go for mason jar lunches for a whole stash of essential nutrients that look and taste good

A whole stash of essential nutrients that look and taste good. Move over Mason jar lunches. The Buddha bowl is claiming lunch and dinner menus in restaurants and cafes world over, and is being lapped up and marketed as a fabulous ‘new’ way to eat. The concept is not altogether new.

Everything from Burmese khow suey to Hawaiian poke and Indian khichri is really a meal in a bowl.

So what’s so hot about the Buddha bowl? The fact that it conserves resources by minimising food waste as well as fuel. People are more likely to put a healthy mix of grain, fruit and veg in a bowl than fried chicken, which would stick out like a sore thumb! Plus, it’s the perfect makeover for leftover food.

But there’s more.

You eat just the right amount. If the idea doesn’t grab you instantly, give over at least two meals in your week to this way of eating. They offer your whole family an opportunity to get creative and explore the kitchen; they also help you discover tastes, as you mix a little of this and a little of that. Boiled chickpeas get interesting with roasted red pepper and crumbled feta.

Exploit the variety. Most chefs love bowl meals, as they are customisable and versatile enough to eat every day. Not only do they offer variety and a chance to use interesting (exotic) ingredients in small quantities, but they are also a great way to blend multiple flavours in a single dish: think roast chicken over red rice with plum sauce, sesame seeds and fresh red chilli.

Plus, they can be tailored to individual preferences — skip the plum sauce and drizzle with stock, for a child who doesn’t like the clumpi-ness of the plum.

Build a bowl. They are quick and easy to cook. Choose a grain, a green and a bean (or a meat). You can do them as a salad with a dressing or as a meal with a gravy. For a salad, start with a base of vegetables (any mix), add a protein (cheese, legumes, chicken), then add a dressing and seasoning.

It’s perfect office fare. For dinner, layer ingredients in a bake-proof bowl and bung it in the oven for an hour until you’re ready. Try mashed potato, crumbled paneer seasoned with garlic powder, and topped with thin brinjal slices. Once it’s out, add a dollop of salsa.

Balance the meal. A bowl is a great way of getting your proteins, carbs, fibre and nutrients (vitamins and minerals) in the right proportion. Even if you’re doing a snack in a bowl, with roasted beaten or puffed rice, you could add in a little shredded carrot, some peanuts and a green chutney, and so up the nutrient quotient. Or a breakfast bowl: muesli, yoghurt, fruit and honey.

The good thing is that if you feel you’re missing out on a nutrient, you can simply plop it in. For instance, if you’ve got corn, tomato, onion, olive oil and lime juice in, and you feel you’re missing a protein, boil an egg and toss it in. Want a sweet element instead? Throw in some raisins.

Try out something new. Since you’re experimenting, go the whole way, by introducing something from another culture. Gujarati Undhiyu is a one-pot delicious hearty meal, mostly cooked in winter. A combination of root vegetables like yam, sweet potato and potato, it sometimes has brinjal, gourds and peas too. It’s all cooked in a coconut-based curry in an earthen pot, sealed and placed upside down in a fire pit. You could try the kitchen version to pour over rice. Another idea: cooked amaranth and veggies with tofu and tahini.

The writer is a nutritionist, weight management consultant and health writer based in Delhi. She is the author of Don’t Diet! 50 Habits of Thin People

Why using the internet as your dietician is a terrible idea

Aashmita Nayyar, HuffingtonPost in





Do your body a favour. Don't search for dieting tips online.

Type `diet' in the Google search bar, and you'll be rewarded with a zillion results, each more bizarre than the other. If one diet programme advises you to have just cucumber and unsweetened curd all through the day , another tells you that having raw papaya will make you lose a little more than two and half kilograms a day . However, they all promise instant results within an impossibly short time.If you have a friend's wedding around the corner and you want to squeeze into that tiny Deepika Padukone choli, it's hard not to buy into them.More so when you consider how much cheaper and convenient it is as compared to visiting a nutritionist's office.Yet, experts ask you to exercise a little caution.There's no harm in doing some research before you drown yourself in a sea of dahi. Lawyer, Abhiroop Dutta lost 16 kilograms by charting out his own plan after discovering Loseit (a weight loss application). His start wasn't so good: Dutta initially went off salt for six weeks, which he admits in retrospect was not the best move.Luckily for him, he discovered he was harming his own body , and chartered a sensible plan that eventually worked for him. “Monitor everything.Know what you are putting into your body . Read every label, and have a chart,“ he says.
Unfortunately , there are many people out there, like Dutta, who initially try to cut convenient corners despite knowing better. Needless to say , they and end up facing ordeals of a more severe nature. “Following a weight loss programme online isn't just concentrating on a particular diet. It requires a holistic lifestyle change in your eating and exercising habits,“ says Ritika Samaddar, regional head of clinical nutrition and dietetics of a hospital. “Most clients only concentrate on the diet, and are disappointed by the weight gain when they discard it.“
It appears ignorance isn't always bliss -certainly not when it comes to looking up diet programmes online. “There's a lot of mixed information out there, and you could be doing some severe damage to your body without even knowing it just for the sake of a shortcut,“ says Dr Shikha Sharma. She has along with other nutritionists, explained why online diets won't always work for you.
YOU CAN NEVER BE SURE OF CORRECT DOSAGES
A lot of content online won't always prescribe the right amount of food your body requires unless you're consulting with an online dietician. “ Amla for example is a dicey food to eat -it will improve your metabolism if taken in the right dosage. But an overdosage has repercussions like diarrhoea, and dehydration,“ says Dr Sharma. One also has to consider the possibility of conflicting health disorders.An individual with a cholesterol problem will only do more damage to himself herself by going on the Atkin's diet.
IT'S NOT RELEVANT IN YOUR COUNTRY
“Many diets that are available online cater to our Caucasian counterparts,“ says Samaddar.“But their metabolic rates and fat and protein distribution content are hugely different as compared to the needs of an Indian body type. For example, the Atkins diet was a huge hit in the US. But an average Indian might land up with kidney failure, simply because our bodies cannot accommodate such high quantities of animal protein.“
IT'S EASY TO CAVE IN TO TEMPTATION
Crash diets or extreme changes are not easy to get used to. When Charlene Hendricks attempted the General Motors diet, she could only survive for four days before dropping it.“The online diet was crazy restrictive. No matter how much they said you'd feel full on fruits and veggies, it just doesn't work that way ,“ she told HuffPost India.“Many people in India enjoy heavier meal,“ says Dr Sharma. If you ask someone to drop from consuming approximately 3,000 to 1,500 kilo calories, that person is more likely to binge and will end up consuming more than he she normally would.
YOU'RE RELYING ON UNREGULATED, UNTESTED INFORMATION
Unlike your family doctor who is familiar with your family history , and will cater to your needs accordingly , there's a lot of vague information out there. “A lot of people think it's a quick buck and quick money . The nutrition profession in India is very unregulated (forget about the thousands of weight loss articles that are pouring in from all other parts of the world),“ says Dr Sharma.“People don't usually look for the source of the content they are reading. Much of the content is picked up conve niently from other areas and stitched together with out detailed research,“ she says.
“Seventy per cent of the content written online is by non nutritionists as fads to follow. There's a lot of double checking to be done, which can be avoided if you find the right nutritionist: for instance, peo ple with a cholesterol problem should not attempt an Atkins diet.“
YOU REGAIN WEIGHT FAST
Atika Singhal Jain attempted a vegetarian version of the General Motors diet to fit into her shorts for a holiday in Goa. “I lost a cou ple of kilos. But it seemed that the minute I had my first lunch at Goa, the extra weight was back,“ she said. Hendricks also gained the weight she had lost within the span of a week.“It wasn't until I started consulting a nutritionist that I started keeping the weight off,“ she said. “The first thing anyone loses on a diet is water, especially when you are off carbs,“ says Lalitha Subramanyam, chief nutritionist associated with a weight loss website and app that caters to clients individually. “It's easy to lose, and one is encouraged by the results. But the minute you start eating carbs, the weight will come back.“
YOU BECOME PRONE TO SUFFERING FROM NUTRIENT DEFICIENCIES
Samaddar reveals that most of her patients who've gone on DIY crash diets come back to report severe deficiencies, particularly calcium, vitamin D and iron. (Vitamin D deficiency is on a steady rise in the country , an alarming phe nomenon as this pro-hormone helps in 26 body functions.) “Protein deficiencies are also very common, as many Indians are vegetarians,“ she says. “Vegan diets are now the in-thing, but need to be monitored carefully so you don't miss out on any nutrients. A lot of this infor mation is not available online.“
YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO NEXT
Eventually , in any diet plan, an individual will hit a stagnant phase. “Your body needs a change to hit the next level and overcome this plateau,“ says Subramanyam. “But if you've following random online advice, you won't know what the next level of natural progres sion is.“
WHAT WORKS FOR SOMEONE MAY NOT WORK FOR YOU AT ALL
“People have different needs, different diet requirements, based on their age and many other things,“ says nutritionist Ishi Khosla. A proper diet needs to be tailor made to suit these requirements.
THERE ARE NO CAUTIONARY NOTES
“Professionals who really know the field will always include cautionary notes about the items you are putting in your body , and how precisely it will work,“ says Dr Sharma. “There are some crazy diets out there, like the wine and cheese diet or a starvation diet, which don't work, and don't include any fine print on the damages. If something is published, people think it's validated,“ she says.
Samaddar cites the example of a nutri tionist who has been trending online for encouraging the inclusion of ghee (clarified butter) in everyday meals. “What's not mentioned is that she's talking about people who exercise every day . So much ghee cannot be ingested by a person with a high cholesterol level. But people will only read what they want to read,“ she says.

dietician advice for todays human

Rujuta Diwekar is highest paid dietician in India. She is the one who took care of junior Ambani to lose 108 kgs. Please read her advice to diabetics . . .

  1. Eat LOCAL fruits. Like Banana, Grapes, Chikoo, Mangoes. All fruits have FRUCTOSE so it doesn't matter that you are eating a mango over an Apple. A Mango comes from Konkan and Apple from Kashmir. So Mango is more local to you.

Eat all the above fruits in DIABETES as the FRUCTOSE will eventually manage your SUGAR

  2. Choose Seed oils than Veggie oils. Like choose ground nut, mustard, coconut & til. Don't choose chakachak packing oils, like olive,  rice bran etc
Go for kachchi ghani oils than refined oils

  3. Rujuta spends max time in her talks talking about GHEE and its benefits.
Eat GHEE daily. How much GHEE we should eat depends on food. Few foods need more GHEE then eat more and vice versa. Eat ample GHEE. It REDUCES cholesterol.

  4. Include COCONUT. Either scraped coconut over food like poha, khandvi or chutney with idli and dosa
Coconut has ZERO CHOLESTEROL and it makes your WAIST SLIM

  5. Don't eat oats, cereals for breakfast. They are packaged food and we don't need them.  Also they are tasteless and boring and our day shouldn't start with boring stuff.
Breakfast should be poha, upma, idli, dosa, paratha

  6. Farhaan Akhtar's New ad of biscuits - fibre in every bite... Even ghar ka kachara has fibre, likewise oats have fibre. Don't chose them for fibre. Instead of oats, eat poha, upma, idli, dosa

  7. No JUICES till you have teeth in your mouth to chew veggies and fruits

  8. SUGARCANE is the real DETOX . Drink the juice fresh or eat the SUGARCANE

  9. For pcos, thyroid - do strength training and weight training and avoid all packaged food

10. RICE - eat regular WHITE RICE. NO NEED of Brown rice. Brown rice needs 5-6 whistles to cook and when it tires your pressure cooker, then why do you want to tire your tummy.

A white rice is hand pounded simple rice

Rice is not high is GI INDEX.  Rice has mediun GI index and by eating it with daal / dahi / kadhi we bring its GI index further down
If we take ghee over this daal chawal then the GI INDEX is brought further down.
B.
Rice has some rich minerals and you can eat it even three times a day

11. How much should we eat - eat more if you are more hungry, let your stomach be your guide and vice versa

12. We can eat rice and chapati together or only rice if you wish. It depends on your hunger. Eat RICE in ALL THREE MEALS without any fear.

13. Food shouldn't make you scared like eating rice and ghee. Food should make you FEEL GOOD 

14. NEVER look at CALORIES. Look at NUTRIENTS

15. No bread, biscuits, cakes, pizza, pasta

16. Ask yourself is this the food my Nani & Dadi ate?  If yes then eat without fear.

17. Eat as per your season. Eat pakoda, fafda, jalebi in monsoon. Your hunger is as per season. Few seasons we need fried food so eat them.

18. When not to have chai - tea - don't drink tea as the first thing in morning or when you are hungry. Rest you can have it 2-3 times a day and with sugar

19. NO GREEN tea please. No green, yellow, purple, blue tea.

20. Eat ALL of your TRADITIONAL foods.

21. Strictly NO to packaged foods / drinks.

22. Exercise / Walk more to digest & stay healthy.

posted as received from whatsapp forward message

healthy simple food chart