‘Milk is unhealthy,’ said my friend, sipping black tea with the relish one associates with sipping milk shake. ‘Very, very unhealthy.’ She shook her head with the solemnity of a seer. ‘Did you know that, left to itself, the cow gives its calf milk for only six to ten months while humans milk it for all eternity? What’s not good for the calf is certainly not good for humans.’
That got me worried. What about all the milk I had drunk over the years, produced by reluctant cows, extracted to the last drop by skilful dairy farmers and sold by unscrupulous business men? Obviously we are all overflowing with the milk of human unkindness.
Now it appears that everything white, unless it is the colour of your skin, is bad. My friend who devours the health pages of newspaper supplements daily while she drinks her milk-less tea, reeled off the list of taboo items – milk, maida, white rice, sugar, salt, white bread...
In the topsy-turvy world we live in, the heroes of yesterday turn into the villains of today and vice versa without so much as a by-your-leave. Milk, earlier considered essential for its calcium content and therefore imperative to ward off osteoporosis, has lost its gloss and apparently those who drink milk are in greater danger of ending up with brittle bones than those who don’t. So go for low fat curds or yogurt, you are advised.
‘No, don’t!’ screams another dietary faddist. Low fat foods are more dangerous than those with fatty content for they are high in sugar, added to make them tasty. And good fat is necessary for your body. So ghee makes a gleeful entry into cuisines and if ghee is allowed, can butter be far behind?
Coconut oil, next to palm oil, the arch villain among oils till some time back, is now back with a glug. In fact, its stock has risen so dramatically a doctor friend said miraculous powers are being claimed for it by its promoters. Move away apple; welcome coconut oil. Drinking three spoons of coconut oil a day, and the more virgin it is, the better, will keep every doctor and illness away.
‘So what about all those much touted oils like olive oil and canola oil?’ I whined. I’d just spent a bomb on a bottle of canola oil, said to be a rich source of monounsaturated fats and omega-3 fatty acids, and with its high heat tolerance, advertised as a safe and healthy cooking medium. I was told that canola detractors claim it can cause diseases because it is genetically engineered. Olive oil is fine but it is sunset time for sunflower oil, earlier the darling among oils to keep heart disease at bay. Sunflower oil produces cancer-causing compounds called aldehydes at dangerous levels. Now why did they hide all this when sunflower’s star was in the ascendant?
My head was in a whirl. What is this all about? Who is taking gullible consumers for a ride? Even the sensible seven-word mantra of food guru Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma , for a healthy lifestyle – ‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants’ – would be manipulated by profit-driven industrialists.
And it’s not just with what we eat. One has to be equally wary of gadgets that are recommended for healthy exercises. The excessive use of the exercise bike caused my friend’s sister’s knees to give way. I have heard of ligament tears it can cause, not to mention backache and cramps.
How many people know that treadmills were used as a form of punishment in 19th century British workhouses? Treadmills are a compulsory component of any gym now, but punishing workouts can be dangerous and have caused accidents too. Over-enthusiastic Zumba dancers have been known to take hobbling and unzumba-like dance steps straight to their beds with heel pain and swellings on their bodies.
When I updated my friend with all this the next time I met her, she again nodded wisely and said, ‘Everything in moderation and under expert advice,’ pointing to an article she was reading. ‘Walking is the best exercise,’ she added. She was sipping light coloured tea this time.
‘Given up on black tea?’ I asked. ‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘Didn’t you hear the latest? White tea is the best form of tea, even better than green.’
So the white taboo has been broken with the white version of tea being given the nod. It drains your purse and fixes your immune system. Guzzle it till the next piece of faddist wisdom topples it over.
[khyrubutter@yahoo.com]
(A fortnightly column by the city-based writer, academician and author of the Butterfingers series)
