Sugar and ghee in your chai and khichdi? Yes, please! Nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar is destroying your top five food myths.
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00:00Sugar is poison. No, it's not. Rice. Don't eat rice. You can eat quinoa, but don't eat rice.
00:07Avoid pickles. They are fattening.
00:10Sugar is poison. No, it's not. Yeah, you heard that right. No, it's not. But overindulgence
00:31surely is. Sugar by itself, when you're making it into or adding it to your ladoos and burfis
00:37and halwas, that isn't a problem at all. A teaspoon to your cup of chai or coffee also
00:42isn't a problem. Sugarcane right now in the season of winter, chewing on it or having a
00:48freshly squeezed juice is also not a problem. Even jaggery, which comes from sugarcane, you
00:53have it with the ghee and with your bajra rotis. It's a seasonal special or a winter special.
01:01So it's not really sugar. It's how you eat it and what forms and what is it that you actually
01:08land up avoiding. So when it comes in the form of a cola, a cookie, a chocolate and a cake,
01:15say no. But when it comes to your regular home cooked food,
01:20well, sugar just adds that little bit spice to your cuisine.
01:24Avoid ghee if you have any kind of heart problem, avoid ghee if you have thyroid,
01:29avoid ghee if you're fat, avoid ghee if you're an Indian. I've heard that too often.
01:34Now ghee is actually something that you do need to add to all your meals, at least a teaspoon
01:40to your breakfast, lunch and dinner. One of the things that it will do is that it will
01:45ensure that you're not overeating. You heard that right, because ghee will
01:49ensure that you're not overeating. You heard that right, because ghee will allow you to have
01:55better access to your satiety signals. It allows you to digest your food better.
02:01It is also something which aids the assimilation of fat soluble vitamins like vitamin A, E, D
02:07and K. You really don't need pills, powders and immunity boosting programs. You just need
02:12home cooked meals, khichdi and ghee to really resolve most of the problems that one faces,
02:18whether it is of bad moods or of immunity.
02:25In fact, not just banana, avoid mango, sitaphal, chikoo, banana, jackfruit, avoid every fruit
02:34that is local. Very interesting. Now this just stems out of the fact that local fruits don't
02:42quite make it to textbooks. So what does make it to textbooks is the apple and the kiwis and
02:51the berries. They also make it to Instagram profiles of fitness influencers. They make it
02:59to headlines. They also make it with endorsements. So what should you do? Avoid them? No, absolutely
03:06not. Eat them. Eat them while they are in season. Eat them in their full glory and know that they
03:13will actually help you stay fit just because they have a name in your native language. They don't
03:19become fattening or full of sugar. All fruits have the exact same sugar. It's the natural sugar
03:25that's there in every fruit. It's called fructose. Fructose by nature is low on a glycemic index
03:31and eating the food is beneficial for people whether they are obese or diabetic or have
03:37PCOD or have fertility problems or have digestion problems. Rice. Don't eat rice. You can eat
03:49quinoa but don't eat rice. I've heard that just too often. Well, I think we have an obsession
03:56with everything that's expensive, unpronounceable and not found in our farms. I think it's high
04:03time we get over that complex and really embrace rice. Rice is something that makes its way all
04:09the way from shadi to shraddh because it can convert itself to a kheer, to a khichdi, to a
04:14kanji, to a biryani, to a pulao. Name it and it will become what you want it to become. Rice is actually
04:22the easiest grain to digest. It blends extremely well with dahi, with kadhi, with rajma, with
04:29dals and it actually allows your body to assimilate amino acids quite easily. It also works as a
04:36prebiotic. Prebiotic is actually food for the healthy bacteria which resides in your
04:42body. Rice is truly nice so do have rice on your plate.
04:51Avoid pickles. They are fattening. We like to avoid pickles but I don't know for what reason
04:58maybe we are avoiding pickle because we feel it's full of oil and it's full of salt.
05:03So a good achar does require salt. It also requires oil because without that you would
05:11have the pathogens or the bad bacteria growing. If you want it to be a culture which allows for
05:17growth of good bacteria, which allows for lacto-fermentation to take place. Lacto-fermentation
05:23is really conversion of that hard avla or that hard kairi that you put in. By the time it
05:31pickles it becomes soft and is it too much? No. The oil and salt is not too much but if you do
05:38eat pickle as much as you eat your sabzi then that would be too much. So when you are putting
05:43pickle on your plate make sure that it's a tiny little teaspoon that you take. It will add spice
05:50to your meal. It will allow for easy digestion. It will also allow your body to assimilate B12 much more easily.
06:08It's also a way of coming together of different communities. It's not just about sharing food.
06:21It's also about sharing love stories, jokes and laughter.