Jaggery, For All Times

I was at the Indian Forest Academy, Dehradun, talking to the probationers about healthy living. It’s the only civil service where you have to clear a physical test to get selected. We were discussing why, post work-out, they should have a banana. “Potassium, iron, fibre, energy,” they said, and that’s when it struck me. Why? Why don’t we ever think along the lines of—it’s easily available (local), it’s yummy, it’s a no-fuss fruit etc? After all, what we truly experience is the latter but the reasons why we eat it are text-bookish.

This is what the weight loss and diet world have turned us into. People who eat because of the science instead of the reality. Yeah, I just called science a myth; nutrition science at least is that. What is the ultimate truth today becomes a sort of apology tomorrow. For over 40 years we were told to avoid fat and cholesterol and today its—‘eat fat and don’t forget the cholesterol, it’s a nutrient’. So nutrition science is where the physical sciences were thousands of years ago: The sun rotates around the earth...sorry, the earth rotates around the sun.

Another example is vegetables. Indian oral heritage says that you must avoid vegetables, especially green leafy vegetables, in the monsoon. But science continues to see them as a great source of fibre/roughage essential for having a smooth time in the loo. Real life, however, tells us that a meal of something as basic as dal chawal or even roti-jaggery-ghee has the same smooth effect on the stomach. Not just that, it even leaves you feeling more satiated and least interested in hunting for a reward in a pastry. The meal itself is the reward.

Experience cannot be questioned, and science is not beyond question.