Here's an article the kind people at Indo American News ran in July about Dr. Robert McCarrison, who is considered the first person to conduct published research on the connections between what people ate and their health. In 1918, he founded the world's first lab dedicated to nutrition research, and it serves as India's National Institute of Nutrition today.
There are three things we can do to prevent becoming sick with chronic disease or better live with it: eat a good diet, relieve stress, and get regular exercise. Millions today exercise at home or in gyms, many of them almost every day. Millions also practice the ancient Indian art of yoga, and modern science has confirmed that yogic postures, breathing exercises, and meditation contribute to good health. But yoga isn’t the only thing which comes from India that helps people stay healthy.
Did you know that many spices in Indian food like turmeric, cumin, and black pepper, among others and mixed together in combinations developed by Ayurvedic practitioners over centuries, have been discovered to have properties described as “anti-cancer” by experts like Dr. Bharat Aggarwal of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center? Spices are one or many elements that make traditional Indian food healthy. (Yes, I said Indian food can be healthy. Read on.)
There are three things we can do to prevent becoming sick with chronic disease or better live with it: eat a good diet, relieve stress, and get regular exercise. Millions today exercise at home or in gyms, many of them almost every day. Millions also practice the ancient Indian art of yoga, and modern science has confirmed that yogic postures, breathing exercises, and meditation contribute to good health. But yoga isn’t the only thing which comes from India that helps people stay healthy.
Did you know that many spices in Indian food like turmeric, cumin, and black pepper, among others and mixed together in combinations developed by Ayurvedic practitioners over centuries, have been discovered to have properties described as “anti-cancer” by experts like Dr. Bharat Aggarwal of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center? Spices are one or many elements that make traditional Indian food healthy. (Yes, I said Indian food can be healthy. Read on.)
To explain this further, I’d like to tell the story of Robert McCarrison, an Irish physician who set off a revolution in our thinking on nutrition over a hundred years ago based on what he discovered in India. In 1901, the 23-year old doctor was sent to the Himalayas to care for soldiers stationed there. Amid long hours on duty, he recorded observations on a people living in the foothills named the Hunza. They were in excellent health compared with soldiers from Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and other parts of India as well as Britain, he noted.
McCarrison also observed high rates of thyroid disease among other Himalayan tribes, and his intuition was that different diets played a key role in why some people suffered bad health while in the same region other people enjoyed good health. This ran counter to popular thought, but his intuition was vindicated by his research on what people were eating in different parts of India, some being based on ancient traditions and Ayurvedic wisdom, and their overall health. During three decades of nutrition research, some in the South Indian hill town Conoor (where he founded a lab that is India’s nutrition research center today) but much of it in the field all over India, McCarrison witnessed a trend that disturbed him: the industrialization of food.
All over India processed products were showing up in people’s food, a departure from the way it had been. Before, as McCarrison noted, people ate grains close to how they grew in nature. Thus, parts of the grain called “germ,” which is full of minerals and vitamins, and fiber-rich “bran” were eaten. But people were not getting nutritious parts of grains as they were eating much more refined wheat and white rice because food was being “modernized” in India.
In addition to whole grains such as wild or brown rice and flatbreads from whole-wheat (atta in Hindi), Indians traditionally ate dal (lentils) and other legumes, leafy vegetables cooked with spices, yogurts like dahi, nuts such as pistachios, and other plant-based foods. Meats were also occasionally eaten in some parts of the subcontinent. These foods when eaten together are the basis of what I call the “Healthy Indian Diet.”
In the last decades of the Raj, Indians abandoned healthy eating habits based on wisdom cultivated over millennia because the industrialization that brought wealth and people to Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Bangalore, Amdavad and other Indian cities also changed what kind of food was cheap and available. Even people living in villages began eating refined grains and sugar, which are high in energy but poor in nutrition and help cause diabetes and heart disease, instead of whole grains and other natural foods.
McCarrison also observed high rates of thyroid disease among other Himalayan tribes, and his intuition was that different diets played a key role in why some people suffered bad health while in the same region other people enjoyed good health. This ran counter to popular thought, but his intuition was vindicated by his research on what people were eating in different parts of India, some being based on ancient traditions and Ayurvedic wisdom, and their overall health. During three decades of nutrition research, some in the South Indian hill town Conoor (where he founded a lab that is India’s nutrition research center today) but much of it in the field all over India, McCarrison witnessed a trend that disturbed him: the industrialization of food.
All over India processed products were showing up in people’s food, a departure from the way it had been. Before, as McCarrison noted, people ate grains close to how they grew in nature. Thus, parts of the grain called “germ,” which is full of minerals and vitamins, and fiber-rich “bran” were eaten. But people were not getting nutritious parts of grains as they were eating much more refined wheat and white rice because food was being “modernized” in India.
In addition to whole grains such as wild or brown rice and flatbreads from whole-wheat (atta in Hindi), Indians traditionally ate dal (lentils) and other legumes, leafy vegetables cooked with spices, yogurts like dahi, nuts such as pistachios, and other plant-based foods. Meats were also occasionally eaten in some parts of the subcontinent. These foods when eaten together are the basis of what I call the “Healthy Indian Diet.”
In the last decades of the Raj, Indians abandoned healthy eating habits based on wisdom cultivated over millennia because the industrialization that brought wealth and people to Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Bangalore, Amdavad and other Indian cities also changed what kind of food was cheap and available. Even people living in villages began eating refined grains and sugar, which are high in energy but poor in nutrition and help cause diabetes and heart disease, instead of whole grains and other natural foods.
After nearly thirty years of studying the connections between what people ate and their health, McCarrison left India, took the wisdom that he gained there, and became a crusader against the Modern Diet in his home country of Great Britain. In one famous lecture he gave in 1936, he said, “I have little patience with those who would have us believe that ‘white flour’ [or maida] is as good an article of diet as ‘whole wheat flour’ [or atta].”
White rice, he said, “[is] subjected to a number of processes before use by the consumer; all of which reduce [its] already sparse supply of certain essential nutrients. It is parboiled, milled or polished; often all three… It is thus deprived of much of its proteins and mineral salts and of almost all its vitamins.” Scientific studies from the last decade show this to be true: eating white rice does increase one’s risk of developing diabetes or worsening blood sugar levels.
White rice, he said, “[is] subjected to a number of processes before use by the consumer; all of which reduce [its] already sparse supply of certain essential nutrients. It is parboiled, milled or polished; often all three… It is thus deprived of much of its proteins and mineral salts and of almost all its vitamins.” Scientific studies from the last decade show this to be true: eating white rice does increase one’s risk of developing diabetes or worsening blood sugar levels.
On the other hand, regularly eating brown rice reduces one’s risk of diabetes. Similarly, studies now show that eating refined grains and sugar encourages the development of heart disease, while eating whole grain foods and cutting out sugar prevents it. For people from India and surrounding countries, this connection between our food and our health is especially important because of our propensity to develop heart disease and diabetes compared with people from other parts of the world.
Here's a link to the article in Indo American News.
Here's a link to the article in Indo American News.
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