Stuck in escapism

The modern world has accustomed us to the idea that we keep needing to make money.  Make money to do what? To do things that will make us happy, things that don't involve work!

Now this puts us in an unenviable trap. While working, we are all the time fantasizing about our time off. We don't enjoy the work as a consequence. While taking our time off, we want to "maximise" that limited window, so we try to pack more and more things in it, go to better and better "destinations", and have better and better insta pictures in order to make our friends more and more envious. 

Our friends when they look at our insta pictures of our road trip in our newly acquired Tesla, are not thinking about us - they are thinking about themselves in that situation and having FOMO. The time we don't spend on actually doing something is the time spent on FOMO. 

So we are all the time doing something that we want to escape out of, that thing called work, in order to earn money to do high octane things to impress others who don't give a shit but which cost a lot of money, and at the same time envying those who are somewhere else! 

There is something drastically wrong in this whole construct. 

It is both sad and hilarious at the same time. Like most tragedies in life are.

Thoughts on food processing

Raw fruits and vegetables are good, human beings have the ability to digest it. 

Once humans shifted to agriculture, we started making denser foods like grains. Grains were initially used only to feed cattle, and not for human consumption. It entered the human diet only about 6000 years back. Due to population pressure, grains then became a large part of our diet. 

For optimal health, reduce grains in the diet. There is a huge amount of time spent on debating why Ragi or Quinoa is better than rice or wheat. These kinds of debates are needless if you anyway decide to reduce grains in your diet. 

If you anyway  have grains, then remember the following. In case you have a lot of inexplicable health problems or allergies, IBS, etc the first thing to drop from the diet is wheat.  Wheat has undergone so much modification in the last two thousand years that the modern version has become a problem. You can try "emmer wheat / jave godi" , that may work for you. 

Milk is in general not required for the human body. Eliminating milk is a healthy option. However, the vegans have it all wrong. Butter, ghee, curd and buttermilk are good for health, extremely good in fact. The vegans, in avoiding these, are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. 

Naturopathy is generally in favour of raw foods. Ayurveda however typically recommends light cooking. When it comes to cooking, heating in the presence of water or steam is better than dry heat, since the yang of fire is balanced with the yin of water. 

Rava, Poha, Sabudana, noodles, pasta,  are all "processed" foods. They are made from rice or wheat after boiling, heating, dunking, rolling, flattening, etc, processes. In today's parlance, this is not what we refer to when we say "processed" foods. 

The rice that is milled in the rice mill is processed in a manner of speaking. The more the "polish" the less the nutrients that remain. However, this is not a major concern for two reasons. (1) I do not depend on rice for my main nutritional needs, for that I have vegetables, fruits and spices. (2) In any case, rice or any kind of grains are not great for health.

Best not to worry about how much processing the rice has undergone, and try to keep progressively reducing the amount of all grains in your diet.

With all these caveats in place, now remember that processed foods are extremely, extremely bad for health. When we say processed food, a short and sweet definition is: any food that is made in a factory. As to the reasons why processed foods are bad for health, those can fill a book. 

Rather than getting into huge debates on what constitutes "processing", to what extent is processed food ok, which processed foods are ok, or into semantical arguments on the definition of processing, it is best to understand the spirit of what is being said, the broad contours of what foods are good, and to maintain an eighty twenty principle. So long as eighty percent of the food you eat is "good", the body can handle the other twenty percent. 

On second thoughts, make it ninety ten.

On Nutrition Labels on Food

Reading labels on food packages is a useless pastime. The food industry has deliberately misled you into looking at the wrong things, irrelevant things. 

It is good to broadly know what are the important nutrients that body needs, and know which foods give you more of those 

It is also good to know what foods are "superfoods", foods that pack a nutrient-dense punch. 

But right now we are talking about why not to read labels, and what to focus on instead. Ok, so here goes. 

Any food that is minimally processed is better compared to highly processed. An example of highly processed is instant coffee powder. Ever thought how the poor innocent coffee seed is converted into that wonder? 

Any food with a wonky name, like Dairy Whitener for milk powder, or Frozen Dessert for Ice Cream, is a definite problem. 

Any food with a very long shelf life is a problem. 

"Added nutrients" are a fraud. 

The bigger the set-up of the company that makes the food, the more of a problem it is. A McD is worse than your local Darshini. 

Refined carbohydrates are bad. White flour is horrible. 

Refined oils are bad. 

White sugar is bad. Substitutes for white sugar are worse. 

Reading any amount of labels will not make these facts go away. 

When I started penning this, I thought I could give guidelines on which processed food is better and / or what to look for when it comes to processed foods. 

Unfortunately, as I am thinking this through, the conclusion is again becoming apparent. 

There is no alternative to cooking at home. 

If you can't do that, catch hold of a neighbouring auntie who cooks fresh food every day and let her send you a dabba.

India is full of such aunties. Every lane has one of them. I believe the US is full of them too, New Jersey for example has enough supply of Andhra or Gujju or Tamil aunties doing this. 

It's not practical, my lifestyle does not permit it, you say? 

Well, then face the fact that you are eating junk, and give up the pretence that reading labels will improve the situation in any way! 

Belief

Every age has its beliefs, and belief by its very definition, excludes rational analysis. 

People believe that a dip in the Ganga will wash them of their sins. A dip in the Ganga where it meets Yamuna and Saraswathi will do the same thing, except perhaps more potently. A dip at the Triveni Sangam in Prayagraj when the stars are favourably aligned, which happens once in twelve years, is even more potent, the best of the best. 

That is a belief that has carried forward since ancient times, and it is in our DNA. We saw the result of that in the Kumbh. No rational analysis is possible here, so let us just assume that India is about the most sinless place right now, since so much sin has been washed away. It won't help, because people will take that as an opportunity to commit fresh and newer sins; after all there needs to be enough to wash by the time the next Kumbh arrives in twelve years! 

Meanwhile, statistics say that fifty crore people visited the Kumbh in the last forty five days. 

Now that is a big number. It is forty percent of the population of India. 

I know many people who visited the Kumbh, it is by far the biggest event in terms of people I know attending it, yet, and here I have to pause... Have four out of ten people I know visited the Kumbh? The ten people here includes children, senior citizens, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, everyone in the population. 

Seems a bit of a stretch. 

Ok, start applying the caveats. First one is that people who go to take the dip twice in their visit are counted twice. I don't know what the other caveats are, I am sure there are some. And then tell me the adjusted number in terms of number of visitors counted only once. 

The Kumbh that is just  concluding is by far the biggest, best organised, most inspiring gathering in human history. Of that, there is no doubt. 

But the way people bandy about that statistic of 30 crore, 40 crore, and now 50 crore, is amazing. They just accept that number, there is no attempt to grasp it, understand the magnitude, critically examine it, parse it, or question that number in any way. 

Personally, I would be equally impressed if the number was 10 crore or 50. The scale still is awesome. 

But I am amazed at the capacity of humans to believe anything without questioning.

That is what I call Belief.

The dilemma of gold

The government introduced the Sovereign Gold Bond ( SGB) scheme in order to save foreign exchange that was being spent  on gold imports. 

India has historically been the largest importer and consumer of gold. Indian people are smart, they always held their wealth in the form of gold. 

Since India does not manufacture any gold, all of it has to be imported. In times past we paid for it with pepper, and other valuable things for which India was famous. Nowadays, we have to pay for it with precious foreign exchange. 

So the government said, give us your money, and we will give you a certificate for an equivalent amount of gold in grams, that you can redeem eight years later for the prevailing gold price at that point in time. We will make it tax free on redemption they said. But the public didn't bite, so they said we will give you an additional 2.5 percent interest per annum. They called it SGBs. 

They kept coming up with issue after issue and the public bought the SGBs. Everything looked good for a while, till gold prices suddenly started shooting up. 

Madam Nirmala cannot  harangue gold into submission, like she tries to do with all those who trouble her. Both Parakala and gold are outside her control, though she may terrorise the rest of the world.

It is not just that gold prices are outside her control, it is also that there is no certainty about future prices. So the government  stopped issuing SGBs a few months back. Word is out that they may even offer a premature redemption window. I wouldn't be surprised if this is accompanied by an unsaid threat that the capital exemption on redemption may be taken away soon. 

In any case, the best way to hold gold is away from greedy eyes, and governments are always most greedy and untrustworthy. 

Expect a spate of articles in the financial press running down gold and saying how those who buy gold are unpatriotic, anti development, anti poor and in general enemies of civilised society. 

When that happens it is time to buy more. Physical gold, mind it!