eating is fun / eating is yuck A VARIETY HEALTH FOOD COLUMN BY TARA NARAYAN

THIS week I am up to my neck in health movements – inviting me to listen to this, that and the other mainstream doctor who has written some book filled with the secrets of the original good life…eat only plant food, be vegan, be vegetarian, eat according to your blood group and the rest of it. The Mediterranean diet and the Keto diet is still on top of the charts for best diet to reap good health! Correct me if you like. Sadly I had to miss out this year’s, that is the 2023 Food Revolution Summit documentary series organized so painstakingly by Ocean Robbins (whose father John Robbins of “Diet For a New America” fame is already so famous as the man who shunned the Baskin Robbins ice-cream empire in favour of health first for human beings and cattle tortured in the meat industry).
There is no doubt about the fact that humankind must shun an overwhelmingly red meaty diet for the best reasons of them all – to be kind to Mother Earth and to be kind to our own body beautiful. The all-American Food Revolution summit docuseries are the best series package you want to buy and listen to if you want to empower yourself, arm yourself with knowledge of how to go about making sweeping changes in your lifestyle – feel better, think better, drink better, eat better, reap the harvest of a fighting fit immune system. In a sense it enables you to say no to doctors, no to drugs, no to pharmacies. Perhaps like me you do not trust the mainstream healthcare system anymore!
Look how the pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer have fixed the American people and the rest of the world with mandated vaccines over the years (and accordingly to Dr Shiva Ayyadurai on an obsolete perception of what goes into the making of our magnificent immune system. Life and living cannot be about compromising the immune system so systematically as it has happened in our times…and who knows what’s in these come lately vaccines?
Are we to be enslaved by pharmaceutical companies who “bribe” doctors all the way up and down to prescribe their drugs and vaccines as some fantastic futuristic healthcare coming from the top from a handful of oligarchs chasing power, profits and control of the world economy?
HEY, I’m not the only one thinking like this post-Covid19 lockdowns and the scenarious played out for us in the global world of recent years. This is how many people are thinking including my contemporaries and several groups have come up to combat healthcare turning into a private limited company funded by the government, for the government and of the government which inspires no trust to begin with.
After the John and Ocean Robbins package of docuseries, there’re my second favourite, the Dr Al Sears, MD and Doctor’s House Call newsletters from Florida which come in regularly, clueing me about a host of things which plague human life on earth from heart disease to diabetes to obesity to cancer and Alzheimer’s or one of the dementia diseases in which more and more of my generation are slipping into come the 70s plus, plus…there’s also reams and reams of health-oriented talk shows so social media, Facebook, YouTube videos, etc.
There’re a flood of videos exploring body beautiful from the inside out, revealing gory details in technicolour of what happens when jaundice is smothering your liver or some other evil is taking a toll on your mind and body, heart and soul! To be honest I can’t even bear to look at these videos any more telling me about my minor and major misdemenours on the eating and drinking front – and help, I can’t walk nowadays, I’ve put on so much weight and am touching 80kg. Do you know that insulin has several roles in joint health – it helps build cartilage, increases bone building, promotes fracture healing?
In a recent study in “Arthritis & Rheumatology,” researchers discovered that our joints – just like our muscles, liver, fat, and other tissues – can develop insulin resistance. Synovium in joints is sensitive to insulin. Synovium is a membrane found in joints like our knees, shoulders and surrounds the inner lining of our joints. Its main function is to create synovial fluid which helps nourish and lubricate the joints…improving insulin sensitivity may be just what we need to slow down the progression of osteoarthritis.
So says my friend Dr A Sears (who runs his own health program online now to educate us). I have been reading him for years now for all the good it has done me. Not his fault, my inability to sign on the dotted line is my fault. Everybody wants to be healthy but fact is health is a costly affair even if it may be as economical as you wish it to be – make what you will of that. Both are difficult platforms even if you know everything and may translate at ground level only minimally! Living frugally means you better not get swayed and exercise discipline and do goals every single day when you wake up, on a day-to-day basis…to arrive at places worth arriving at. Take gorgeous chat show Oprah Winfrey as your role model!
Still I thank my friends Ocean Robbins and Dr Al Sears most humbly for all the wonderful reading they’ve offered me over the years to educate myself about body beautiful! Thank you Brian Vaszily, Jonathan Otto, all the Mayo Clinic despatches, Dr Jockers.com, Anna Joy of VegHealth, mindbodygreen, Rob Herring, Chris Kresser, and a whole lot more health sites which offer food to think and brood over. There is a flood of data now educating and confusing us equally about what to do and what not to do to be healthy, happy and wise — whatever comes first.
The market for health suppliers and seekers is blooming into a heady variegated bouquet of flowers into a garden of paradise – you want to be in it if only to look up and inhale the fragrance of a zillion flowers! I speak metaphorically, okay, you get the idea here. In a household of only two as mine is, I find the partner with his health problems now hell bent on starving himself like a Jain monk – with a slew of medicines at his disposal; the fallout is that I am stuffing myself silly off and on to ease nameless agitations and frustrations to do with the autumnal years of life, not having planned for them too well.
For those who grow old in mind and body – the mind being enslaved by the body or the body being enslaved by the mind, it’s a hard call! In any case I’ve never been able to make up my mind about whether it is the mind which enslaves the body, or the body which enslaves the mind? You tell me.