working there. Every day, by seeing an office boy carrying a mountain of pizza boxes to them for lunch, I understood how they were surviving. One day, the bigger guy went missing. Then I found out that the previous day when he was travelling back to his hotel in the evening in a rickshaw, he couldn’t resist the smell of food that was emanating from all the eateries everywhere. He ended up spending a day in the toilet. My apartment mate during MBA went on an eating spree on the streets of Shanghai and one night, he blacked out, fell in the bathroom and had to be hospitalized. When the doctors were suspecting epilepsy, my doctor in India correctly diagnosed it as low blood pressure caused by MSG or Ajinomotto, which is added to all Chinese food to increase taste. Friends have told me that the best way to eat meat is to cook it along with it’s blood. Yes, we started off by eating raw meat but we have come a long way from there. Our stomach is not made to digest meat. In fact, it is not even made to digest pure milk.

I understood the dangers of eating outside long before I left home to work. There are no guarantees about how food, especially meat is cooked and if it even gets washed properly. Quitting all kinds of meat did make my menu smaller, but went a long way in keeping my tummy and health steady. Even then, I still had to ward off enough troubles with vegetarian food because of the way it was getting cooked. Starting to cook my own food was one of the best decisions I ever made. Taste wise it would never match the food from restaurants, but buying good vegetables, using minimum spices and never reusing oil did wonders to my health.

Vani Hari (foodbabe.com), who has dug out Subway’s dark secret is one of the many people in the world who is striving and doing a commendable job in creating awareness about food adulteration and how to evolve into eating healthy food that fits our lifestyle in the modern age. I come from a place where people primarily eat brown rice which is heavier because it contains lot more starch. Brown rice is good for health provided it is digested completely. It is meant for people who do hard labour or are physically very active and not for someone like me. I feel my body weight increasing whenever I start having brown rice so I stopped having it completely. Knowing our own body, it’s ability to digest different food and knowing what to eat that fits our life style are key factors in maintaining a good food regime, especially for professionals who cannot afford to risk frequent health issues and stonewall their careers.