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Monday, November 21, 2022

The Changing World of Foods

The Wellness Tree


Essential eating habits in humans keep evolving with time. I am yet to come across someone whose choices of foods have not changed over time.  What we ate as small children at home changed when we started going to school. Our friends ate different cuisines, as they hailed from other parts of the country.  We too were enticed to experiment with these different foods. Later some of them got adopted into our menu too. This continues to this day. The present time is certainly the most interesting, considering the options available for trying new foods. The preferences of people have changed, Some like imbibing celebrities to maintain lean frames while others look for options to sculpt their bodies better. Eating has a very close association with our wellness and the tree shown above indicates linkages of diseases to the different factors. The primary cause is the choice of wrong foods besides others.

A recent experience in Continuous Glucose Monitoring( CGM) using a probe to see the change in glucose levels as different foods are consumed, needs to be mentioned. In all these years I never realized that certain grains and foods do cause a jump in glucose levels which is not considered good. The viewpoints differ in the conventional medicine world vis a vis the Functional Medicine world. According to conventional medicine, a glucose level beyond  200 mg/dL is a diabetic condition. Up to 180 mg/dL after 2 hours of eating is considered okay. However, in Functional Medicine, the endeavour should be to ensure that the glucose levels never exceed 140mg/dL.  It was interesting to notice that most of the foods that I love to eat most of the time, were the ones that created a spike in the glucose level. The phenomena differ for each individual so there are no thumb rules when it comes to eating but the choices should be such that the glucose spikes do not occur even after eating food. There are experts who opine that consuming proteins, apple cider vinegar and certain fats, prior to eating grains or certain pulses help in containing the glucose spike or flattening it. The endeavour should be to ensure that glucose levels stay within a range of 140 mg/dL or below most of the time. In a normal healthy person, a range between 80mg/dL-120 mg/ DL is a good marker of the glucose level

A whole new world has opened up and the choices of foods are now undergoing yet another change. The comfort foods that I enjoyed all along have now taken a back seat. Consuming more significant portions of green leafy vegetables, the right balance of rainbow colour vegetables to encompass the wide array of phytonutrients is now more on the platter.  Learning never ends and likewise, it is never too late to learn new food paradigms and make wise choices

PS- All information in this post is based on personal experience. In no way this post is a suggestion to try things that override personal physical health conditions of individuals and remedies being adopted by them.
2. Picture kind courtesy of Google

4 comments:

  1. Everything has a limit, and knowing our boundaries can help us prevent harmful eating habits. I believe we can live a healthy life if we eat per our physical activity or act as per what we consume.

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