Author - Dr. Nitin Gupte

Snacking On Nuts And Cheese Is Not Going To Make You Slim!

Many people ask me if snacking on ground nuts and other nuts like almonds and walnuts and cheese helps in slimming.

Hardly. In fact, all nuts including groundnuts and dry fruit nuts are very high in fats. They provide between 50 to 60 per cent fat, walnuts providing 60 gm fat by weight, meaning every 100 gm of these nuts provide you with 40, 50 or 60 gm of fat. That is the same as eating 10 to 12 teaspoons of pure fat, like oil or ghee!

A major part of the fat in nuts is the monounsaturated kind, though walnuts also provide the plant source omega-3 fatty acids, which help protect us from coronary artery disease, although not as valuable as the sea source omega 3. Almonds and walnuts are also rich in a wide range of antioxidants. So it makes sense to have a few almonds and walnuts daily, walnuts especially if fish is not a part of your food, especially if you’re slim.

Luckily there is no cholesterol in nuts.

Eating nuts because nuts have fibre, makes no sense for Indians. Pulses, whole grain cereals, vegetables, especially leafy vegetables and fruits provide adequate fibre in Indian diet at the cost of much fewer calories. Our normal Indian food has all four in most meals, so we don’t need high fat nuts for fibre. Plus all four are far cheaper than dry fruit nuts!

For most Indians, the normal diet consists of cereal – pulses – vegetables routine in the majority of meals and meat only a few meals, probably no more than a couple of days a week. So getting enough fibre is not a great problem for us.

Predominantly ‘meat only’ Western diets include little whole grain cereals and vegetables and probably lack adequate monounsaturated fatty acids as well as fibre. Hence some Western experts may advise a handful of nuts as snacks. But for Indians, the advice is totally misplaced.

Nor do we need nuts to give us proteins. Milk and a combination of cereals and pulses and legumes  provide us with adequate proteins. Also the proteins in nuts are not of high quality, not containing all essential amino acids.

So we don’t need to buy a lot of fats to get some incomplete proteins and a little fibre.

A diet high in overall fat, and particularly saturated fats, builds more cholesterol in our blood.

Cheese will be 30 per cent fat, major part of it saturated, and ample cholesterol. Both are bad for your blood cholesterol levels and your heart.

We don’t need cheese to give us proteins and calcium; milk and leafy vegetables can provide them amply.

So snacking on nuts and cheese is bad for your weight as well as the heart. Make no mistake about it.

Eating either, in small quantity, occasionally isn’t exactly akin to committing suicide, but snacking on them every day definitely is!

Read more about the Basics Of Nutrition on our website.

Keeping Our Bones Healthy For A Life Time!

Osteoporosis is a disease in which bones lose calcium, mineral mass and density, become fragile and fracture easily. Even sneezing or coughing can cause fractures.

It is a highly crippling disease whose threat is not perceived seriously enough by people.

Fractured hip bone or femur (the thigh bone) in old age can be life threatening.

Osteoporosis is a lifestyle disease common amongst older men and women, more so amongst post-menopausal women.

The wrists, the hip bone, and the vertebrae are the common sites of fractures caused due to osteoporosis. Many old people fracture their hip bones and femur and have to undergo extensive orthopedic surgeries, and many of them become bedridden and never recover.

Lack of adequate calcium and vitamin D in the diet, minimum exposure to sunlight, lack of exercise and sedentary lifestyle are the major factors leading to osteoporosis.

There is the danger of developing osteoporosis during breast feeding, if the mother’s food doesn’t supply enough calcium and she doesn’t get enough Vitamin D.

Prolonged breast feeding is beneficial to both the baby and the mother in the long term.

But it puts strain on the mother’s body.

Breast milk draws vital nutrients from the mother’s body and provides it to the baby.

If the mothers food doesn’t supply it, the breast milk draws it from her body, e.g., if adequate calcium is not present in the mother’s food, the calcium is drawn from the mother’s bones, which ultimately may lead to osteopenia and eventually osteoporosis.

So multiparous women who breast feed many children for years, could suffer from osteoporosis most often.

All commercial slimming programs inevitably force you to take up very low calorie diets (VLCD). Such diets invariably lead to calcium loss from bones, amongst multiple other nutritional deficiencies. If you are prone to take up starvation based low calorie diets off and on in a desperate attempt to lose weight, you are a prime candidate for osteoporosis. So stop such yo-yo dieting if you want to have healthy bones for a lifetime.

A high protein diet, excessive consumption of coffee and alcohol, smoking, stress, and depression also enhance calcium loss and slow down fresh rebuilding of bones, thus helping the development of osteoporosis. Caffeine in coffee and raised levels of the hormone cortisol in stress enhances calcium loss from bones.

People who have taken steroids for long periods for diseases like asthma or other allergies, also develop osteoporosis as steroids cause the body to lose calcium through the urine.

The threat of osteoporosis has increased multi fold during the Corona pandemic as we are home locked and get even less exposure to sunlight and may not get enough vegetables or drink enough milk to get sufficient calcium from our food.

Osteoporosis is undoubtedly a very grave disease that can be prevented simply by leading a healthy lifestyle from childhood. Which means that parents must have adequate knowledge about the dangerous disease which can be prevented or arrested but not completely reversed once it sets in.

So you must learn all about this illness and teach your children to eat healthy, play physical sports involving activities like running and climbing, get into the habit of exercising regularly and being happy and peaceful.

You must include ample skim milk, lots of green leafy vegetables, nachani (a cereal, also called ragi) and soya in your diet to ensure getting adequate calcium.

You can consult your doctor and discuss with him or her about whether you need calcium and vitamin D supplements. If you don’t get sufficient calcium in your food, you may be benefited by taking them.

Our body synthesizes vitamin D from sunlight. We also get it from food.

Our body builds a precursor of vitamin D under the skin with the help of cholesterol when exposed to the sunlight. Eventually the liver and the kidneys also play a role in the synthesis of vitamin D.

So ensure that you get adequate early morning sunlight to allow your body to build vitamin D without suffering from the damaging effects of strong sunlight. Five-minute exposure of your arms, legs and face to the morning sun, three to five days a week is adequate for most people to synthesize sufficient vitamin D.

The food sources of vitamin D are limited. Fatty fish oils, fatty fish, liver, eggs, and milk are the major sources of vitamin D. So you could consume milk every day, a couple of whole eggs a week (unless your doctor recommends not eating them to limit dietary sources of cholesterol) and fish to improve your supply of dietary vitamin D.

A whole egg four days a week would serve you nicely if your cholesterol is excellent, providing wide health benefits other than vitamin D. But you must avoid other sources of cholesterol, viz. non-vegetarian source foods, ghee, butter, and cheese on these days.

You may not get enough vitamin D if you do not have much exposure to sunlight. Barring milk, the food sources of the vitamin are not common foods. In such a case, it may be necessary for you to take vitamin D supplements. Ask your doctor about this issue.

Take up regular weight-bearing exercises. They help stop further bone loss and may help to build bone as you age. By improving your posture, balance, and flexibility, they also reduce your risk of falls that can break fragile bones. Exercise for at least 30 minutes three times a week. Take up antigravity exercises like walking, running, jogging, aerobics, hill climbing, stair climbing, tennis, football, basketball or volleyball and moderate weight training. Swimming doesn’t help in building healthy bones as your bones and muscles must work against gravity to do so.

A word of caution will not be out of place here. While taking up these exercises, don’t get carried away and damage your knees! Taking up knee strengthening exercises simultaneously is equally vital. We want strong bones as well as healthy knees.

So consult your doctor before taking up these exercises.

Read the articles ‘Can I Eat A Whole Egg?‘ and ‘Save Your Knees‘ on this site for more information.

Vital Information About Our Salt Requirement

Sodium is a mineral that is essential to our health. Our body needs it to regulate our body water balance, blood pressure and blood volume and also for proper functioning of our muscles and nerves.

The largest source of sodium in our food is table salt. Almost all components of our food, including milk and water, naturally contain sodium.

All the fried snacks (‘farsan’ or ‘namkin’) are high in sodium.

All fast foods like ‘wadas’, burgers, pizzas are high in sodium.

Indian foods like pickles, chatnis and papad are all high sodium foods.

Dried fish including prawns available in India are very high in salt content.

All sauces like Worcestershire sauce, soya sauce and garlic sauce are high in sodium content.

Processed meats like salami, bacon, sausage and ham, and canned soups and vegetables are high in sodium.

Many people imagine that rock salt or ‘saindhav’ is healthy. It isn’t. It contains as much sodium as table salt. So don’t replace table salt with saindhav imagining it to be the healthier option. And since it tastes less salty, most people end up using it more than table salt and in fact get more sodium than when they use table salt.

‘Chat masala’ is also a source of sodium. It is extremely unwise to use it liberally. In fact, best is to avoid it altogether.

The glamorous super chefs on television have popularized sprinkling of ample table salt and also chat masala on their cookery shows with such panache, such flamboyance that you are tempted to imitate them!

So you can see that sodium is easy to get amply and difficult to restrict.

The surest way to go overboard with our capacity to acquire a bad habit like overeating or over-drinking is to recklessly persist with it. Same holds true to eating too much salt. The more we eat it, the more do our taste buds demand it for the same level of the pleasure of eating salty food.

Gradually you can over-consume food, sugar, salt and even alcohol in quantities you couldn’t possibly have consumed previously. Your capacity of consuming food, alcohol or salt keeps going up.

So the same applies in equal measure to eating sweets! The more you eat sweet foods, the more you can eat it!

Give your taste buds a chance to adjust to low sugar, low salt food and in a few weeks you will find that you cannot eat as sweet or as salty food any more!

Too much sodium can lead to water retention and high blood pressure. Your doctor may ask you to cut down on your sodium (salt) intake if your blood pressure is high or you have oedema (swelling) on your body.

Water retention in people with congestive heart failure, liver cirrhosis, or kidney disease can lead to grave consequences. Such people are usually put on strict sodium-restricted diets by their doctors.

A healthy adult should consume less than 2,300 mg of sodium a day while individuals with high blood pressure should consume no more than 1,500 mg a day. Those with congestive heart failure, liver cirrhosis, and kidney disease may need much lower amounts.

One teaspoon of table salt contains 2,300 mg of sodium. Plus every food item that you consume and also the water that you drink contain sodium.

So you can easily see that your food should not contain any more than three fourth of a teaspoon of table salt, perhaps even a little less than that may be better! Most people easily eat much more!

A renowned Pune, India, doctor goes so far as to say that we don’t need to add table salt to our food at all, all our food is naturally endowed with all the salt we need for absolute health! And I couldn’t agree with him more!

But following his advice will take a radical change in our thinking, which can only happen with great difficulty. Also it will present some practical difficulties, like say when you eat out, in a restaurant.

But it is not very difficult to get used to low salt food. Fortunately, our taste buds are not difficult to manipulate. If you start eating low salt food consciously and persist with it for a few weeks, you can train them to get used to low salt food, just as easily as you trained them to enjoy overeating it. And then you would find it tough to get back to eating high salt food again.

Incidentally, the same principle applies to food and sweets. Eat food and sweets sensibly and moderately for a few weeks and you can train your taste buds, brain and tummy to get adjusted to the new levels quickly.

So it is vital that we constantly remain aware that we must consume food, salt, sweets and alcohol with care! Moderation is the key! It will create optimum health, lack of it will destroy it!

It is vital that we cook low salt food at home and ensure that our children learn to eat low salt food from childhood. Once low salt food becomes a culture for them, they won’t have any problem eating salt in moderation later in life.

So the best plan is to set aside just under three fourth of a teaspoon of salt per adult in your family and cook all your family meals from this salt. This, of course, is applicable to otherwise healthy families.

This also requires that your food does not include the above mentioned high sodium foods on daily basis.

If your family members eat all meals at home and eat on par with each other, everyone will get the measured amount of salt.

In contrast to sodium, potassium helps us lower our blood pressure.

Potassium relaxes our muscles, and relaxing the smooth muscles in the arterial walls relaxes the arteries and this helps lower our blood pressure.

We need potassium also for the electrolyte and acid base balance of the body and normal functioning of the muscles and nerves.

We get potassium from fresh vegetables, fruits and pulses.

While it is very easy to get sodium amply from most of your food as well as water, you have to choose right foods consciously to get adequate potassium.

Therefore you have to consciously avoid high sodium food and keep your sodium consumption low and eat more of vegetables, fruits and pulses to get adequate potassium, whether your blood pressure is high or normal, to protect yourself from heart disease and strokes.

If you consciously reduce your sodium consumption and increase your potassium consumption, you will protect yourself from heart disease and strokes.

Also read the article ‘Preventing Hypertension‘ on this website.