Myths of Indian cooking - debunked - ft. Krish Ashok | Dr Pal

hello guys this is uh doctor I have a very very interesting guest very very special guest I love his angle um to talk about how we can Implement easy techniques during this intermittent fasting thing that we have been promoting so that you don't feel the pain that much and then also get the good quality nutrients in a simpler way I'm more than happy to welcome Mr Ashok Krishnan who is the biggest selling author of the biggest selling Book Masala lab I'm more than excited to meet him foreign thanks for joining pleasure pleasure I'm a big fan so it's a great honor to be uh on your show thank you thank you thank you so much and you know I know you are an engineer by profession and uh a cook uh cooking is your emotion absolutely emotion passion and also day to day it's it's also essential thing that you have to do absolutely absolutely I think I was just telling you that you know you should be the next cook with komali host laughs so um so people who don't know uh Ashok is a wonderful cook and he has been doing this for the last 20 years I mean during the pandemic and he realized you know the science behind the Indian cooking why we are doing what we are doing has not been explored before so he has written a book called Masala lab I'll put that in the description as well please check that out it is one of the best-selling books and the reason that I thought Krishna and would Ashok would be a wonderful uh addition to our audience is that I've been promoting uh Ashok intermittent fasting or time restricted feeling and um what I have been telling my patients is that hey you know just follow the Circadian rhythm that we are born with and you God doesn't want you to watch late night movies okay to watch late-night movies but not to eat at the same time so most of the audience that I have and also the question that I get is okay no you're trying to limit the time that you are eating so what should we eat and it's going to be a painful process during your busy lifestyle so I want this interview to be completely your platform to explore and also add additional information to see how we can use your information during this eating window so the first question to you is most of the times what I encourage patients is that hey see listen um um you I'm asking you to do a Time restrictive feeding right so you need to have more quality nutrients into it and the first question that people ask me is the easiest way to do is to use frozen items and people have this myth that Frozen is always bad so what is your take on no so this is a very a particularly common misconception only in India though uh which is that somehow that if you actually see uh uh if you look at all the things people are afraid of in India there's a very common pattern right anything that makes life easier in the kitchen you will find that Indians are afraid of it right it's I almost it almost seems as if it is it's a conspiracy by Indian uncles who do not know how to cook right uh to keep women in the kitchen and to cook fresh food all the time also they they resisted pressure cooker in the past they resisted uh gas stuff you know only apparently only people are supposed to cook on wood fire my grandfather used to say I only like food cooked on Wood Fired stuff right and now they are resisting microwave and ovens and air fryers and uh and everything else right and and all the other things they concoct around oh this will give you cancer that will give you cancer I mean like I it is it is literally I think oncologists don't have a job our guys on WhatsApp are diagnosing cancer like anything like you know microwave will cause cancer cell phones will cause cancer you know frozen food will cause cancer soy will cause cancer and that's what so yeah I think in a sense that I think the fundamental idea is that uh if you can utilize uh the refrigerator effectively and I don't think Indians utilize it effectively right and in a sense I think my entire approach to cooking has always been that if you know the why uh it's not like so people sometimes think that scientists scientists can be arrogant scientists can say do all kinds of things but the process of science is essentially asking simpler and simpler questions till you understand it at the basics right right so sometimes you just ask what does a refrigerator actually do if you remember your school biology the lower the temperature lower the biological activity that's as simple as that right and things you eat plants and animals they're all living things and they're made of cells and they have enzymes and they have and there's bacteria there's all these kinds of things around the moment you lower the temperature activity goes off right yes he says right around two to five Celsius in the regular refrigerator it doesn't cease entirely but it slows down but under minus 18 or minus 15 which is what the temperature in the freezer it completely seizes yes yes so so literally people don't realize that if you put something in the fridge you know although I say yeah for Indians and I say two to three days typically even up to six to eight days you'll be perfectly fine most things especially Indian food is very spicy and sour okay uh which by itself is very uh does not Harbor uh bacteria as much because the sour acidic conditions you know already kill most of the bacteria and we anyway cook things till everything is killed anyway right so there is no very rarely do we eat raw food so it's a but so therefore if you you can actually if you can plan your week around saying that look I'm going to say cut vegetables and keep it in the in the regular compartment if I want a salad you know I I'm sure you would have talked about it right that if before when you eat if you eat a salad first right that is automatically going to suppress the the spike of the the glucose that you of whatever the carbs that you ultimately eat because all of that resistance starts and the fiber is really going to slow the whole thing down right so so that's why so if you get into that habit of say wanting to eat a salad the biggest pain is now I have to cut sit and cut the carrots sit and cut the Cucumber exactly so remember that you know in general Behavioral Science says that it is it is very hard to change willpower you can't will yourself to say yes I am doesn't matter I'm going to make a fresh salad I'm going to go buy the vegetables right now and make salad never works but what works is that if you change the environment around you yes right yes it's right there it's you open the fridge the vegetables are there then you will eat the salad right right it's just like they said so if you if the cookie jar is by your bedside you will eat the cookie right so the solution is not to say improve my willpower the solution is to move the cookies are away to a very far away place so you create the friction right right so if you want the habit of drinking water the first thing in the morning keep a jar of water right next to the bed and you will wake up and drink but if you have to walk you know 20 meters to drink it you will never do that right so that's the whole thing right so the whole thing is that if you can use the freezer and the fridge effectively so you can cut vegetables you can you can keep basic things like for example uh uh even even leftovers people think that leftovers are oh no completely non-nutritious no boss see the first first principle is that nutrition loss is a not some sort of simple binary term right raw things have some nutrition when you cook it you are losing nutrition period okay but most things are also uh inedible without cooking them so technically speaking wheat and uh Dal all have highest nutrition when they are raw okay but I can't eat uh you know the Dal raw or you have to make the chapati right yes the act of making the chapati reduces the amount of vitamin B by 25 but you know you can't like stuff yourself with uh so so people have have to have that perspective right and just because you keep the chapati the fridge and eat it the next day it does not mean you somehow lose all the nutrition you don't right it is still better than saying no no this is old so let me go buy that fried Samosa and eat it because it is fresh yes that is where you sort of make a mistake right you buy you buy packaged food or a restaurant food it is typically at least two to two and a half times more calories right so one of my favorite hobbies is to be able to look at something and guesstimate calories it's not going to be accurate but you just need to be you know you just need to sort of you know be consistent about that's like a fistful of rice is is roughly about say you know 82 for a man's you know about 80 to 100 calories right uh this much of protein like a piece of meat or chicken or something that is likely to be around 130 or 140 calories and so on a teaspoon of you know fat is pretty high amount of calories right and so the point is that uh home-cooked food is almost always going to be lower in calories you're never going to put as much oil and as much all of that as a restaurant does yes and so so this is because because our family members are forced to come back to home sort of you know uh evolved to where you know our grandmother or mothers we often have to take an account that there is an old person uh there is a person with uh you know diabetes as a person with heart disease there's a young child so the your cooking almost always has to somehow cater to everyone so in general is always going to be healthier so that this is a regular refrigerator likewise you can be even more smarter what I talk in my book is to say that look you know when you go to a restaurant and order a butter chicken or whatever it is right or say Dal Makati if you're a vegetarian right you know uh they're able to get it to your uh table in under 10 minutes yes it takes nine hours to make dal Makati from scratch so don't think what you're eating in a restaurant is fresh right right that Dal was boiled in the morning that that gravy that makhani gravy was made in the morning and Frozen okay the guy is putting it together adding tons of butter uh he thought it hot butter on top and he's serving it to you that's what you're actually eating right so so the whole point here is that you can use some of those techniques very efficiently you don't have to add like you know 100 grams of butter but you can definitely say you know what if I'm cooking some kind of Dal uh I will cook double batch and put it in the fridge right so next day I want to eat that Chana or something like that that's a fantastic way to really save time right uh likewise the gravies you make in the weekends one of the things I do is to say for example let's let's take two slices right so I'm going to take uh you know uh sesame oil and add garlic and ginger and Curry leaves uh and in Tamarind or any other things that I've eaten and make a base right or maybe even you know grated coconut and all that add water reduce it and make a thick base and put it in the freezer in Ice Cube right so the next time I want to make say let's say I feel like eating I want to make some shrimp Curry right uh frozen shrimp uh heat it in a little bit of oil two ice cubes two cubes of the statenard uh gravy and your your Chetty nut shrimp is ready right so this literally takes 10 minutes and this is going to be Wow way way more healthier than you trying to you know order something you know from a from a restaurant and so on um and so so partially the base gravies can also be frozen right Frozen so essentially I think it's quite fascinating in India if you look at refrigerators I was quite fascinated in the U.S the refrigerators always have giant freezer compartments because people really freeze a lot of food right in Europe and in Japan in everywhere else you know so sometimes Indian will say no Americans are very unhealthy as they find boss Japanese right they live 25 years longer than Indians do okay and they use the freezer way more than we do so but in India the models of freezers the freezer will always be tidy yes apparently Indians don't use the freezer so that manufacturers like people are complaining that your freezer is too big right so it is you know that is so that's the site of uh so you people can be tremendously more productive right and forget about health right you can actually enjoy you can make more combinations if you have all of this prep work right you don't have to worry about what am I going to cook today and all of that right so this kind of prep work takes the that effort as I said no a if you have to put mental cognitive effort trust me what's the first thing you'll do you'll reach for some snack yes because your your brain uses up and as with your stress your brain uses up a lot of glucose you it will give that craving go go eat that popcorn That Snack wait that chips and so on so as much as possible you want to take yeah you want to take that out of your equation so that it is just something that you you should not be stressed about it at all right and again being anxious being afraid of all of the pseudo science and this is dangerous that is dangerous uh freezer will give you cancer this will give you cancer all of that stress is also not good for your intermittent fasting right it is going to be needlessly scared all the time no absolutely absolutely you know so I have been promoting the stiffenbox method kind of thing you know like I actually take my different box it's a small like okay perfect so I actually take my different box to a get together at night and then I've been telling uh patients that hey you know now people that I don't think as a society we should eat anything after 7 30 following our circadian rhythm so I'm going to pack everything because I love food I love food I don't want to um restrict myself but I'm going to eat it in the next day in the morning so the first thing that people say is that is even worse when you store that food in the refrigerator and then reheat it yeah what will you say so as I said also the the people in general one of the if you step back and think about why people get this wrong essentially what they get is they get the prioritization of these risks wrong meaning that they simply don't realize that the very Act of cooking is what is destroying the most amount of nutrition not the act of storing not the act of reheating right again remember that when you take it back from the fridge and you put it back on the stove you are literally re-cooking it again and the longer you do that you are going to lose a lot more basically again and also the other question is think about what are you exactly losing are you losing protein no are you losing carbohydrates no are you losing fat no you are at Max losing water soluble vitamins that's the only thing that's right yes micronutrients and that too only water solubles the fat soluble ones are already the fat nothing is going to happen right uh water-soluble ones are the ones that are more susceptible to heat and those are the ones and particularly vitamin B is particularly susceptible okay so think about it right if that is all that is happening you can adjust that elsewhere yeah just add lead a little bit of salad a little bit more of spinach and you'll get it back drink a glass of milk there are so many ways to get vitamin or take a supplement doesn't matter okay right there are just so many ways so you're breaking your head over reheating food over the loss of some tiny amount of vitamin B is not worth thinking about so it's a prioritization thing right so if at all you want to do that the other the second problem though is that when you uh reheat food especially on the stub again any kind of stuff heating is uneven right so when you're cooking food from scratch it's fine because everything is uncooked so over time it will adjust and so on but when you're cooking anything on a stuff the bottom part is at a much higher temperature than what is at the time yes so when you're reheating food you are you are risking the fact that you're going to burn some of the bottom because it's already cooked you are really literally overcooking it in that sense so from a taste standpoint just flavor standpoint it is actually better to use the microwave because why a microwave Cooks the food entirely simply because microwave operates only on one thing in this universe which is a water molecule that's it the the way the microwave works is that that specific frequency of microwave is just designed in such a way that it is able to make a water molecule flip and basically the microwave oven keeps changing the direction of the microwave so the water molecule keeps flipping so it it literally heats up the food right and if you understand that you would realize that this is the most purest cleanest and the simplest form of cooking that is going to destroy the least amount there is no excess heat excess temperature one part getting burnt you know the bottom part of the pan uh overheating the top being undercooked you run none of that risk you're literally heating the water inside food and most food is mostly water right that's why you can't actually heat things that don't have much water inside the microwave water okay yeah when you put a microwave popcorn what's happening right inside that inside that seed is a tiny amount of water water that water is starting to steam and steam has occupies more area it is exploding right and that's where you get a popcorn okay right so that is so essentially but you know but when you actually heat something like a gravy or a Dal or something like that it's all mostly water right and you're just it's no you're not you're not heating it enough to evaporate it you're just raising its temperature enough so that it is palatable to you that's all you're doing right and therefore speaking from a nutritional loss standpoint microwave is the most efficient a way of reheating food and preserving it and that you are least likely to you see it's all a temperature game right once you are above the boiling point of water which happens in a pan right that is where all the problem happens many molecules break down right as long as temperature is well below the boiling point of water you you you reduce the risk of damaging any of these molecules again remember we are largely only talking about water soluble vitamins which by the way you can get from elsewhere this is not something for you to worry about it yeah yeah to be honest I would just say don't worry about it just eat the salad along with your reheated food your your cup you've accommodated for whatever vitamins you are using but there is a recommendation that you know reheating the dish twice yeah um has been associated with some kind of uh viral illness or something like that what what is your take on that see that I don't think this the viral is no viral stuff it comes out that sounds like you know uh sort of pseudoscience to be but see there is there are a few things like for example uh rice for instance just plain cooked rice uh can sometimes Harbor a specific bacteria that's always there in the rice uh and it if you if you if you just Store Plain cooked rice for too long in the fridge and keep reheating it you sometimes run the risk of that bacteria uh sort of uh causing you food poisoning right it's exceedingly rare and most people do not actually end up storing rice for too long because it gets very dry and hot okay and so General people maximum one day and that's perfectly safe right so therefore see these are so again in general you know it's a it's a question of balance right um if a food that has been reheated twice or Thrice does not even taste good right so most people uh you know when you're forced to do it for because you don't have time you have a tough job baby you're a doctor you're running around and you just simply don't have time it's fine right once in a while it's fine you're not going it's not going to really kill you right for the person but but yeah it's it's just that if you're doing it to every dish all the time you won't enjoy the food you're eating see if if you if you cannot the one of the greatest advantages of intermittent busting and I've been doing it for four years now right um is the fact that I do 168 and trust me 16 hours I don't eat that eight hours I I mindfully meditatively enjoy the food that I'm eating I want to eat the best tastiest most amazing food because I know that I have that freedom I don't have to worry about what I'm eating because I am eating at that window as long as I'm not going overboard the calories I am not worried this is my dad this is jaggerated sugar yeah hi with the whether this is polyunsaturated mono answer it none of that just break just just keep all of that it doesn't matter right just eat as long as you get your macro uh nutrient ballots roughly approximately in a day uh and you make sure that you're getting your micro nutrients it doesn't matter whether it's maida or Billet or rice or it doesn't matter like uh because you are you are therefore you are less to worry about right and you enjoy that food more and so I think you'll automatically make sure uh that you're not reheating like 10 times right right right right no absolutely so the other thing is your uh non-stick cookware that you can put that other meth I want to burst as well so can you explain that as well see not 60 it's a on the face of it if it again the this is a complex issue when a lot of uh times when people say non-stick is bad aluminum is bad that is bad that is bad you know or uh uh the the the chicken you buy has antibiotics or it is genetically modified are they all of that stuff right a couple of things there so one is uh people forget the uh affordability aspect meaning that for what USB can afford to buy organic free range highly you know sustainably grown Stuff Etc but but it imposes a cost right and for the most for people on the planet uh they cannot offer right so there is the one thing to keep in mind right so even when it comes to vessels uh everyone cannot cook on uh highly seasoned high quality cast iron uh tri-ply stainless steel that's expensive it is expensive right and and so therefore certain materials tend to be cheaper uh and uh and in a sense that is one angle the second angle is that people sometimes confuse problems that occur in the manufacturing of something versus when you actually use it for cooking that's the confusion with non-stick there is no doubt that the manufacturing of non-stick material the the poly tetrafluoroethylene which whose trademark is due uh you know Teflon you know by new Bond and so on the manufacturing of that involves a lot of chemicals that are not good for when they leak into the water or for the workers who work in those factories in the past it has been shown that it's not great for the for the people who make those things right but in never in the last 30 or 40 years has has there been any conclusive evidence that consumers using it in their homes are suffering from many serious consequences as a result of that final product because as I've explained it has been chosen because it is remarkably non-reactive it does PTFE reacts with nothing right now see there again the the problem is that people will say no no microplastics risk is there boss that's a deeper problem you know you are getting microplastics everywhere right in the milk you drink in in the vegetables you eat in the fish you eat you think the fishes the fish are eating all the plastic in the ocean and you are eating the fish so that is a wider problem that we have to fix as a society right right you can't Target Italy only say if I stop eating non-stick I'm not getting a microplastics you're diluting yourself right right so you have to wait way the overall risk and say look net net what do I get by using non-stick um is the fact I get convenience and convenience is very very important if you're if you if you're if your cooking is not convenient trust me it makes it double uh as difficult to maintain a diet yes you want it to be easy you want it to be convenient right it is never underestimate convenience in achieving your uh you know nutritional goals and so on right and to that effect like for example if you had to make an omelette and eggs are great right you want to do that on stainless steel by all means to it and then waste the next two hours trying to wash that uh I think because the AIDS will stick to stainless steel like anything right right because you know amino acids react with metals they will stick that's just the way that's basic chemistry and that's where like if you want to be dead safe at the very least use your non-stick for making eggs right I mean it's a it's a great way to do that and you can by the way you end up having to put less oil that you have another added benefit if you are looking to restrict restrict your calories and want to be on a caloric deficit that's a great way you can cook eggs on a non-stick uh without with little or no oil and so so therefore you think you have to weigh those balances before so it's really about prioritizing risks that's the problem right I think people have this seems in social media the problem is these algorithms and WhatsApp and Facebook and Instagram and everything their algorithms are like what can I show you that will scare the hell out of you so that you keep scrolling right that is that is the goal of these algorithms right so and that is one the second thing is these all these mainstream media Outlets they will read some science paper which is maybe they experimented on this one thing for sometime rats and they force-fed it and they found some problem that's what happened with covert that's what happened yeah so these so what what are the what the newspapers like okay if I say oh this test on rats cause this problem who will want to reach it's a better headline if it says X causes cancer okay right if I put that then everybody will click everybody will be I I am I'm more afraid I want to consume the other the third thing that happens with social media is uh in when you read a newspaper right that is the main news it's right on top and then there are small bits of news then there's something on the fourth there's an intuitive sense that what is on the front page is more important than what is on the fourth or fifth page right in social media everything is equal okay yeah so people have no sense of priority right like for example as I keep telling people that you're wasting your time asking me is is it okay will I lose nutrients uh when I reheat something yes your bigger problem is not that right yeah elephant in the room is the fact that you are eating too much right you fix that problem okay that therefore it is not about whether same thing with preservatives right is it you are worried about a Biscuit having preservatives the problem is the biscuit you first fix that problem right you're eating 10 biscuits without preservatives does not mean it's healthy okay right right yeah biscuit is but if you're eating only one biscuit then it doesn't make a difference whether you're eating one one with preservators or not because the sheer amount of Billy grams involved there are so tiny and you are being moderate so you don't worry about it at all so the problem with social media is that everyone thinks everything is equally important it's not it there is no sense of uh what is high priority what is low priority and the priorities get distorted based on who's telling it right so some guy some God man some Guru says oh you must you must not eat this human this is uh this is dangerous Etc people somehow think that guy knows more than a doctor or a nutritionist right that's another problem that happens on a medical field as well right so the patient will be hospitalized intubated have pneumonia we give antibiotics then the question they ask is that the antibiotic have any side effects [Laughter] I think the priorities matter as well so in my in our in my I mean I mean everybody should be following this method this time of sector feeding thing that you have been following I'm very very glad that you just think uh so the main thing is convenience it has to be convenient if it is not convenient it's not going to be sustainable and I completely 100 agree with you and can you educate us about meal prepping like how to plan next week or next day yeah so Bill prepping generally prepping right so again if you go back to the basic science right uh so we largely eat plants or animals okay yes uh and if you essentially plants are where you get carbohydrates from and animals are where you get protein from at a very simplistic level right basically okay uh and and so therefore because plants uh uh cannot move uh the way they are structured and the way uh Etc they have further cell walls so which is where vegetables are the way they are uh in that it's interesting so when you when you cook vegetables they become soft when you cook meat it becomes hard yeah right so when you put salt uh on on on on plant material it shrinks because it dehydrates when you put salt with regard to meat it makes it more juicy because mussels when they have salt they retain more moisture that's why when you run a marathon or get really tired you when you drink electrolytes and whatever it needs to have some food so because that salt will keep will keep you from losing muscles from losing more water right so that's why I think you know one of my hacks that in the book is if you want really juicy chicken because chicken breast dries really uh and but also chicken breast is very convenient as a protein because you know it's it's easy you can you know cook it very quickly and so on but it gets very dry right so soaking it in uh like uh soaking it in an eight percent salt solution for one hour right will change forever how you enjoy chicken because it'll be it'll keep it juicy no matter how long you cook right and Indians tend to overcook chicken right yes so these so this is like for example some of these things right so from a prep standpoint which means that you have to Approach meat separately and you have to approach uh plants separately right now each of these uh plants again you have to remember so uh meat is is dead all the cells are die when the animal dies because the nature of an animal is it needs central nervous system it needs heart everything else blood so once animal dies the cells die plants are still alive so so plants only die when you when you kill them in the kitchen cells don't die right or or when you actually eat the with your salad with your assets so Etc so which therefore means that uh a plant is far more like a vegetable is far more likely to get oxidized uh and enzyme enzymes are likely to break out Etc uh and a different category of spoiling happens to plants versus meat right so meat meat in uh which is why it's safer to generally freeze meat as as much as possible uh you can keep it in the main fridge but only if you're using it pretty quickly don't let meat sit in the regular temperature this thing for too long right especially if it is any kind of you know sausages are different in general you should be eating too many sausages but in general uh at least like fish or chicken Etc if you're if you're not using it within the next 24 hours please freeze it don't put it in the regular this day because it's it's a that's like a buffet for bacteria and it's not like fridge has no bacteria so right so you have to think about it that way there are some exceptions how you can how you can make it easy if you marinate it right and what is marination there's an acid again less lime juice and yogurt and all of these other things are acids right yes and acids are exceedingly inhospitable to microbes so when you marinate and keep then you can keep it in your regular compartment for a longer time right so on the weekend yeah you know you you cut different uh you know whatever it could be uh shrimp or it could be chicken or fish or whatever it is so in fact that's why even in the past normally when people used to buy even before refrigerators they'll immediately put turmeric and things like that and soak it in lime juice and salt like and keep it so it improves the shelf life otherwise you know it's going to spawn so this is how you deal with meat it's a good way to marinate and keep it that's one right brine marinade keep that way I think salt and all of that will essentially keep it for a longer vegetables again what is critical is you do not want um if you are cutting vegetables then you have to put it in an airtight as good and airtight just Ziploc and all is generally not great get yourself airtight boxes like you know what you get in say Ikea or something bad but it's completely properly airtight for cut vegetables but herbs and things like leaves uh if you put them completely airtight they will spoil inside they will like you know so they need a little bit of air right what happens is that the enzymes inside when in the lack of oxygen will done the whole thing to bash I see so you want to make sure that when you're storing herbs and all of that it needs to be a little bit Airy that's why at least you know in in India when you the the small box that you get for storing coriander and Curry leaves with a few holes um so so that way you want to store those uh in that and so on right yeah fruits fruits your fruits so fruits are very important never store fruits near vegetables in the fridge I see so here's what happens let's remember that botanically speaking vegetables and fruits are all fruits in the in the Botanical sense right right the only difference is that uh fruits are sweeter they just have more sugar right um and also remember think of it from the plant a sweet fruit a plant wants you to eat a fruit that is not sweet the plant does not want you to eat so and it it makes a lot of other chemical tricks to prevent you from eating it but we have figured out a way to eat it by cooking it but so that is why many of them are inedible raw right they'll be very tannic and many of them will actually have things that will you know burn your so like a really raw mango will will will really burn some of your other things right um like how pineapple is a great example right so pineapple has a has a protease enzyme uh you feel that that sort of feeling when you buy ate a pineapple it's that protease enzyme trying to digest your uh so literally as I said when you eat the pineapple the pineapple is trying to eat you eat you it just it just fails unfortunately but yeah so because we have your biggest better but it works against insects and you know other things so that's why insects stay away from pineapple and so on so so you want to keep fruits away because fruits tend to generate ethylene gas which causes everything else to ripen and you don't want your vegetables to ripen and remember uh ripening uh reduces nutrients why because only priorities produce sugar it's not good for you right so so a raw mango is generally significantly more healthier in micronutrients than a fully ripe mango I see fully Red Mango is just basically death by fructose okay it's just all fructose so so therefore uh so that uh so you have to be and you have to remember all these things because it's a it's a live thing so it is making decisions on the go right like for example potatoes are underground uh they they live their entire lives underground are you placing them in the kitchen right if you're placing them around a lot of light the way they're programmed is oh I I must be I'm seeing light so let me Sprout because then I can photosynthesize so it will Sprout green leaves and that's not good because then it'll say since I'm producing these new babies I want to make sure nobody eats this starch source so let me produce a poison called solanine uh which which will keep all of these insects away for humans it fight it's a mild stomach upset if you get if you eat too much of the the green patch potatoes but so that's why you want to keep potatoes in a slightly closed environment but not airtight so you still want some air to be there so you know put them in like newspapers and and keep them with your uh this thing for so that your your potatoes don't Sprouts of vegetables on the top and fruits on the bottom yeah so if you have uh it depending on how your fridge is keep the uh keep the fruits farther away from the vegetables especially things that will cause ripening right uh because the ethylene gas produced by the fruits will end up ripening everything else right and outside of the fridge a banana is a great the largest producer of ethylate okay so you don't want to keep anything near the banana otherwise they will also ripen really really fast so that was true for even banana right raw banana is much more nutrient than way more there is a so there is a it's a it's a peeking right so first it's inedible then it reaches a level of peak firm not too sweet ripeness which is ideal for you and after that it's just sugar and alcohol okay people don't realize it's a beautiful example so this is uh persimmon it's it's available yeah so look at this this is already getting ripened right and I allow this because because it's tasty and The Taste is because of the sugar and I think there is an unripened persimmon as well which is not people are not very fond of because it is not the tasty it's not tasty yeah and and the other thing is that the thing is that so once uh once fruit becomes really really ripe uh the the sugars are also uh uh will will form it permanent the bacteria and yeast in the air will ferment it yeah so really when the banana becomes slightly dark black it's like 0.5 alcohol so just so you know right so so that yeah exactly yeah yeah so at that point you really want to either make you know some sort of a parampuri or some sort of a you know pudding type of banana bread or something like that anyway which again is not a great uh you know this brings me the I'm learning so much in this interview so because you know in fatty liver patients we say that you know fructose is really bad and in the gastroenterology book there is a thing that hey you know avoid um fruits rich in fructose um but but the thing is you know again it's a balance you know you cannot eat Biryani and then say avoid just uh fruits alone but if you're really conscious about it I think what you're making tailing is make more sense because if you eat an unripened fruit maybe it is not that much so it's in fructose I think it'll be okay it won't be exactly so again it's about balance right so in the sense let's see again again if people over complicate it and it's like if you're in living in India and if you're in summer and you say you know what I'm only going to write unripe mangoes that's a very sad life yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you do want to be able to enjoy the delicious sweetness of a mango but if you're eating three mangoes a day you might want to reevaluate all right so so in that sense I think you know it is really about being aware right and like for example so let's say you know uh eat eat a mango then eat guavas guavas are actually typically low on fructose so India I think it's generally good to have like in many countries now I think they have this sort of you know this color coding for you know Green for like best like you know high fiber High antioxidant versus red this like you know Ultra processed and all that right so you should have a mental this thing of mangoes probably sort of like a it's still a fruit so yeah you still get fiber all of them is fine it's not quite the it's not quite green let's say yellow right uh you want to say you know what if I'm eating a little bit of that maybe I have a guava maybe I have something that's not as sweet right so things like grapes and things like apples and things like mangoes tend to be very high on fructose bananas ripe bananas right but a guava even a ripe guava is not that sweet so so it's good to sort of mix and match and and generally I think you know don't break your head but yeah so you know as I said no there which is why I uh one of the first things I was watching your videos back in the day and I was when I was first researching this entire intermittent fasting and going into the YouTube rabbit hole of you know fructose being a a big problem and so on um and the recommendation that you know what fruit juices are not as good as uh they are made out to be you actually want to eat if at all you want to eat the fruit eat the fruit uh don't like drink like one liter of fruit juice that you're literally just glugging fructose okay and without without all of the benefits of the uh the rest of the fruit yeah the fiber and all the rest of that yeah wow wow this is amazing this is amazing so what you know but people do add some flavors to keep it sustainable and that's where the whole processing thing comes right so how do you see this from the food industry see the food industry it's again a complicated question so on the at a social level we are now living in a world where uh it's a very silly right 100 years ago it was this opposite okay right now we're living in a world where the more process the food the cheaper it is the cheapest calories actually come from yeah well again it's very simple what what are you doing is that you are removing every part of the food that might spoil that might uh get destroyed by heat that might not be shelf stable right and again you're also making unnatural combinations that your body is not used to right right so your body is we what does hunter gatherers we're only hunting animals and eating the occasional Berry and some roots and all of a sudden you you take something like one of these uh packet snacks which is just like which is ultra processed wheat Ultra process and all these uh other flavor additives and all of that but our ancestors have never encountered that so we have no way of really so our body can't deal with it this is like oh wow this is amazing this is delicious so it's it's like hitting all of the it's like it's like an addiction in that sense right so so that that's the danger right so in the sense that that's the extreme value but at the same time what I often also tell people is that look you know if you go to the internet you will see over simplified things that say processed bad unprocessed good boss that is nonsense okay you know your rice is if without processing it's inedible okay right somebody has to remove the husk otherwise so most people who eat rice have you ever seen a rice plant have you seen what that grain looks like and have you seen how hard it is to remove right have you seen wheat everyone so so or have you for example do you think people one more dangerous thing that people do this new habit of drinking unpasteurized milk straight from the animal are you kidding me the risk from the bacteria in many countries it's banned in the U.S I think it's mostly banned in many states you can't drink you can't sell raw milk right so and and think of so the pasteurization is also processing and people will say no no it destroys nutrients are you okay it is it is literally it's saving more than 30 seconds right it's saving you right you're not losing anything right and so therefore so the question to ask is what processing if it is the basic processor for example yes so if I if I remove the husk and all of the brand and all of the germ then you get maida from wheat right oh you're only leaving behind the starch and protein that's it right in Atta you leave behind some of the brands so that there is more fiber in whole wheat flour like what you get in the US you leave all of the branch so that there's a lot more fiber right right but at the same time if you are like uh say that no no I'm I will now heat whole wheat Malabar parotta and you think that is healthier you are missing the point okay yes your choice your decision to eat the Paratha is the problem right now you can't feel you can't say oh I'm now I am I'm eating whole wheat parota so now it is fine right that difference between that is very tiny right right so first understand what the processing is doing right and again think keep keep it so all it means is that lesser basic processing doesn't really make a difference the more and more the processing and more and more the combination of things that don't exist naturally in nature classic example is chicken nugget right McDonald's you know style chicken nugget nowhere in nature does protein animal protein exist with carbohydrates it just doesn't exist right it doesn't exist animals are just protein and fat that's just the way they are we don't have stores of carbohydrates okay and uh and uh and plants don't store like muscle tissue yes so you are taking chicken and you're taking maida and you're making this thing and then deep frying it so fat protein and carbohydrate in a combination that does not exist in nature it is like your your it is ultra process right so again I'm not saying you don't enjoy that it's delicious it's delicious because your brain says that this is I'm getting all nutrients this is just amazing just keep eating more of it right right and so it keeps me and it does not it none of these trigger your satiety these things and you want to keep eating right and and so what happens is that you just want to say a spectrum and say this I will eat as a special mistake oh you know what once a month once a week I'm enjoying chicken nugget it's fine right so don't break your head if it is something that is relatively less processed fine you know you might want to do it once or twice a week and so on uh things that you make largely unprocessed or minimally processed feel free to use it in your date day-to-day you know cooking and so on it should be that simple right rather than you know break your head over what right right the problem with this once in a while is that I always have problems because once in a while comes for each and every ingredient and you don't have you only have 21 meals a week [Laughter] once in a while in a week so so I I don't know so I have yeah so in my family you know we've tried all you know me and my wife essentially uh have like a uh Wonders that we have like okay so buy Cuisine right so Monday is North India and Tuesday is yeah uh Caroline because when she is Tamil cooking and then uh so Friday is go out and eat Saturday is order a day so two days of the week we'll sort of you know again both of us are working and so on right right uh and and again so it is it is essentially you can sort of whatever works for you at the end of the day right yes um yeah I know the world of food is just there is just so much amazing food out there and uh you lead an entire lifetime to try and enjoy all of it and so on uh but but you know I I think you know uh as I I know this is sort of like a the eating is literally the only day-to-day assault on your body is is what people don't realize okay right right and the reason and the reason you have to think of it as an assault is because nothing you're eating today right uh and people say ancestors look human beings spent more time being hunter-gatherers than being agricultural people so our body is designed for the hunter-gatherer it's not designed for the ugly in fact a lot of the metabolic diseases essentially start coming after the invention of agriculture and the large-scale consumption of grades right till then we did not say diabetes we did not see all these other problems we did not see obesity we did not see forget we did not see tooth decay back to you see all these fossils right Ancient Man Who Lived before a discover agriculture fantastically healthy teeth till they die because we have the fossils moment we start growing rice and wheat and sugarcane and all of that you start to see a lot of tooth decay in all the fossils you know and all of the burial sites and all the teeth right so so essentially means that we have we have a body uh that is being assaulted by 21st century food uh but our digestion system is still stuck for 200 000 years ago okay so you have to remember that right I mean basically it essentially so and how and think about what life was like back then right you you ate when you could not like two three meals a day okay yeah oh now the sun is here lunch time no it doesn't that's not how it works because you've got to go hunt an animal and it takes hours sometimes days right and when you when you hunted it it's going to rot so you better eat everything one shot put on a lot of fat very quickly so that by winter you may not be able to hunt yes and your body fat is going to rescue you okay by the way people apparently would not eat anything for days right and live off their body fat so we are designed for that right but somehow in the modern age in the last four or five thousand years once agriculture was discovered and now now that we have Ultra processing and packaged food this is food that our bodies and brains have never encountered evolutionary right your mind may know it but your body doesn't your enzymes don't your grilling and all the rest of your system has no clue it is designed for eating one animal once a week and during summer Whenever there are berries that's the only time you get carbs was nothing else right physiology wise you are destroying 10 percent of your acid producing cells in your stomach the stomach is getting assaulted every time and that is one more reason that I've been promoting this technique is that overnight the growth hormone comes in and then replace all the damage that you've been doing during the day but if you have to give some time the research says that you need at least 12 hours at least 12 hours of fasting to get the repair done so that the cells become fresh and that's where I strongly believe that the cancerous transformation happens exactly our ancient ancestors forget dwell last boss your ancient ancestors were doing 36 48 Hours easily without even thinking right right they would just eat a giant they would hunt an animal get some berries eat or dig up some Roots eat and then chill out for the next 48 hours okay right right it is remarkably incidentally even Hunter Gathering few hunter-gathering societies stuck at the Amazon and all that you look at them they still have the same habits they don't eat like three times a day and so on right Rhymes if people think like they people immediately think I'm getting a headache I need to eat now that somehow that's bad no you know what I I mean I uh I when I first started out started doing 12 hours uh 13 hours was hard okay but just simply over extended half an hour every day until you get to 16 hours and now I I in fact when I wake up in the morning from morning to when I eat at 12 Dune I am remarkably productive sharp yes right you know yes and something about a mental acuity that being being hungry but not being hungry in a negative way this is sort of almost like a positive feeling of hunger right I mean there's a lot of research to it as well yeah exactly and then I can do so many things and like what is my reward for doing being so productive a fantastic meal at 12. and I really look forward to that yes absolutely it increases your metabolic rate and that's been shown in multiple studies as well exactly this has been a wonderful wonderful interview I learned a lot more but I want you to summarize one or two points that my audience and your audience can also take home so that they can Implement in their daily practice and this is just not a YouTube video and just say oh you're good it's like and then go to the next video yeah I would really say embrace uh prepping ahead meal prep is the one single thing that will save you time you'll eventually end up a tastier food by the way right because flavor is all about layering so if you have something that's already prepped and some part of your ingredients you make fresh the combination of that is much tastier by the way restaurant that's where restaurant food is taste here okay it's all about layering right so and again so prep is hugely crucial please Embrace that and to do that you need to embrace uh the freezer the microwave and the regular fridge compartment this is very very important right uh and other things again again if you're really Advanced please teach yourself how to lacto ferment those are also fantastic methods you you in fact make a lot of things very healthy and and I I know I have there are videos you can see on my Instagram on um how you can lack the ferment everything from carrots to radishes uh to Cabbage to kimchi and all of these things are fantastic right I mean I think uh they are sour they're pleasantly tasty um and they're filled with a lot of micronutrients that you would otherwise yeah yeah right because fermentation produces a lot of of these things and so on right so those are Advanced things that you can sort of teach yourself and so on um and the second thing that I want you to really take away is really first you have to prioritize convenience over uh uh what social media assaults you with this is good this is not nutritious this is unnutritious this one ingredient is Magic first stop billing in the idea of things like super food and all that okay it doesn't that's not how our body works um please stop believing in nonsense like immune boosters and all that you cannot boost your immune system the only way to do that is to take a vaccine or something like that other than that you have the only way to do that is to go out and get sick that's how you get sick exactly exactly you can't boost your immune system by eating some look when you get sick and if you're eating well your immune system is well prepared to deal with it that's how that's how you have to think about food okay it's not about if I take one this turmeric water 10 times a day I will boost my immune system it's not how this works right right and if you drink that water and then eat uh you know Burger yeah that turmeric is not really going to help you if you change your lifestyle and then also during turmeric water then yeah maybe you know you can say that it happens right so forget so forget this idea that you have to optimize every single thing that's that the meaning the word the meaning of the word optimize is not about optimizing every single thing it's about looking at it holistically and when you look at it holistically convenience is the single most important thing if you fix that then you will have the mental bandwidth to make the right choices right and not worry about whether oh it's aluminum or it's none of those matter as much as you think it does what you eat and how much you eat dwarfs everything else right you fix that and and at the third Point as you said the typing right you fix these three things it doesn't matter right you eat you eat a biscuit by the parotta whatever it is it doesn't really matter as long as it's in moderation and you are getting all the other uh you're eating it in a balanced way uh and you don't worry whether it is cooked on cast iron or aluminum or non-stick you don't worry about whether it was cooked in a microwave whether it was frozen or whether it was in a fridge uh it doesn't really matter as much as you think it does right and that's the problem so I think you know stop so if somebody is scaring you on social media right about oh etc etc very simple ask some detailed questions people will say this will Detox you what will it detox you off just ask the next question you'll find that they won't have an answer right right most of these so so that's not how it works your boss your kidney and you are that is what is detoxing your boss nothing you eat is data in general you want to detox the the it is the idea is not to put more things inside okay right the idea is to give it a break okay absolutely right otherwise the detox only is relevant when you're like say it's serious uh like drug addiction heroin that that is a medically that a doctor has to do that okay right it is no you can't some drink some buy some product and so first and foremost make sure that you respect your body and make sure priority is convenience and then stop watching listening to any scare mongering right ask some questions if somebody says oh this is dangerous okay how this ingredient is dangerous how much am I getting this preservative dangerous how much am I eating how much am I eating anyway right how much have I been eating before right did it really make a big difference and so on if you're eating 100 grams you'll get a few milligrams you know come on just simple chemistry will tell you that it's too small right the dose makes the poison okay it's not the poison that makes it exactly just simplify your you know mind and uh and just be be more adventurous be enjoy food right you'll fast more effectively if you actually you know enjoy food better absolutely better yeah when you resting food then it's a problem when you restrict when you if you hate food if you're doing that that's a that's a toxic attitude to food and then you'll never be able to keep it up you'll silently go you know whenever there is some small cookie and you'll quietly you'll fool yourself that say that no I actually didn't eat it you'll lie to yourself and your light mothers yeah right super super thank you so much Ashok thank you thank you very much all my audience please follow his channel as well and also please click the link uh below for his book and I absolutely learned a lot looking forward to working with you in future as well thank you for your time good fun thanks pleasure thank you [Music]

Channel: Dr Pal

Views: 533,218

Keywords: Askdocpal, Weight loss, processed foods, food additives, processed food, ultra-processed foods, processed foods to avoid, processed foods safe to eat, processed foods vs unprocessed foods, processed foods are bad, processed foods grade 3, why are processed foods bad, processed food dangers, processed foods documentary, what are processed foods, processed foods are killing us, dangers of processed foods, what is considered processed foods, truth about processed foods, masalalab

Id: VMckcCVawk8

Length: 54min 47sec (3287 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 10 2022