The Ultimate Food For Body, Mind and Soul

From the Back of the Book:

Food can heal most common ailments. It can improve our mood, activate our brain cells to perform better, retain information and help us to think sharp. It can cure insomnia and lull our agitated mind, make our joints more flexible, make us feel full of beans and youthful, improve our eyesight and retard the formation of cataract. It can increase hormone level, boost immunity, relax the taut nerves, soon the pains and aches, and retard ageing.

A small amount of garlic taken every day can provide immunity against many kind of cancer; onion can lower blood cholesterol and regulate blood sugar. The lycopene in tomatoes can ward off cancer. Green tea can improve memory and delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

Food affects not just our body but also the mind and the soul. The right food can bring peace to the mind and elevate the soul to the spiritual level. On the other hand, the wrong kind of food can trigger allergies, cause headaches and exacerbate the pain of rheumatoid arthritis. Wrong food is the main cause for the heart disease.

If you are one of those who think of food as sustenance only, think again. This book will help in dispelling most of the myths connected with food and help you in using food as potent healer. It will also help you in controlling most of the lifestyle diseases that have sprung up in the last two decades.

This book is meant to act as food for thought and activate the mind into selecting the right food for optimum benefit. It aims to help built an intelligent approach towards food selection and to equip you with food wisdom.

About the Author:

Tanushree Podder, a management graduate, has specialized in Labour law and Human Resource. She has dabbled in varied fields like beauty, education, Reiki, Vipassana, Pranic healing and Yoga. Lately, she has been studying the various alternative therapies used in India and abroad.

Tanushree has been writing for the past twenty-eight years. Her writings have been published in almost all leading newspapers and magazines in the country, some of which are The Times of India, The Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, The Deccan Herald, The Eve's Weekly, The Savvy, The Society, The New Woman, The Woman's Era, The Health and Beauty, etc. She has been writing on diverse subjects ranging from travel, fiction, health and fitness, spirituality, beauty and relationships.

She has worked for Larsen & Toubro Limited and Manga Publishing Co., besides setting up a woman's portal called evetimes. com in which she was an editor and content manager. She is also involved with India Development Foundation and Asha, which are two bodies that serve the society. Besides her involvement in social work, she is often invited to speak at various seminars on social issues.

Tanushree has widely traveled all around the country with her husband who is an army officer and has contributed travelogues for various publications. She visited Switzerland and Malaysia on invitation of the respective tourism boards.

She has written fourteen books on various subjects like alternative therapies, health, fitness, relationships, management, and nutrition. Tanushree's interests vary from music to reading, traveling, and community work.

'Let food be your medicine', said Hippocrates more than a century before modem science substantiated this fact through various research techniques. He knew what he was saying and his statement is finding confirmation in the corridors of pharmaceutical research today. In our rush for modernisation and advancement, we have forgotten the benefits of healthy eating and resort to antibiotics and over-the-counter medication for our ailments. First, we consume food that brings ill health, to pander to our taste buds, and then rush for allopathic panacea to cure our disgruntled body systems. During the last two decades, food has almost become an obsession with mankind.

Food is the largest industry in the world. It has become the single largest global obsession in the recent times. Cuisines have crossed borders and new cross- cultural foods are reaching the dining tables of people in different lands, which is good if people are conscious of the effect different kinds of food has on their body cells. Unfortunately, food obsession and the age of plenty have brought with it a host of lifestyle diseases. More and more young people are falling prey to problems like high cholesterol and heart disease which were earlier known as old-age problems. Even as we sink our teeth into the delicious burger and top it up with a cola of our choice, we take another step towards ill health.

There is lot of wisdom in the ancient dictum about food being the greatest natural healer. Most of us tend to discard the tenets as 'old wives tales', but the truth is that the nutritionists and food scientists are slowly coming around to believe that there is enough substance in those tenets to merit intensive research. Scientists, the world over, are finding evidence that the age-old secrets of food's medicinal powers are potent enough to cure and heal most disorders and diseases of mankind. When your grandmother applied a paste of turmeric and oil to your wound or made you drink a concoction of honey, ginger juice and tulsi leaves to cure your sore throat, she wasn't fooling around. She knew what she was doing. It has taken many years of scientific research to convince us that turmeric and ginger contain immense anti-bacterial and healing properties to justify attention. Medicine is turning a full circle, and once again, the herbal cures and traditional practices are finding favour with the practitioners.

I was highly amused when, during an 'Art of Living' session, my teacher remarked: "The Western doctors are still in the learning stage and that is why they are known as practitioners. They are practising their skills on innocent scapegoats."

How very true! The Western world is just beginning to wake up to the wise sayings that our forefathers and medicine men knew centuries back. Our traditional culinary practices include many condiments, herbs and spices that are healthful for the body. Even a common leaf like the curry leaf that is used liberally in South Indian cuisine and the ubiquitous coriander leaf used in the North have immense beneficial effect.

Food not only has the power to heal but also has the power to harm, when eaten indiscriminately. Half the ailments we suffer are due to our dietary mistakes and pandering to the taste buds. Food researchers have recently unveiled the goodness of a common vegetable like cabbage and its efficacy in fighting the free radicals and air pollutants. The smelly garlic can actually defeat cancer and onion has been found to contain potent agents. The link between fish oil and healthy joints has established its curing powers in diseases like arthritis. Food can improve our mood, activate our brain cells to perform better, retain information and induce sharpness in our thinking process. It can cure insomnia, lull our agitated mind, and make our joints more flexible. It can also make us feel full of beans and youthful, improve our eyesight and retard the formation of cataract. On the other hand, it can also trigger allergies, cause headaches and exacerbate the pain of rheumatoid arthritis. Wrong food is the main cause for heart disease, but it can also be used to set the problem right. It can increase hormone level, boost immunity, relax taut nerves, soothe pains and aches, and retard ageing. In fact, the wonders of food will never cease to surprise mankind.

The rising pollution, adulteration, exposure to pathogens, genetic mutation of disease-causing germs, and other ecological imbalances have, together, contributed steadily to our ill health. While we cannot have much control over the environmental factors, we can surely control our diets. The dreaded SARS, mad cow disease, bird flu and many other new diseases are all related to food and its wrong handling. Most of the modern diseases can be clubbed under the head- lifestyle diseases. Nature has a bountiful abundance of good food. It is up to us to use them intelligently.

My first encounter with the healing properties of food happened when I reached the menopausal stage. Hot flushes, insomnia and irritability, which are a part and parcel of menopausal malady, were driving the family and me bonkers. I consulted my gynaecologist and he recommended that I resort to Hormone Replacement Therapy, which would mean that I take regulated dosage of hormones to balance the ones produced in my body. The treatment helped me recover to a large extent; I became calmer and my skin turned radiant. Compliments about the texture and my glowing skin poured in from all quarters. The changes in my temperament brought relief to my family and everything was fine till I read about the likely link between cancer and HRT. Horrified that I could be digging my own grave, I took a second opinion. I was instantly taken off the treatment and this time, the physician advised that I begin a regimen of soya and moong sprouts. I was sceptical. How could soya and sprouts cure my problems, but I decided to try it out anyway. And it worked! Many of the conditions related to menopause were controlled by the simple change in diet. And thus began my interest in the link between diet and disease. After years of intensive research followed by interviews, I accumulated enough evidence in support of the efficacy of food in healing and preventing diseases. Intent on sharing my findings with others, I began penning them down and this book was born.

Food not only has the power to heal the body but also has intense and far-reaching effects on the mind and soul of a person. It is a fallacy to believe that measures to control food intake should be taken only in old age. Food wisdom, as I call it, should begin early so that the harmful effects can be warded off. There is no way one can undo the harm that occurs due to indiscriminate consumption of unhealthy food. This book is meant to act as food for thought, to activate the mind into selecting the right food for optimum benefit. It aims to help build an intelligent approach towards food selection and to equip you with the wisdom for using food as a healer and not as a destroyer.