How often has the thought come to your mind that our grandparents lived a better quality life than us? We even go to the extent comparing our energy levels with theirs and again we lack behind there. Maybe we all are aware about the problems but we are so busy that we are unable to help solve it. A lot of credit for this does go to technology. Let’s see if we can try simplifying things related to food alone. Over the last 20 years, we have introduced a lot of faulty food practices, due to our busy schedule and which on the longer run will eventually leave us on the mercy of pills. So, it’s time that we took the efforts to correct our lifestyle and make way for healthy practices.
The quality of your life doesn’t depend only on your job status or how much you earn; it also depends on how much you invest on your health through the food you eat. We are smart and also we have learnt to value time. We don’t mind spending an hour or two at the gym, salon for a head spa or a movie but we do mind spending less than an hour to prepare a fresh meal each time. I’ve come across people who just cook over the weekends and store up everything in the refrigerator and they just need to heat it up in the microwave. They are happy to have saved a lot of their precious time but in return they have called for poor health. Both the above practice of storing food in refrigerator and using a microwave for reheating are totally unhealthy practice. This food is not only low in nutrients but also consuming it diminishes our body’s Ojas ( Vigor). According to Ayurveda, Ojas is the essential energy for the body and mind which is responsible for vitality, strength, health, long life, immunity and mental/emotional wellness.
Another common problem is that we have moved from using steels and glass to the most poor quality stuff; plastics and ceramic ware. As if storing dry foods like pulses and cereals was not enough, we have even started to store cooked foods in low quality plastics. The evidence is growing continually that chemicals leached from plastics used in cooking and food/drink storage are harmful to human health. The sad part is that every day we pack healthy food for our children in these plastic containers. We need to open our eyes as the health risks of plastic are significantly amplified in children, their immune and organ systems are developing and are more vulnerable.
In the so called run to maintain our body weight and lose that extra fat from our body, we have taken to low fat cooking. So to make low fat cooking healthy and easy we got hold of non-stick utensils. If you use your non-stick cookware on a daily basis, you may unknowingly be exposing your family to hidden dangers. That’s because non-stick cookware is made using a carcinogenic chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), which starts emitting toxic fumes that you inhale every time you cook in it. That extra little oil would do less harm than the alternate cookware that you are using.
We are exposed to chemicals in the air and water, pesticides and preservatives in the foods that we eat; these may take a while to be corrected. But what you can do as an individual is to check the few wrong practices that you can change. The solution to all the problems is proper planning and timely action.