‘What is the DIP Diet? It is the Disciplined and Intelligent People’s Diet! All plant based food including fruit, vegetables, green leaves, nuts, roots, etc., falls under the category of the DIP Diet Food. And the other side all the man-made food including fast food, packed food, dairy products, etc, falls under the category of VIP Food!’

By Tara Narayan

Eating is Fun / Eating is Yuck! – A variety food column

MY favorite season is here and I wish my love-hate relationship with food would end! Don’t know about you but one of the reasons why women tend to eat is arguments home. I’ve had an argument and in the old days in Bombay-that-has-become Mumbai I’ve known myself leave the house early enough to catch three breakfasts before it’s time to check into office – idli plate at an Udipi down Flora Fountain, bun-maska at the Irani restaurant near Churchgate and finally, coffee at Ritz also nearby. It’s killing myself eating and drinking and so obesity catches up with me sooner or later, a mirror reflection of my life and times in those hard working days!
Well, I’m improved some with age and wisdom, but recently after too much of covid staying indoors I find I cannot resist if I’m passing by Vinod Vadapauwallah down town Panaji… samosa and vada are weaknesses and I found myself beserk lingering over a plate of two vada and one samosa, my dinner of course.
The provocation this time was just the indoor incarceration of staying at home too much! Funny or not funny, after that I discovered all about how a certain famous Dr Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury waxing lyrical about shunning VIP diet in favor of his DIP diet.
What is dip diet? “For snacks take soaked sprouts and nuts, and coconut water. Dinner should be a repeat of lunch but by sunset. Stop consumption of all dairy products, milk, tea and coffee and animal products like meat.” (03 Aug 2019)
The good doctor is from Hyderabad, Telangana and has come in for a lot of brickbats except that I don’t see anything wrong in what he is saying. All he is saying is eat more real food and less unreal food and see how your RBC count overtakes your WBC count enough for you to run around your building at least once a day! I’ve heard this before several times.
To introduce more naturopathy in life and chances are your days with allopathy will be more or less over! Even Wikipedia says, “BRC is a self-proclaimed doctor known for peddling medical conspiracy theories, including denialist conspiracies about Covid-19, HIV/AIDs, and diabetes, for which he has been heavily criticized.” But if you are interested in harvesting fighting fit good health I would say listen to him and make up your own mind.
I rather like this Dr Biswaroop’s analogy regarding whether we’re patronizing a VIP or DIP diet. Are you living on a VIP diet or a DIP diet? VIP diet means you’re eating mostly out of packages and cans and excessive refined carbohydrates with zilch exercise in your life so everything in body beautiful spreads (something like that apart from all the fire-fighting inflammation going on to keep you more alkaline than acidic)….VIP diet means eating animal foods, dairy products, packed and processed foods, chemicals including medicines from dawn to dusk.
DIP diet? This is just a three-step diet of healthy fruit, vegetables in raw form (as in salads, kachumbar, raita, relish, sauces, chutneys, anything equivalent in terms of prebiotics and probiotics). Call it sattvik food in Ayurveda lingo. Lately I’ve been asking myself how can I make the switch to mostly fruit, vegetables, green leaves, nuts, seeds and coconut water? I’m nowhere near that on a daily basis though. Can the DIP diet cure of diabetes?

DIABETES
This Dr Biswaroop Chaudury says in his experience with more than 5,000 diabetes patients in more than 10 countries, including Kuwaiti population, he found one thing was common in them, “They were all consuming VIP food.” Take a look at the sparten cultural lifestyles of the Jarawas or Hunza or people of Okinawa around the world, they never suffer from the diseases of our so called excessively monetized civilization associated with high or low blood pressure, diabetes, cardio-vascular diseases, cancer, all the degenerative diseases we’re familiar with and which keep the chemist shops delirious with joy.
By switching to a DIP diet, says the good Dr Biswaroop, you can reverse diabetes and practically all diseases of the body and mind! Or so speak. He says with the kind of food a VIP diet patronizes the human stomach behaves like a VIP (you may find them in any country), “A VIP (Very Important Person) is like a politician or bureaucrat, who can overlook and ignore or snub the laws that are otherwise applicable to every citizen of the nation.
For instance, a VIP may ignore the red light of the traffic signal and drive anyway, ignoring the risk and discomfort they may provide others.”
And so similarly, “Some food upon entering the stomach behave like a VIP and jump into the blood stream without considering the level of sugar in the blood, the blood pressure and other parameters leading to great damage in the body.” But his DIP patients turn into disciplined and intelligent people, like common citizens who obey laws and rules of country! “For instance, at a traffic signal they wait for the green light to cross the signal.
Similarly certain food upon entering the body behave like a DIP, they understand the signaling system of the liver and are able to understand the communication signs of the traffic controller, the incretin hormone, and safely add blood glucose to the blood stream without putting unusual burden to the metabolic system of the body.”

INCRETIN
Well, you follow all that? It is very simple: the food which responds to the incretin hormone, are the food with live enzymes. In this planet, there are only three kinds of food with live enzymes: all fruits, all vegetables in raw state, all green leaves. So, any or all of these food may be considered ideal for the DIP diet….also consider soaked nuts, seeds, coconut water. The good doctor observes that while in Kuwait he noticed how the population which is the richest had the highest prevalence 17.5% diabetes. While those who live in hard-work economies like the tribal hunter-gatherers in Andaman & Nicobar and elsewhere in the world live on fruit, vegetables, occasionally fish and other sea foods and they suffer from none of our diseases of being over-civilized!
See the Kuwaiti population patronizes a VIP diet, the Jarawas a DIP diet. You make up your mind. If you want to switch over to a DIP diet to be friends with your thyroid…think daily about leafy greens, whole grains, nuts, seed and zinc-rich legumes like peas, lentils, chickpeas and beans. These foods contain amino acids like tyrosine, B-complex vitamins, minerals like selenium, and antioxidants – all of which support thyroid health. If you like seafood, you’re in luck.
I think Dr Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury’s DIP diet can fix any kind of disorder within the body. In fact, he reiterates again and again that by following a special diet rich in fruits and vegetables not only Type II but Type I diabetes can be reversed in just 72 hours and almost all lifestyle illnesses in a few months. Naturally, mainstream doctors are up in arms against this doctor calling him irresponsible, a hoax and all kinds of other names to stop patients from going to him! I will say, if you’re serious and disciplined, shun VIP diet for DIP diet. You don’t have to prove anything to anybody else but yourself and reap better health so that you may feel like living anew with zest, cheer and goodwill for all.
Google and read about Dr Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury, he is a fund of very sound and provocative advice. Also read up Dr BM Hegde, Dr Shiva Ayyadurai…put them together and see what you get. Some magical common sense not just to brood over but to practice! Hey, with the new covid variant B.1.1.28.2 detected in international travelers we need to sit up, this variant goes for your lung tissues in a matter of days. Concentrate on revamping your immune system which is what saves us from dying every time we’re on the verge of dying.
My advice is you also chase the science and art of naturopathy more, I think it heals from the roots… as in mind and body, heart and soul. Much of Ayurveda is naturopathy and remember Mahatma Gandhi chased it too. In fact, I wish more naturopathy-based sanitariums and ashrams would come up to take the burden of so many of our modern day killer hospitals. Please note, I say this with all due respect for mainstream allopathy’s role in healthcare as well as my favorite doctors in Goa and Mumbai!
WELL, to move on, to the charms of hog plums or the Konkan coast’s ambade.

LEAVE WILD MUSHROOMS ALONE!

JUST about every Goan knows that if it is monsoon season in Goa it is also wild mushrooms or “roen alami’ season! These buff-colored wild alami are a mushroom lover’s delight and most everyone is a connoisseur when it comes to wild Goan alami or “olami” which once used to grow abundantly wherever there were the sacred termite hillocks on the outskirts forests of villages and in backyards. These prized and by now exorbitantly priced mushroom are raided by night (for plucking them is now illegal) by profiteers and sold quite openly in known places in Goa.
Unfortunately, says microbiologist and PhD guide of Goa University and consultant, Microbial D Biodiversity, GSBB, an authority on wild mushroom diversity of Goa and world expert on Roen Alami, this wild raiding of alami has to stop for the mushrooms are varnishing from the wild and soon an entire change of biodiversity linked with them will also be lost.
The battle is on to save the precious wild edible mushrooms of the Roen Alami. This monsoon even the Goa State Biodiversity Board (GSBB) has sent out a strong message to its forest staff that there should be no plundering and sale of the wild mushrooms. Sending out to press release to media people it makes a strong appeal to the people of Goa, “These wild species play a very important role as a powerful degrading fungus in forest and grassland ecosystems converting 50% dead plant material into rich fertile soil. Without this fungus the termite hills can’t degrade dead forest biomass which they bring inside the mounds to grow this species. Besides these mushrooms destroy virus carrying vectors hiding in dead organic matter in forest and keep away diseases affecting humans….”
All this and much more for the cause of a safer Goa if not safer world! At least in Goa let’s preserve our wild lands. Quite simply do your bit to educate the general public that like several crops and fruit grown, these wild species of mushrooms cannot be artificially cultivated and on mass scale by humans for their consumption.
The truth is that these Roen Alami species have no independent existence anywhere in the world and termites need their seeds for their own use, “They grow only in association with termites. If there are no termites, no mushrooms and vice versa.” In a nutshell, the LESS wild mushrooms you eat the more you contribute towards the conservation of our complex biodegradation-based ecosystem services provided by the termites.
How much you care is another matter, but remember Roen Alami gatherers are now liable to be prosecuted if caught stealing the wild mushrooms. It is illegal to collect them. However, we don’t know if eating them is also illegal and what the fines are!

Make ambade chepnim!