Surprise Surprise: Boiling is better

In light of series of acute medical conditions diagnosed in our families - I decided to initiate a series focusing on Health.

I wan to follow two basic guidelines:
1.  Medicine is a science of statistics - let it be on your side.
2.  Conscious Living: Live consciously and stop living in denial.

Today's Topic: Potato or Sweet Potato / Boiled of Fried.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/01/news/la-heb-sweet-potatoes-weight-gain-201100701

And this fair comparison which says Potato is not as bad but Sweet Potato is indeed "Sweeter".
Note: Sweet Potatoes has high concentration of Beta-carotene AND Beta-carotene is a precursor for Vitamin A.
http://www.lisanelsonrd.com/blog/white-potato-vs-sweet-potato-which-is-better


Next week: How Sweet is sugar ?

How sweet is Sugar ?

Two key guidelines:
1.  Medicine is a science of statistics - let it be on your side.
2.  Live consciously.

When I visited my physician last November, he warned me about my "numbers".

He advised two things:

1. Potatoes are not vegetable! - Stop eating potatoes and rice until you improve your numbers.
2. Exercise at least 3 times a week for at least 20 minutes.

While my physician was candid enough to explain to me the reasons to minimize carbohydrates, I was not too convinced about it. I grew up eating carbohydrates everyday, rice has been my favorite. The entire southern India eats nothing but rice. So why now suddenly they are the source of the problem?

I thought, if I believe that medicine is a science of statistics, then the world knows a lot more about medicine in last 30 some years. Thus there are things known to the science of medicine which conventional wisdom has not caught up with.

Learning about carbohydrates lead me to "Glycemic Index" or GI.

One of the definitions of GI: The glycemic index measures how fast and how much a food raises blood glucose levels.

There is a lot of information on the web about GI, so I will let you Google that. But I just want to share the key elements of GI I learned (or learnt) which helped me understand the advise of my physician:

1. There are three basic classifications of foods based on GI - Low, Medium and High.
2. Low GI food - fruits and vegetables will release glucose more slowly and steadily.
3. Sugar, white or brown, has medium GI. Honey and Agave have low GI.
4. Potatoes, rice, white bread, corn flakes, wheat flower have high GI.
5. If food with higher carbohydrates has high quantity of fiber - it reduces GI.

And most important statistics -
Several lines of recent [1999] scientific evidence have shown that individuals who followed a low-GI diet over many years were at a significantly lower risk for developing both type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, and age-related macular degeneration.

Back to my numbers - after few following life style changes - in just four months, I brought my numbers back to normal (way below average):

1. Installed morning breakfast of Fruits and Vegetable smoothy - No bread and cheese anymore.
2. Ensure the dinners has none or very low carbohydrates:
    - Salads - you will be surprised how many tasty options of salads there are which I never know of.
    - If I do eat carbohydrates I ensure that I also eat protein (lentils) and fiber (whole grains).
3. Most of us do not need more than 1500 calories in a day.
    I consciously, monitored quantity of my intake and reduced it by at least 30%.
4. Replaced any junk food intake with Nuts, Dried Fruits as snacks.
    Junk food is defined as, anything processed to be preserved and eaten over a period longer then 2 (two) days, primarily using frying as method of preservation.
5. Minimized SALT (key enemy) and replaced sugar with Honey and Agave.

Sugar is everywhere in the form of carbohydrates - so watch out and it is not as sweet as it tastes!

References:


1. Inactivity is the major contributor (53%) of the Heart Disease.
    http://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm/

2.  There is no alternative of plain, simple, serene water:
     http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/01/12/what-happens-to-your-body-within-an-hour-of-drinking-a-coke.aspx

3.   All about GI:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index

4.   GI of Sugar:
      http://www.fitsugar.com/Glycemic-Index-Where-Do-Sweeteners-Fall-3031565

If not plastic then how ?

As part of one of the discussions on Face-book - Someone asked:

"If we do not use Plastic bags at all, how can we collect our trash / garbage and not create a mess when we dispose them off."

Because my answer was longer then I thought :) - I decided to share it as my first blog entry.

And so here it goes:

You have a very valid and potent question and not answering it is in fact a loop, as you put it. Let me try to answer that in three parts:

Part One - Use of Plastic

I have wondered:

What were we doing before the Plastic bags were invented?
- Someone wrote:
"Plastic bags were introduced in the United States in 1977 under the premise that the manufacturing process of paper bags were killing trees, wrecking forests, and destroying habitats for wild animals. Plastic bags were seen, at the time, as a far superior environmental alternative to paper bags. Oh how have things changed since..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reusable_shopping_bag

Did cleanliness became possible only after the plastic was invented?

Use of plastic is one of many BAD things we have learnt (or learned) which we need to un-learn. But to our defense when we did - we did not know the adverse effects of its utility. Because it is engraved into our system so much, an outright elimination of it at once, will not be possible. So the steps would be Reduce, Reuse and Recycle and in that order.

First - we Reduce it - Stop asking for or accepting plastic when we shop.
- When buying Vegetables - use good old cotton bags. (Thailla and Thaillee)
- When buying groceries, carry your cotton bags, ask for Paper Bags.
- When buying groceries in bulk - use own containers, if possible.
- In the end there will be two situations were we will be using plastic.

• A: Where it is already pre-packaged.
• B: For Trash Collection, until we figure out another mechanism.

Second - We ReUse it - for trash collection we use the bags we already have.

Third - We Recycle what we can not ReUse.
Reusing it can in fact become recycling if the trash processing companies do so, as it is the case with all US waste management companies.

PART Two: Divide and Rule

One of the reason for the NEED of the plastic bag is because we produce trash! While in many case it is inevitable there are ways we can reduce producing trash itself. Generally speaking - household trash can be classified in two categories - DRY and WET. We need plastic for the WET (and heavy) trash.

So Step 1 - Install two dust bins in home - one for dry and another for wet.
For DRY you do not need plastic. You may not use any or use paper.

Now let's tackle the WET one.

Main source of wet one's is the Kitchen (for the most part) which includes trash related to - for Indian / vegetarian households -
- Vegetable related, - Tea / Coffee related, - Grains related.

These actually form an another category called Compo-stable trash. So if we can manage to establish Community Composting Facility, we actually do not need to trash the wet trash but can (re)use them to produce something useful.

Following demonstrates the examples of such installations.

India: Pune:
Pune has City Ordinance for some years now where new building constructions must provide Composting Facilities. Here is one method / tool about composting at home:
http://conference.nswai.com/2%29%20SandipT.Mali%201-Rapid%20Composting%20Technique%20for%20Vegetable%20Waste.pdf

Additionally Pune also has many community initiatives already active.
http://government.wikia.com/wiki/Composting_in_Pune
India: Bangalore
http://www.dailydump.org/bangalore_composting
US: NY City
http://www.lesecologycenter.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11&Itemid=36
US: San Francisco
http://blog.harvestpower.com/composting/8-interesting-things-about-san-franciscos-recycling-and-composting-effor/

PART THREE: Biodegradable Plastic bags.

Finally - let's say we did all and we still have need to use the Plastic Bags because that is the best possible use of their durability. Try to use those which are not a problem. There are many inventions and products in the market today which offer plastic bags which do not have the negatives of the traditional plastic bags.

Summary:

- try producing less trash by consuming consciously.
- reduce use of plastic from as many sources as possible
- reuse and recycle whatever we can.
- encourage local communities, government and waste management companies to recycle.

A continuous effort in these direction(s) will lead us to less intrusive human existence.