I want to begin this column by asking these questions? Have you ever eaten an apparently healthy meal only to feel completely unsatisfied after finishing it? Or, a meal that left you feeling heavy, tired and bloated? Often. Right! That’s probably because these meals were unbalanced, no, not in terms of nutrients or calories, but in terms of flavours.
Today there is clarity that balancing all five tastes—salty, sweet, sour, bitter and the newly discovered umami—is the key to satisfaction and good health. Science now believes that unless we eat all flavours in balance our brain does not think that we have received an adequate amount of nutrition, and so doesn’t get satisfied.
The irony is that while this might be breaking news in modern science, Ayurveda has been following this theory for ages! Our traditional thalis, which always had a little of all (and we wondered why), were so obviously constructed based on this balancing tenet; they propagate a balanced mix of six basic tastes or rasas—sweet (madhura), sour (amla), salty (lavana), bitter (tikta), pungent or hot (katu), and astringent (kashai)) but the subtext is the same: That less or excess of any of these tends to create an imbalance in our body. So yes some sugar fits in our diet fabulously as long as you eat it the right way. Our grandmothers loved this and they are usually right.
As a nutritionist, my take on a “Happy Diet” is very clear. I don’t believe that we need to completely curb our sugar craving, and put a blanket ban on all meetha. Agreed, excess sugar can be bad, like any other item consumed in excess, but a blanket ban is certainly not the solution. In fact it doesn’t work. I have been writing about the fallacy of demonising meetha for a long time. In fact, in my second book Ultimate Grandmother Hacks, there is a chapter titled “Don’t Say No to That Laddoo”.
I believe that a better strategy is to practice moderation instead of going cold turkey. Because the fact is that the more you try to run away from meetha, the more you’ll think about it and crave for it. So it makes more sense to learn instead to get smart about it; choose your sweets right. Eat them in moderation. For example, I believe that a home-made mithai will never harm you. As with these you can control the ingredients and even ensure some nutrition. So aim for portion control instead of trying to ban it completely.
THE WEIGHT-LOSS CONNECTION
When trying to lose weight too, it always helps to focus on the taste factor of the diet. It’s actually the ‘mood foods’ that help drop the kilos, not the foods everyone else says you must eat.
Two big lessons for a diet to be successful you must: One, satisfy your taste buds, keep them on your side—it’s important! Two, you cannot sustain a tasteless diet. And diets only work—obviously—if you can sustain them.
I personally feel that we all have gone overboard trying to project sugar as an absolute villain. Actually we always do that. We love to pick on foods and ingredients and paint them all black or all ‘green’ (good). But the fact is that no food is bad per say—it is only bad in excess. And that holds true for every food, in fact even water. Excess of anything is bad.
So instead of trying to ban foods from our diet, the approach should be to learn and teach moderation. I have a simple rule that I talk about and write about all the time: The power of moderation. Just eat more of the good food and less of the bad and you’ll do just fine. Of course, excess of anything is bad. For example, according to Ayurveda while the sweet taste promotes a feeling of love and well-being, which is imperative, when consumed in excess it leads to smugness and stasis; basically, a lazier version of us (and well, insulin resistance and diabetes too). Similarly, salt in moderation gives energy, promotes growth, and balances electrolytes in the body, but too much may cause acidity and also raise our blood pressure. Too much sour food might lead to water retention. Too much pungency in food might lead to constipation and so on.
So, don’t make any food a villain. Don’t be scared of sugar, eat it responsibly. Make intelligent choices based on your health and lifestyle status. And always choose natural over artificial—this is one rule that can safeguard your health, so don’t compromise on that.
Kavita Devgan is a nutritionist, health writer and author. The views expressed are personal.