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26 July 2007

Meat, Poultry diet

One of my new clients came to me with three concerns viz. Uncontrolled Weight gain, High cholesterol and Hypertension and asked me if I can help him in the way of structuring a diet. Before I did that I was interested in understanding more about his food habits and the food content. He said he was primarily having non-vegetarian’s food like pork, poultry, beef etc from past ten years everyday and just doesn’t like vegetarian food at all. So that gave me a basis to analyze the food content and what was causing the issues he was concerned about.

It is a ironic reversal of trends that India, known in the past for vegeterianism is moving towards more of non-vegetarianism, while the Western world is moving in the other direction.

While Meat, fish, eggs have a lot of good nutrients one can get almost all of the same virtues by eating vegetables. I am not in any way advocating giving up on meat. I am merely highlighting the fact that people who do not eat meat do not have to feel that they are missing out.

Here are some facts about meat and comparison with Poultry food
  • Mutton, pork and beef are high fat, high calorie, high cholesterol diet with plenty of saturated fats and will need all those extra hours at the gym to burn/negate them
  • Poultry products on the other hand have moderate fat. Fats and calories in poultry are formed in the skin and in pads which are located just beneath the skin and thus can be removed easily. Iron, obtained from poultry is easily absorbed.

So once I explained to him all the good things he could have with vegetables, we came up with a hybrid diet which had him eat vegetables one time of the day and also let him eat meat. This coupled with exercise regularly, we have seen things turning around for him.

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