Eating the right food

Last Saturday, I attended a nutrition program. We were given a cooking demonstration on cooking food without oil. No oil was used in any cooking. She cooked about 6 dishes in two hours but none contained even a drop of oil. And believe me when I say that she did not use the non-stick pan. She said it was toxic. Instead of oil she was rubbing the tava with onion when roasting the patties and for cooking she was using ground peanuts or coconut. Instead of salt she advised in using rock salt or black salt and instead of sugar, she advised to use gur or dates. She said that we should avoid boiling or frying food, it is best to steam the veggies. She had made tomato puree by steaming the tomatoes and blending them with their skin on. Following of the dishes that she made during our session: Tomato curry Potato patties with ragda in coconut gravy Halved capsicum was stuffed with boiled and grated potato and steamed Steamed potato was rolled with spinach leaves and steamed Moong dhal was soaked and pounded into paste and mixed with spices and steamed and then garnished with curry patta and hing. For sweet dish, a kheer was made of unpolished rice, which was steamed ad mashed and boiled with jaggery syrup and cocnut milk. Cardamom and nuts were added to it. There was a stress on using food in its natural form. Our body can get all the nutrients from raw veggies, fruits, nits and sprouts. Rest everything that we eat like fried stuff, biscuits and savories between meals, is extra work for our body. Tinned or canned food is the fragmented food and does not contain all the nutrients since most of them are destroyed during fragmentation process. A high energy food is the food that provides carbohydrates/glucose and requires little or no digestion and introduces no toxins that would require elimination or extra energy expedition. Whenever we eat, the new food is added to our common reservoir which has stored nutrients from previous meals. The cells in our body, extract the nutrients from this common reservoir, and convert it into energy and distribute it to different parts of the body. The residue is either eliminated or get stored as fat that you see on your hips or on your stomach. By eating the correct food, the balance is maintained and our body does not have to over work to maintain the harmony and balance between our intake and the ends of the body. If the food is not right, then the enzymes from other organs such as liver, kidney, etc, have to rush to help with the digestion. As the result lot of energy is wasted in digestion of the food and other organs are not able to perform their own function. Some of the most important factors for consideration of selecting food for optimal health are that they should be easy to masticate, can be easily digested and absorbed by the body and leaves an alkaline ash after metabolism.