Skip to main content

How Safe is our Food?

Image
By
When food procured from the local grocer and prepared for serving to the Prime Minister during his recent visit to Kanpur was found to contain impurities, it made headlines for a day. That a billion Indians eat the same food considered unsuitable for the prime minister’s consumption, every day, does not seem to arouse us.
A wide variety of chemicals, pesticides, impurities, hormones, toxins, additives and insecticides find their way into our bodies through the food we eat. It begins with chemical fertilizers and pesticides used in farming. Of late, our farmers have discovered that injecting a hormone called oxytocin, which is normally produced by the human body for making the uterus contract or express milk from breasts, can enhance farm produce and make the fruits and veggies look fatter, bigger and garden-fresh. Another chemical agent, calcium carbide, is commonly used to ripen fruits.
There is growing concern what they might be doing to us when we consume them. The dangers this time are not the cliched “cancer scares” but possible links to nervous breakdowns, sterility and neurotic disorders. A disorder of children being increasingly linked to toxic food additives is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD. Children manifesting this disorder are unable to sit still and concentrate, are restless and show impaired learning. Several chemicals, coloring agents and preservatives such as glutamate and benzene are suspect. Glutamate is commonly present in monosodiumglutamate or MSG, preservatives and canned foods, while benzene is used as a preservative in cola drinks and fruit juices.
Pesticides, insecticides and rat poisons used at various stages of food production and storage can be harmful too. If the Bhopal gas tragedy is any reckoner, it was leakage of these poisons from the Union Carbide insecticide plant that killed thousands of humans and maimed many others. Their harmful effects may not be readily evident, but regular small doses can be bad for our nerves and brains. Heavy metals, such as lead or aluminium, often present in garnishings of sweets, can lead to dementia or foggy brains.
Several developed countries such as Scandinavia, Australia and Germany have therefore banned food additives, artificial flavours and colouring agents from use. Germany boasts that its lager and cheese are totally free of impurities and taste-enhancers.
Organic farming, in which grains, veggies and fruits are grown naturally without any fertilizers, chemicals or hormones, has already become the fashion statement of the rich and the evolved. Organic food looks lean, wrinkled, and lustreless but is healthier than our artificially fattened brinjals or painted deep green bulgy cabbages.They also cost much more as the yield is smaller as they are grown without fertilizers and other chemicals.
 In most parts of India, plump and clourful is still in and hence safe food on our tables seems quite a way off. It is time we looked beyond size and looks and paid attention to our health.
As published in HT City ( Hindustan Times) dated 8 august, 2010.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Doctor’s Dress

By
The familiar white coat worn by physicians as their distinctive dress for over 100 years, has started generating  murmurs  of controversy. It is not uncommon to find the blood pressure to be higher when measured by a white-coat-wearing-doctor in the hospital or clinic than the readings obtained at home by relatives.  This is due to the anxiety that the white coat and the hospital setting evokes in patients, and has been termed “White Coat Hypertension”. Mature clinicians often routinely subtract a few points from these measurements when entering records in case charts or calculating the dose of anti-hypertensive medications to be prescribed. The white coat scares children too.  Kids often express their dislike for this dress by crying and screaming and by denying access to their bellies or chest for examination by paediatricians in this attire. Many pediatricians across the world have folded up their white coats and taken to informal colourful dressing to...
2 comments
Read more

Food Fads in Liver Disorders

By
In an attempt at trying to do well to those they love, spouses and parents often enforce diets on patients of liver diseases that often turn out to be detrimental. The commonest food fad is pale insipid boiled cabbage being doled out to nauseous patients suffering from hepatitis that makes them puke even more.  The liver, in a way, is a buzzing manufacturing unit that requires lots of energy to keep its multiple functions going. And it derives all this from the food we eat. During disease, such as during an attack of jaundice, when many of the liver cells get killed, the liver attemptsdamage control by trying to regenerate quickly. For its cells to multiply however, it requires a generous supply of energy that comes from carbohydrates, and protein, the building block for its cells and tissues. Boiled green vegetables unfortunately have neither of these. Hence the situation often progresses to that of a starved liver unable to recuperate due to cut-off food suppl...
2 comments
Read more

Teaching and Learning – is there a trick?

By
One of the big mistakes that we as parents and teachers often make, and that could stifle the mental development of our children, is to treat them as just small adults! In fact, it is this attitude of grown-ups that could be leading our next generation to become stereotyped conformists rather than original thinkers and innovators. And if we intend to drive home health messages and inculcate healthy habits we need to tailor our efforts to their cognitive potential. That children indeed think and discover the world differently was first noticed by a Swiss scientist Jean Piaget in the early 20th century. He studied his own three children grow and was intrigued by how they behaved, played games and learnt at different ages. With further observations and experiments, he propounded the theory of ‘cognitive development’, placed great importance on the education of children and is hailed even today, 30 years after his death, as a pioneer of the constructive theory of knowing.  He...
1 comment
Read more