ALL YOU NEED TO EAT: THE A-B-C OF GOOD NUTRITION

Can Vitamin C cure a cold?

Is sugar taboo for diabetics?

Will alcohol keep your arteries healthy?

Will coffee put you at risk for a heart attack? Cancer? Miscarriage?

Can you get all the nutrients you need from just the foods you eat?

DEPENDS ON whom you ask. And that sparse, and admittedly unsatisfactory, reply is a nutshell representation of the cataclysmic confusion that pervades the Aisle of Nutrition today.

There is no market as rich in hype and hokum, ignorance and befuddlement, as that whose raison d'etre is to tell the rest of us what we should be eating.

Nutritional experts want to improve the state of our health, of course, but not only do they often disagree on the nitty-gritty, they also haven't had much success in transferring their fat percentage formulae and dietary pie-charts to practical use in our kitchens and on our dining tables. Manufacturers and snake-oil peddlers, on the other hand, are driven more by commercial incentives than by concern for our arteries or our carbuncles. The research establishment is plagued by God's own confusion, with today's "findings" being contradicted by tomorrow's "conclusions". And the government is often pulled in so many contradictory directions by so many diverse lobbies that it generally ends up doing nothing (Should non-iodised salt be banned? Should salt be fortified with iron? Should gutkha be outlawed?)

Bombarded with inconsistencies in the nutritional messages he gets, the consumer at the receiving end of it all adopts one of three philosophies of personal nutrition:

(i) The You-might-get-hit-by-a-truck-at-any-moment Philosophy. So eat up today, and don't pay a paisa's worth of attention to all those nutritional trigger-words: fats, triglycerides, cholesterol, sodium.

(it) The live-to-eat-moong-sprouts Philosophy. Its acolytes have made the study and practice of nutrition the sole focus and chief end of their existence; their conception of nirvana is a steaming bowl of Yellow Pumpkin soup, their idea of the perfect birthday gift is a three-year subscription to Vegetarian Times.

(iii) The Hem-and-haw-and-hedge-and-hum Philosophy. Its choristers (the overwhelming majority of us, that is) make mounds of dietary resolutions, worry in spurts about whether they really should be eating more vegetables and fruits, and generally end up homing in only on the advice they think they can live with. (Drinking only mineral water in a restaurant is fine, but having your tea with skim milk doesn't sound so do-able.)

Even if we try to grasp the fundamentals of good nutrition, realities on the ground can trip us up on. a daily basis: Fibre helps to prevent constipation, you know that, but does an apple contain more fibre than a pear? Are some "good" cereals better than other "good" cereals? Which cheeses are lowest in fat? If you're dining out, how do you calculate the calories in a mushroom moussaka or an eggplant-almond enchilada? And even if you exercise personal control over what's going into every morsel you eat, how do you know whether you're getting your daily requirements of a score of nutrients unless you convert your kitchen counter into a data-processing centre?

In a word, is there a way to healthy eating that is not rigged with calculations, contradictory advice, research babble, anxiety and guilt? Can we cut the pedantry and talk about real eating in

the real world?     

In a word, yes. You don't have to wade through an encyclopaedia of nutrition or be frozen by the realisation that you'll never be able to work out whether you're getting too much fat in your daily diet because you were looking out the window when they were teaching percentages in school. In this, and the following chapters in this section, you'll find all the nitty-gritty you need to make wise nutritional choices, to ensure that food becomes your ally rather than your adversary in the fight against disease and aging.

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