Heard of sweet potato toast? I didn’t until fairly recently — a random Facebook video I stumbled upon, while trawling through my feed, enlightened me. And no, this is not a modified potato bhaji sandwich. Thanks to the gluten-bashing brigade, bread has, in recent years, become rather passé: they say that it throws your auto-immune system into a tizzy and inflames your intestines, remember. Sweet potato toast involves simply popping two bread-sized slices of the tuber into your toaster, waiting for it to brown.
Sweet potato toast is probably just one more entrant on a long list of food substitutions that promise to change your life forever. There are plenty more. The Atkins diet, developed in the 1960s by cardiologist Robert C Atkins, for instance, propounded the use of cauliflower to make mashes or couscous and rice substitutes. Then there is paleo-bread, made by pulsing together and baking almond flour, coconut flour, flax, salt and baking soda. Or chia-seed pudding: a porridge substitute, which involves soaking chia seeds in nut milk (because vegan), swirling in goodies like almond butter, coconut and maple syrup, and topping it all with fresh fruit and nuts.
When I lived on my own in Bengaluru, I decided that the regular idli-dosa, roti-sabzi type meals I had eaten for 30 years were terrible for me. So I started spending long hours (and vast quantities of money) trawling the shelves of the nearby health-food stores to prepare fashionably healthy meals.
I swilled down steel-cut oatmeal with rice milk, pink-flesh imported apples, hemp seeds, cranberries, blueberries and macadamia nuts. Lunch was usually a salad made with quinoa, barley, spelt or wild rice, flecked with raw vegetables, protein and some sriracha or harissa. Then there were the strictly carb-free dinners: stir-fries filled with bok choy, shiitake, zucchini, peppers and tofu.
I returned home a year later, 6 kilos heavier.
Then in July, I chanced upon a video (also on Facebook) explaining exactly why food fads are so misleading. It featured a man being served breakfast by his wife — a regular fry-up of eggs, toast, steak — who is visited several times by a nutritionist from the future, who keeps pointing out different things wrong with his breakfast. The eggs are first vilified, then just the yolks. Then he says that the eggs are all right but it’s the steak that is the issue. And so it goes, until he comes back chastised, and declares that nothing matters but genetics.
Which is why, I’m now tending towards a Rujuta Diwekar style of nutrition. True, a lot of what she says should be taken with a pinch of salt: no, besan laddoos are NOT a nutritious meal. But much of her eating philosophy does make sense. Eat the food you’ve grown up eating, not food that has been air-freighted onto your plate. Eat enough until you’re satisfied, not stuffed, but don’t starve either. Don’t fill yourself with coffee, tea or cigarettes — no bulletproof coffee, thank you very much. Move enough, get in your 7-8 hours of sleep, turn off your laptops and phones when you get home, nurture relationships. Moderation is key here, moderation that gently lulls your body into its healthiest, happiest self.
And for me, this discovery has been probably been the greatest thing since sliced bread. Now excuse me, while I go and make myself a sandwich.
