“Eat your food as a Medicine. Otherwise you have to eat medicines as your food” –
Ratan Tata
Ratan Tata certainly has a point there! We all agree with him but do we know for sure what we must put on our plate? What we put on your plate is more powerful medicine than anything you will find at the bottom of a pill bottle. Food is the most powerful medicine available to heal chronic disease.
Dietary Requirements as per the Food pyramid as per the Food and Nutrition Guidelines published by Government of India states that the one food that we can eat liberally is green leafy vegetables and fibrous vegetables.
Nutrients that we obtain through our diet have vital effects on physical growth and development, maintenance of normal body function, physical activity and health. Nutritious food is, thus needed to sustain life and activity. Our diet must provide all essential nutrients in the required amounts. Requirements of essential nutrients vary with age, gender, physiological status and physical activity. Dietary intakes lower or higher than the body requirements can lead to undernutrition (deficiency diseases) or overnutrition (diseases of affluence) respectively. Eating too little food during certain significant periods of life such as infancy, childhood, adolescence, pregnancy and lactation and eating too much at any age can lead to harmful consequences. An adequate diet, providing all nutrients, is needed throughout our lives. The nutrients must be obtained through a judicious choice and combination of a variety of foodstuffs from different food groups (Figure 1).