Back in 2009 I read an essay by an Indian journalist named Akar Patel on why many Indian people have become sick with diabetes and heart disease, and it struck me like a hammer.
"Indian food is assumed to be strongly vegetarian, but it is actually lacking in vegetables. Our diet is centred around wheat, in the north, and rice, in the south. The second most important element is daal in its various forms. By weight, vegetables are not consumed much. You could have an entire South Indian vegetarian meal without encountering a vegetable. The most important vegetable is the starchy aloo. Greens are not cooked flash-fried in the healthy manner of the Chinese, but boiled or fried till much of the nutrient value is killed.
"Indian food is assumed to be strongly vegetarian, but it is actually lacking in vegetables. Our diet is centred around wheat, in the north, and rice, in the south. The second most important element is daal in its various forms. By weight, vegetables are not consumed much. You could have an entire South Indian vegetarian meal without encountering a vegetable. The most important vegetable is the starchy aloo. Greens are not cooked flash-fried in the healthy manner of the Chinese, but boiled or fried till much of the nutrient value is killed.
Gujaratis and Punjabis are the two Indian communities most susceptible to heart disease. Their vulnerability is recent. Both have a large peasant population -- Patels and Jats -- who in the last few decades have moved from an agrarian life to an urban one. They have retained their diet and if anything made it richer, but their bodies do not work as much. This transition from a physical life to a sedentary one has made them vulnerable."
Read the whole essay "Why Indians are stressed and unhealthy" here. While I don't agree with everything Mr. Patel writes (for example, he's right that there aren't enough vegetables and that rice and wheat products that are often fried are to be blamed, but I don't agree with his blaming of ghee), I do agree with a lot (EXAMPLES) and with his overall claim that traditional diets are healthier than our modern one.
Read the whole essay "Why Indians are stressed and unhealthy" here. While I don't agree with everything Mr. Patel writes (for example, he's right that there aren't enough vegetables and that rice and wheat products that are often fried are to be blamed, but I don't agree with his blaming of ghee), I do agree with a lot (EXAMPLES) and with his overall claim that traditional diets are healthier than our modern one.
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