Healthy eating habits play a vital role in avoiding diseases, say nutritionists based in the city. “Every second disease that we come across today has direct link to our eating habits,” they say.
“It’s high time that Bangaloreans analyse their eating habits,” said Sheila Krishnaswamy, vice-president, Indian Dietetics Association.
“Lifestyle diseases are becoming a big threat. High calorie low volume food is the main problem. We need to introduce disease specific nutrition programmes. It will be of great help for people with diseases like diabetes, cancer and high cholesterol to combat it the natural way along with medication,” she said.
She was speaking at a press meet organised by HealthCare Global Enterprises Limited on the occasion of National Nutrition Week (September 1 to 7) on Thursday.
Busy work schedules of professionals’ leaves them with no time to exercise. “They spend most of their time glued to their computers. They are forced to adopt a buy-and-eat culture. Cooking at home takes a back seat and you cannot expect restaurants to serve low calorie and low salt meal,” said Jyothi Prasad, chief dietician, Manipal Hospital.
“What they failed to understand is that a pastry or pizza may look small in size, but is loaded with calories. It is much more healthy to have home-cooked roti or chicken instead,” she said.
While eating out once in a while is no big harm, most professionals eat out several times a week. “We are getting dependent on ready-to-eat food which is high in fat and salt content. It is fine to have packed food during emergencies. But it is not right to replace home cooked food entirely,” said Prasad.
“What we can do is make healthy choices while eating out. Most professionals are away from their families. Thus, on an average, it has been seen that, they have two meals outside in a day,” said Farhana Afroz, chief dietician, BGS Global Hospital.
“Dieting means making healthy food choices. However, people wrongly interpret dieting as avoiding food. Thus, ideally dieting would mean, pizza without cheese instead of pizza with extra cheese, palak paneer preferred over butter paneer, a clear soup replacing thick cream soup, grilled fish or chicken over its fried option and butter milk or tender
coconut chosen instead of an aerated drink. One can eat out and eat healthy too,” she said.
People try to avoid visiting nutritionists as they presume that this could lead to cut down on their favourite foods, said Afroz. “It is high timepeople learn to take charge of their health and consult a nutritionist once in six months or a year,” she added.
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