7 simple healthy dietary changes

We have made several small changes for long term health, primarily inspired by getting pregnant before A was born, and wanting the best for the kiddo, and all.

It's amazing how low our awareness was prior to that.

1. Increase water intake. My goal is supposed to be 10-12 cups a day (my husband drinks about 20 - he's disciplined). It's based on your height and weight. I am 5 foot 3, my husband 6 foot 1. My theory is to drink a cup when I think about this goal!! I don't think I do more than 6 a day, unfortunately!! But hey, it's better than 5 a day!

2. I always find it easier to ADD rather than subtract things from my diet. We added omega3 fats to our diet, in the form of walnuts, and flax seed oil and soy milk. I don't give my son soy, as it has phyto-estrogens that MIGHT be bad for kids, specially boys. A TBS flax seed oil (Barleans' organic) for my son daily, and my husband does flax seeds in his daily smoothie (2 TBS after grinding). Note that flax seed loses the fatty chains if heated.

3. That brings me to the important point about refrigerating oils used daily. Oils get rancid if they lie around exposed to heat or even light. They start to oxidize. They're best put away in the frig. My olive oil SOLIDIFIES in the frig. But kept outside for 2 minutes, melts, fast enough. Also, you're supposed to benefit from storing oils in an opaque container (but we're not there yet). We store our canola and sesame and olive oils in the frig always. A related point, is to not heat oil to the point that smoke comes out of it, for "tadka", sauteeing, frying, etc. If it's smoking, then smoke point has been reached. That implies that it's starting to form free radicals. Free radicals have been linked to all the major diseases, as they cause inflammation.

4. Talking of anti-inflammatory foods - a typical Indian meal has many anti-inflammatory ingredients. Ginger, Garlic, and turmeric, for instance. I'd love to learn more about what the other good ones are. These are excellent to include as much as possible.

5. Iron intake is really hard for vegetarians. We're not going to get enough. LEntils, beans, green leafy veggies have them. But you want to have it with vitamin C rich foods, and away by 2 hours (before and after) from Calcium rich foods. It's really hard to implement all this. However, raisins and dates are easy additions to diets. Also, cooking in a well maintained cast iron pot. Getting iron from tablets is not at all ideal, as if it's not absorbed, the excess is stored in our livers permanently (as a toxin). And to some people, iron tablets are constipating.

6. We've thrown away our non-stick and our aluminium pans and pots, in light of all the evidence against them. We tried using non-stick pans and maintaining them well so they wouldn't scratch, but even then, the worry about teflon in general bothered us. There's no final evidence against these things, but I believe there will be. Teflon is now considered a "possible" (or suspected) carcinogen by the FDA. GOod enouygh evidence for me! Regarding Aluminum, they found plenty of it in patients' brains, when they examined bodies. These were Alzheimers patients. They don't know if these people RETAIN more Aluminum in their brains compared to other people, or if the aluminum in their brains was the cause of the disease. Again, it's easy enough for me to replace Aluminum, although it's a mighty fine conductor of heat!!

7. Which oil, what purpose?? We've switched to ONLY sesame or canola for Indian cooking (as these oils have a high smoke point) and olive oil for drizzling in salads. We do not cook with any oils except sesame and canola. We plan to do grapeseed, as it has only 1 g saturated fat, but it doesn't have enough of the good fats.

The following is not easy to do, and shouldn't be on this "simple changes" list! But it's so important, specially for young kids, to attract whom, many packaged foods for them are bright in color.

We try really hard to avoid artificial colors and flavors and preservatives. A good way is to simply shop at whole foods market (or other organic/health food stores). Indian store stuff has TONS of coloring matter and preservatives and artificial flavors in kids' candies, and particularly in all the pastes and sauces and pickles. The word "sodium benzoate" scares me! but it's in almost all packaged/bottled Indian store goods. This's why we keep away from garlic-ginger paste and other such conveniences...And, we buy candy at whole foods, and the baked things I have not made, we buy at Mr.Naturals. My husband used to do a lot of the baking around here, but I've taken over now. I used to be afraid to bake, but am learning a lot - and it's really easy! I substitute whole wheat flour, in place of 50% (or even more) of the maida. I use only jaggery. And I use oil/bananas etc in place of butter. Butter is still far healthier than margarine (that has trans fats). If you can control your portion sizes, I mean, how much of the final baked product you eat, it's just fine to add anything into it. But my son and I overeat the things that're yummy, specially sweets...

Those of you in India have a huge edge, with kids rarely eating coloring matter. But maybe things are changing now...