“Have this namkeen chai”, said my guide’s mother during my Spiti trek. “It will increase your appetite, give you the energy to walk and keep your back strong till you die.” Namkeen chai is a concoction of tea leaves, barley and large amounts of freshly churned butter and some salt. Back home in the highrises of Mumbai, butter and salt are blamed for everything that’s wrong in one’s life—obesity and blood pressure to heart disease.
The Himalayan women believe in stoking their appetite, city women believe in suppressing it. My clients have often been advised in their past to add bran to their rotis or to drink fibre gels before meals. No, they didn’t get any thinner, only weaker in their backs, lower on their immunity and in Vit D and B12.
Churned butter adds so much flavour to the food we cook/eat that it actually entices your digestive fire. This allows for better absorption and assimilation of the many nutrients in our meals, especially the fat-soluble vitamins like A, E, D, K. To speak specifically of Vit D and my guide’s mother’s oral wisdom—my ability to walk and have a strong back till I die would be greatly dependent on my bone mineral density. In the absence of Vit D, my bones would be brittle and this will ensure that I create very little motion in my body, leading to obesity and a host of other lifestyle diseases.
Freshly churned butter is an undervalued essential fat, therapy actually, in our Indian diet. It needs to make a HUGE comeback to our city and small-town lives.
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