My dad loved rich food: pastéis fritos em banha de porco, arroz refugado laced with the best Australian butter, bebinca and sans-rival. Even when in the mid-fifties he was found to be a diabetic he loved his sweets and could not resist the temptation. Whenever we caught him sneaking – on the sly – a chunk of the apetitoso bolo from the fridge and sternly tried to dissuade him, he would apologetically submit, “Son, this sweet…ah…you know… is not all that sweet!” Unmindful of consequences he would presto cozy up in his cadeira Voltaire and gulp with gusto a large piece of the scrumptious doce. Dad never thought he would cross the sixties because of a bad family history of congestāo cerebral (brain strokes). Yet, God permitted him to die at the ripe age of 83. To us, his children, he doubled as an exemplary father and mother (after we lost our mum tragically of a premature death). Oh, so loving, caring and foresighted he was!
Many of my friends brag, “Our ancestors were big-eaters and binged on coconut oil and still they lived long!” During my times as a medical postgraduate we were taught to believe that coconut oil was an “untouchable” – very bad for the heart! However, today the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way as we are made to believe that coconut oil is the healthiest oil for cooking since it contains medium chain fatty acids that are healthy and do not break down even when heated.
Similarly, for long we had been told that butter was bad, red meat was harmful and if you ate fried food you were going to drastically reduce the time it would take to end up in your grave. Now, we sing a different tune as these theories are being turned on their heads. To begin with, butter is considered more than an acceptable companion on the dinner table. Red meat does you no harm, if it comes from a reliable source, and you needn’t ask for a lean cut. Certain oils are actually good for your system, they say. Why this change of heart when for years we were told that fats were bad and saturated fats the worst of the lot capable of clogging your arteries causing heart attacks?
According to nutritionists the whole shift towards eating low fat foods has actually resulted in people deplorably consuming more “processed foods” and “foods high in sugar”. For example, the cookie box will scream low fat, but the calories are almost the same as the original, because the low fat version has more sugar. As a result you end up eating easily digestible sugars while your body is compelled to release more and more insulin to keep pace with a rapidly mounting blood sugar. In the long run this invites double trouble: diabetes plus heart trouble. High levels of sugar nowadays are believed to cause more damage to your heart than fats ever did. To add to it, too many sweets may render you morbidly obese.
But what is worthy of note is that everyone is unanimous in condemning the so-called “trans fats”. Trans fats occur naturally in small amounts but when oils are processed (hydrogenated) the quantity of trans fats increases. Trans fats can occur naturally at very low levels in some meat and dairy products. “Artificial trans fats” are generated when oil goes through hydrogenation, which involves adding hydrogen to liquid oil to make it more solid. Partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs) are widely used in “bakery products” (cakes, biscuits, pizzas, pastries, etc), “fried products” (potato, corn chips, etc), “deep fried foods” like French fries, doughnuts, fried chicken and various Indian deep fried snacks besides coffee creamer, margarine etc. In India, trans fats are consumed a lot in the form of “vanaspati”, a cheaper source of fat that improves taste as well. Indian restaurants use “vanaspati” for cooking bhaturas, parathas, puris and tikkis among others. Moreover, repeated use of the same oil for frying, as done by wayside eateries, adds to the problem.
The Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) in the US announced a final three-year timetable to eliminate artificial trans fats from the edible products since they contribute significantly to clogged arteries and heart disease. FDA estimates that striking trans fats from the American diet will prevent an astonishing 20,000 heart attacks and 7,000 heart disease-related deaths each year.
There is no doubt that to enjoy good health we must “exercise”. But to “eat responsibly” is even more important. When people ask us doctors “what that exactly means” we often stammer as we tread on contentious ground when the very concept of “healthy diet” is in a state of flux. What is then the best advice? Tread the middle path and march on with an ounce of optimism.
There is an old saying, “Health is wealth”. But, I may add, after all is said and done “we can do only our best, God will do the rest.”
(Dr. Francisco
Colaço is a seniormost consulting physician.)
