Tips to healthy alternative food

Since the trend today is to consume healthy food, every body has begun to put in extra effort to hold calories down. This, however, must be supplemented liberally with essentials like protein, vitamins, fluids, etc. This should be combined with plenty of exercise, without which any diet to check weight is meaningless.

Super-refined flours, silky flours, double-bleached flours: these terms blare out of advertisements, trying to make the products seem superior, attractive and generally profitable, if not for our body, at least for the manufacturers. The age of such refinement in food has begun to have a very different connotation. They are difficult to digest and increase problems of obesity, heart disease, blood pressure and indigestion.

However, one need not be terrified of such ingredients. Consuming a moderate quantity while balancing them with highly nutritious foods like bran, whole flour, germ-of-wheat and other grains makes a sensible combination. Keeping in mind the age, lifestyle and food habits our generation has inculcated, such a balance is more welcome than a fanatic aversion to super refined products. In fact, most people believe that taste is wholly sacrificed in the process of changing over to health foods. Hence, it is wiser to adopt the middle path.

Include an ample amount of sprouted lentils in your diet. Make them at home for the tastiest sprouts. Wash lentils (moong, channa, matki, etc.) in water. Soak overnight. Drain water, wash again and remove excess water. Cover with a moist cloth, and keep aside for 15-20 hours. Make sure the cloth is kept moist. Do not tie in the cloth. Use the sprouts as required. Refrigerate the remaining for later use.

In this section we will try to use a major amount of bran, muesli, friendly amounts of fat, wheat-germ, oats, soy flour, etc. to help maintain a healthy, balanced life and body.

A few tips regarding enhancing the nutrition content of our foods:

1. Instead of using refined wheat flour, either use whole-wheat flour, or add a cupful of soy flour to a kilo of wheat flour. If you have a flour mill at home, grind both together for a good blend.
   
2. Make rotis (leavened breads) out of millet, jowar, ragi flours on some days, instead of wheat flour. Add a handful of soy flour to it if desired. This is a healthy and welcome change.
   
3. Make biscuits, cookies, etc. substituting a portion of plain flour for toasted bran, fibrous flours like ragi, or whole wheat, or even crushed muesli.
   
4. Use toasted or baked forms of grains instead of frying them for any dish.
   
5. Make intelligent and creative changes in basic recipes, converting simple dishes to excitingly new and tasty alternatives. For example, the regular semolina upma may be made from crushed jowar and wheat germ.
   
6. Even if you are not very adept at using healthy foods, and substituting the ingredients, try the simple solution of using either ready-to-use flakes, or toasted wheat germ, rolled toasted oats, etc. as a topping in baked dishes, casseroles, salads, raithas, cookies, etc. Even this helps to take a lot of fibre, without actually cooking with it, directly.
   
7. The best way to cook vegetables is by steaming them. Put some water in a large vessel. Place a metal stand in the centre. Steam by putting the vegetables in a colander and placing over the stand. Cover the vessel with a lid, while steaming. This way the vegetables are not washed off of their nutrition and are cooked faster.