This time around I am rarely concerned with the honesty of the tourist industry, but lies which aim to mislead locals have caught my attention. I will skip over the spread of homeopathic medicine, or the newspaper adverts for BrainoX, for exam performance, or the pyramid schemes... their time will come. My first concern is food.
Food is an issue in India, and many people are malnourished, stunted by diets reliant on cheap white rice. Anyone who can afford it seems to have the opposite problem and gains weight. There are various pieces of local wisdom on the cause, quite often cooking oil is blamed for the rise in obesity. If instead you take a 'post low fat' look at the Indian diet, a big chunk of the calories come from rice or wheat. Sugar, the new food evil, is also consumed in large quantities. Given these influences it would be helpful if the debate was informed by reliable sources.
The bag of milled rice flakes known as poha catch my attention. The bold claims are as follows:
"Low calori" - the front of the pack makes this claim, but the nutrition label shows the standard figure for dry white rice. It's true white rice has significantly fewer calories than vegetable oil for example, but it's not exceptionally low. At 365kcal/ 100g it's between white bread and sugar... I would consider this a lie.
"Healthy and fresh" - Two separate claims. I would argue that as a long-life dried food poha is in fact the very opposite of fresh. It's probably a good candidate for stocking up a survival shelter. When a nutritionist mentions eating more fresh food I doubt this is what they have in mind. Here I'm being facetious, I know India has repurposed the word fresh to mean anything that isn't fried in vegetable oil. As vegetable oil is the popular cause of all ills this food must therefore be healthy. I'm leaning towards a lie.
For your healthy life - meaningless, and deceptive. If you eat this you will be healthy, which is a lie. Note how guarded the UK brands are when they state their processed foods "can be part of a balanced diet".
High minerals & dietary fiber - I will define an easy threshold for high in X to be "if you ate your daily calories entirely of this food, you would meet your RDA in nutrient X". This is of course a flat lie, white rice is neither high in minerals or high in dietary fiber. If you ate 2000 calories of rice you would receive only:
27% of your dietary fiber
22% of your iron
11% of the calcium RDA
33% of magnesium
16% of potassium
Export quality - but is it? And what does this mean, perhaps the absence of twigs and small stones? I'll call this one smoke.
This pack could just be a bad apple, another brand has none of the misleading statements. In fact it's one of the quaint things I love about India, the little nostalgic touches.
"Victory Poha", in a dark military green pack. Established 1947.
Food is an issue in India, and many people are malnourished, stunted by diets reliant on cheap white rice. Anyone who can afford it seems to have the opposite problem and gains weight. There are various pieces of local wisdom on the cause, quite often cooking oil is blamed for the rise in obesity. If instead you take a 'post low fat' look at the Indian diet, a big chunk of the calories come from rice or wheat. Sugar, the new food evil, is also consumed in large quantities. Given these influences it would be helpful if the debate was informed by reliable sources.
The bag of milled rice flakes known as poha catch my attention. The bold claims are as follows:
"Low calori" - the front of the pack makes this claim, but the nutrition label shows the standard figure for dry white rice. It's true white rice has significantly fewer calories than vegetable oil for example, but it's not exceptionally low. At 365kcal/ 100g it's between white bread and sugar... I would consider this a lie.
"Healthy and fresh" - Two separate claims. I would argue that as a long-life dried food poha is in fact the very opposite of fresh. It's probably a good candidate for stocking up a survival shelter. When a nutritionist mentions eating more fresh food I doubt this is what they have in mind. Here I'm being facetious, I know India has repurposed the word fresh to mean anything that isn't fried in vegetable oil. As vegetable oil is the popular cause of all ills this food must therefore be healthy. I'm leaning towards a lie.
For your healthy life - meaningless, and deceptive. If you eat this you will be healthy, which is a lie. Note how guarded the UK brands are when they state their processed foods "can be part of a balanced diet".
High minerals & dietary fiber - I will define an easy threshold for high in X to be "if you ate your daily calories entirely of this food, you would meet your RDA in nutrient X". This is of course a flat lie, white rice is neither high in minerals or high in dietary fiber. If you ate 2000 calories of rice you would receive only:
27% of your dietary fiber
22% of your iron
11% of the calcium RDA
33% of magnesium
16% of potassium
Export quality - but is it? And what does this mean, perhaps the absence of twigs and small stones? I'll call this one smoke.
This pack could just be a bad apple, another brand has none of the misleading statements. In fact it's one of the quaint things I love about India, the little nostalgic touches.
"Victory Poha", in a dark military green pack. Established 1947.
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