On Shopping, Food and Nutrition

 

Like I said before, my mother did all the housework herself, so from a young age I was called upon to help whenever needed and wherever the assistance of a 6 – 10 year old was appropriate. This usually happened during summer holidays, when time hung heavy and we needed to be kept out of trouble. In fact, when I was little and bored with my limited play options, I would follow my mother around begging her to let me do what she was doing. I longed to be grown up. 

One day my mother ran out of coriander leaves while cooking and asked me to go across the road to buy a bunch. Having no change, she gave me a Rs.5 note and told me to get 10 paise worth of coriander leaves. I was excited to be entrusted with such a responsible task. “Be careful while crossing the road,” she called after me. Normally, I should have gone down the road in front of our home a short distance, gone out the gate of the campus and then crossed the main road to the line of shops across. I decided to take the short cut.

Clutching the money in my hand, I ran across the road in front of our house, jumped across the ditch, climbed over the campus wall and jumped down, crossed the wide ditch on the other side and then looking left and right as I had been taught, crossed the main road to the vegetable shop. The vendor recognized me as he had seen me with my mother. He gave me what I needed and I ran across home the same way I had come.

My mother had watched my progress from the window and was already annoyed with me. “Where is the change?” she asked when I gave her the bunch. Change?  I looked at her blankly. Switching off the stove and taking me by the hand, she hurried me back to the shop, this time by the proper route. I got a sound lecture on the way about my irresponsible behavior while crossing the road and carelessness with money. The shopkeeper had the change ready. “She ran off before I could give it to her. I would have come to return it, but here you are." (“हम आता होता, पण तुमच आया,” were his exact words in the Hindi-Marathi-Gujarati blend common among the locals.)

That was my first lesson in shopping. After that I began to take more interest and learnt from my mother over the years how to buy vegetables and fruit, how to select good ones, how to compare prices and bargain. She would not tolerate my bringing home sub-standard stuff and would scold me roundly. Later, I learnt how to buy meat and fish and not to unquestioningly accept the vendor’s word as to the item’s freshness.  Today I have domestic help and often I send them to go and buy something. Sometimes they come back with something unsatisfactory and I have to bite my tongue, as I’m not a scolder by nature and the alternative is to go out and get it myself. Whenever I shop, I feel grateful to my mother for teaching me this skill, especially when I watch other shoppers put unsuitable stuff in their baskets. 

My mother was interested in health and would always ensure we ate nutritious food. We were not allowed to fuss or leave anything on our plates. Whether we liked something or not, we had to eat it if it was on our plates. This training has stood me in very good stead. Wherever I have traveled, I have never had trouble with food. I can eat almost anything that is edible and I am willing to try new things. I am an easy guest to please where food is concerned, because there is hardly anything I don’t like. I have watched other Indians during my travels suffer acutely when their preferred diet was not available. Some even carried food from home to tide them over, or bottles of pickle or chilly sauce. But I was always able to find something on the menu to enjoy.

Perhaps because of my early training, I developed an interest in health and nutrition. I’m going to share some of what I have learnt, first from my mother and then from other sources like friends, relations, books, magazines and the Internet. Perhaps some of you may find something of value here. I would also welcome your input and feedback to expand my knowledge, because I’m sure there are many things I don’t know. I will need to do this over multiple posts, as there is so much to convey. Here is where you can help me by asking questions or telling me your areas of interest.

So let’s begin with some general tips:

• It is generally better to buy local fruits and vegetables that are in season. They are likely to be both cheap and fresh, as they don’t have to travel that far to your table. The fresher, the more nutritious.

• Buy vegetables that have a good color and look healthy and attractive. They should be firm and not wilted or dull looking, overripe, under-ripe or damaged in any way.

• Don’t buy fresh and then store too long or carelessly even in the fridge. You lose both nutrition and taste. Keep them in containers or plastic bags in the refrigerator to avoid dehydration. Use within a couple of days.

• Wash your veggies well, but before cutting, not after to ensure minimum loss of nutrients.

• Eat fruits and vegetables of different colors every day. The various pigments contain different kinds of flavinoids, which have antioxidant properties and work to prevent cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Include red, green, yellow, orange and purple on your plate. You have the double advantage of your food looking attractive and appetizing as well as being more nutritious.

• Include plenty of greens – eat them three or four times a week. Eat different kinds of beans and legumes too, both fresh and dried. A high fiber diet keeps your colon healthy and is a guard against colon cancer.

• Ensure variety in your diet. Don’t eat the same old vegetables all the time. If you don’t like a certain vegetable, it is possible that you will like it if it is prepared differently.  Experiment with different recipes. (I never liked ‘lobia’ or ‘karamani’ until I ate it in a friend’s place prepared in an entirely different way. I liked it so much then that I cook it regularly now and always take a second helping.  Many friends have told me they never liked pumpkin until they had it at my house. My pumpkin bharta always gets cleaned out at parties).

• Don’t buy cut vegetables or fruit, however convenient they may seem. Cut surfaces get oxidized and you will be ingesting more free radicals, which are responsible for sickness and disease. Besides, fruits and vegetables begin losing nutrition from the moment they are peeled or cut. Cutting all your vegetables before starting your cooking is a dubious habit if your cut veggies are sitting around too long. Cut as you are cooking or just before eating for best nutrition value. Especially onions should not be cut and kept – they deteriorate very fast. They are also bacteria magnets and are likely to make you ill. Cut only what you need and throw away left over raw onion.

• By the same token, avoid raw salads at restaurants and weddings unless you are assured of them being washed and freshly prepared in a clean environment. Especially if you reach the table late, the salad will have deteriorated in nutrition value and have accumulated a lot of bacteria by the time you eat it. Stick to cooked food at such times.

Enough for now. In my next post I plan to share some more specific tips on selecting and storing vegetables for maximum freshness, nutrition and minimum wastage. Until then, cheers!