Obesity

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Eat Wholegrains and Whole Foods

179.   Nowhere in “Nature” do you find sugar or starch without fibre. Do your body a favour and eat mostly foods that have not been refined to remove the fibre and valuable nutrients. The fibre in wholegrains also promotes growth of friendly bacteria or probiotics. With an ever increasing upsurge of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, a diet rich in wholegrains is more important than ever. Children, as a matter of extreme urgency, too must be encouraged to eat wholegrain-based products. Whole foods must be introduced to them early in life as taste preferences are largely established in the first decade of life. If we don’t do this, fast food chains will keep on changing their taste buds to savour their unhealthy junk foods. Let us endeavour to put “Nature” back into our food. This is the only sensible salvation from disease. Healthy eating corrects most disease conditions.

 Sprouts

180.   Sprouts are essentially young living plants germinated from say, nuts seeds, wholegrains, beans, legumes as well as various grasses such as barley or wheat. Sprouts are considered “wonder foods” and “nutritional superstars”. They rank as the freshest and most nutritious of all vegetables available to the human diet. By a process of natural transmutation, sprouted food acquires vastly improved digestibility and nutritional qualities when compared to non-sprouted embryo from which it derives. There is an amazing increase in nutrients in sprouts when compared to their dried embryo. In the process of sprouting, the vitamins, minerals and protein increase substantially with some decrease in calories and carbohydrate content. For example in moong sprouts; calories decrease by 15%, carbohydrates decrease by 9%, protein increases by 30%, calcium or vitamin B1 by 208%, Niacin or vitamin B3 by 256%, vitamin A by 285%, riboflavin or vitamin B2 by 515% and an infinite increase in ascorbic acid or vitamin C.

181.   Sprouts, therefore, contain a high concentrate of antioxidant nutrients that fight against the damage caused by free radicals. Sprouts are also packed with vitamins, minerals, enzymes and fibre as well as two anti-ageing constituents – RNA and DNA (nucleic acids) – that are only found in living cells. Sprouts supply food in predigested form, i.e. the food which has already been acted upon by the enzymes and made to digest easily. During sprouting, much of the starch is broken down into simple sugars such as glucose and sucrose by the action of the enzyme “amylase”. Proteins are converted into amino acids and amides. Fats and oils are converted into more simple fatty acids by the action of the enzyme “lipase”. Funnily, during sprouting, the grains / seeds lose their embarrassing gas producing quality!