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Bid adieu to junk food

For a highly health conscious generation, junk food plays the serpent's role in the Garden of Eden

Photo: K.R. Deepak

Irresistible Time for a bite!

Aditi Rai is subjected to an arduous test of will power every time she hangs out with her friends. On one hand there is the yummy cheese, topped with grilled chicken pizza, begging to be devoured. And on the other hand, her mind warns about the loads of calorie content in it. For many like Aditi, this internal tussle has become a part of life, with their heart winning over their minds most of the times.

In an age when everybody is health conscious, junk food cries for attention and plays the serpent's role in the Garden of Eden. Every Adam and Eve would love to take a bite, what with the heady smell wafting over to the roads and people in cars and vehicles getting a whiff of it from long-winding traffic jams.

Until recently, a full meal `thali' of sambar rice and butter-milk with tasty pickles used to be the hot favourite of one and all. But this eating habit has gone through a slow metamorphosis with the mushrooming of fast food joints in the city.

Today cafeterias have morphed into swank eateries where one finds a delectable line-up - pizzas, burgers, grilled sandwiches, muffins and tarts, cold coffee and what you like.

Vineet Agarwal, a management student, loves to nibble on a pizza or have a quick bite at the nearest fast food joint. "It is a cool place to hang out with friends and we love the ambience and the yummy food," he says. Hussain Tambawala, Sanskriti and Ravi are regular visitors to these swanky food joints. "We go there almost everyday for a quick bite," they say.

Vizag has fast emerged as a city of affluence, of 24/7 eateries, pizza chains, vada and bhel puri stalls and just-a-dial-away food. And growing money power only helps a sedentary lifestyle. In fact obesity, largely caused by eating junk food, is a serious public health issue. It has been termed an epidemic by the World Health Organisation and is the main cause for heart disease and a risk factor for diabetes.

Just consider this. Your kid's T-shirt stretches across the hanging, layered tummy. He would not bend down to pick up a pen. After school, he comes home tired and flops on the sofa, watching TV. And he is fast becoming an embarrassment.

Jog your mind a bit. Do you coax your child with extra butter on the paratha at breakfast? Do you stock up potato chips and colas and ply your kid with chocolates to make up for coming late from work? Do you force your daughter to eat more than what she wants because you want her to look cherubic and happy? Well, then it is stock-taking time.

Says Anuradha Reddy, dietician of the Visakha Diet Clinic: "Most parents do not monitor the wrong food habits in children. This leads to obesity and other problems from a very young age. And junk food can be extremely hazardous. Just look at the calorie content in them:

"One samosa could carry up to 200 calories and walking 20 minutes could burn about 100 calories: so you would really have to walk 40 minutes over what you are already walking to burn one samosa. And that's just the beginning!"

Indian food is not always better than burgers and fries. "Red meat is high in cholesterol," says Ms. Reddy. "Exercise helps, but not if you are not eating right," she adds.

So too much of utterly butterly food, rice and oily crunchies translate into those unsightly `spare tyres' and the rest of it lie perched on the hips and tummy, giving you that `prosperous, cholesterol-inviting' look, say doctors.

You can cave in to temptations and take a bite, but make that occasionally, say once in two weeks or so, and the weighing scale will not tilt over. Even if it is not the perfect figure, a healthy body can definitely be maintained, if one realises what lies in store ten years ahead.

NIVEDITA GANGULY

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