On a Sunday morning, reading the newspaper with my first cup of coffee and browsing my phone for any new recipe, I was suddenly struck by the thought that the past three months had made me consume more sugar, butter and ghee. The lockdown made me try out new recipes which needed more of the three ingredients. The stay-at-home routine has made us all gluttons, cooking and eating in repetitive mode.
Buy a cake from a bakery, we eat a piece or two. But bake one at home, we eat almost half of it — of course, we do not want to waste it, do we?
Wrong notion
Being a nutritionist, I started thinking loudly: do we need sugar? Of course, we do not need refined sugar for a healthy living. Many of us are of the wrong notion that not eating refined sugar will make us weak. All the carbohydrates in the cereals that we eat are digested into glucose in our small intestine, and it is transported to the liver to give energy for our day-to-day activities and functioning of organs. But when we lead a sedentary life, only a limited amount of glucose is needed for the basal functions. The rest is converted to glycogen and a little of it is stored in the liver. The excess glycogen is converted to triglycerides and is stored in the adipose tissue. Triglyceride is a form of fat which in excess can be unhealthy and is more dangerous than low density lipoprotein, which is called “bad cholesterol”. Triglycerides are the main reason most of us Indians get hypertension and cardiac diseases, and as we all know, India is the capital of both.
Coming back to the topic, “Do we need sugar?” The cereals we eat contain complex carbohydrates, which are converted to glucose (which is a simple sugar), while the table sugar or cane sugar which we eat contain sucrose (which is made up of two glucose molecules). So, when we take more sucrose, as a taste maker or in a cookie or pastry, it is converted to glucose immediately in the body, and this glucose might add to the stored glycogen and ultimately be stored as triglycerides.
By exercising regularly, we can avoid the storage of glycogen as triglycerides; but if we eat a high carbohydrate meal and do not exercise, then it is stored as fat. This is what, most of of us are doing. Triglycerides are the reason for the rice eater’s tummy in most middle-aged men and women.
So, please do not make cooking a pastime. Cook foods which are healthy, tasty and satiating. Our body is not a dustbin to throw all the excess food. Prepare only the quantity that is required for the family and eat only what is required by the body.
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