What to eat?

Till 1989 I was eating whatever I was getting excepting of course beef and pork. That time I was 46 yrs old posted at Vizag Steel Plant as Site Incharge for the captive power station supplied by BHEL.

It so happened the wife of horticulture incharge of the steel plant, Mrs Mitra had a mild heart attack, was admitted to the steel plant hospital and they were our neighbor. So me and my wife went to visit her in the hospital. After visiting her I found there was a nurse outside at the corridor with blood pressure measuring instrument. Just out of curiosity I had my blood pressure checked and by the way till then I never thought of consulting doctor for general medical checkup.

Lo behold my pressure measured was 160/110, the lady asked , “When did you stop taking medicine?”

I laughed and said,”I never started!”

She advised me to consult doctor immediately. Then my wife took hold of the situation and took me to the resident heart specialist of that hospital next day. I was given lot of medicine to control pressure and advised tests. Medicines were beta blocker, blood thinner etc and advised on diets.

Well folks that was when I realized that what to eat was no longer my choice but of the body. So went through the regime of low fat intake, controlled red meat, controlled egg etc. The pressure, cholesterol etc were brought within limits by regularly popping those tablets and controlling food habits with low carb, low fat.

But then last year onwards some new research items started appearing in newspapers, WhatsApp etc which stated that fat is not the real culprit but sugar is.It appears all these MNCs like Coke, Pepsi etc paid heavily to doctors to come out with report suggesting cholesterol,fat etc were the culprit for heart diseases and not sugar so that their cold drinks with sugar content get free run. So now it is no harm in taking ghee, red meat egg etc because sugar is the culprit. So I was back to square one. Now I apply thick layer of butter on my bread and take egg whenever I wish to eat. I am back on mutton eating but of course in a control way. This time control on meat stuff is not commanded by the doctor but the body or rather the ageing body, it says it cannot digest that fast as I was doing say some 30 yrs back. Three years back the doctor advised me to go slow on sweets, better to take tea without sugar and less of rice. So now again my food equilibrium was disturbed to control sugar. So now it is black tea without sugar, the coffee with milk but no sugar. Reduced the quantity of rice intake. But today I came across an article which says carb is as good as protein to block dementia. But now I take low quantity of rice in the morning, two chapatis at night to control carb and starch. So I am in a dilemma of deciding whether to increase carb intake to shield against dementia but then my ever expanding waistline will run wild, my belts have to have extra holes punched or maybe I go for free waistline pant with suspenders. I was cursing these medical researchers, pharmacists in short the whole medical fraternity for misguiding me and my food habits. Well readers I am sure you too will have similar tales to tell.