Have you too been taught from a young age to “respect” food? To gobble it up without question? To politely compliment everyone’s cooking “skills” if they cook something for you? To chime in with everyone’s comments on “the food was good/great”? I’ve met many people who go through stomach pain, sleep loss, acid reflux, flatulence (fart attack?) and bloating, but they either have no clue about which foods are causing the problem, or they fear speaking up about the food quality. Perhaps it’s also a loss of hope that things would ever improve.
It’s time we brought The Stomach Test into the picture, to provide our digestive systems a beacon of hope. It’s not yet a comprehensive test. It’s a start. It needs inputs from your experience, to be refined and improved. “Stomach” here, is meant to encompass the entire digestive system.
The Stomach Test
When delving into finding The Real Cure for Eye Strain, I desperately had to figure out what caused my sleep loss. So I kept track of everything I consumed for a year. You’ll not realize the importance of these points if your digestive system recovers quickly enough. People tend to think they have a stomach of steel. However, as you age, or when you suffer on a daily basis, you’ll notice what I did. Food has to pass my six tests to qualify as “good food”:
- No burnt food: Burnt particles in food cause digestive discomfort, which leads to sleep loss. I now throw off the black, burnt spots from bread toast, barbecued chicken, parathas/rotis, etc. If onions, mustard seeds, cumin seeds, curry leaves or anything else gets burnt when frying them, throw it away and start over.
- No under-cooked food: Food that felt like chewing-gum, also resulted in sleep loss (it wasn’t cooked properly) and it’d result in flatulence and/or loss of appetite (I believe the digestive system creates this loss of appetite, to take time to recover). Cooking rice, parathas and other rotis properly is especially necessary. I’ve written more about it below. Well-cooked food also kills germs and tapeworm eggs, for example (you should also be aware that some bacteria form heat-resistant spores). I would also add unripe fruits to the category of “under-cooked” food.
- A healthy, balanced proportion of ingredients: Spicy food is never really a problem if it’s balanced well with other ingredients. Avoid foods that contain excess salt, oil, or sugar (many processed/packaged foods have these in excess). It’s important to diligently follow the ingredient proportions of well-established recipes.
- No adulterants: Oh I just don’t know what to say about the evil/ignorant scum who adulterate food. It’s not just adulterants. Ideally, this point should also encompass pesticides and formalin used on fish and the excess medication/hormones given to livestock/poultry. Why on earth are people not actively investigating and eliminating food adulterants? Water from certain water filters that left a “layery” feeling in my mouth and even the way certain coffee was prepared, resulted in stomach discomfort that led to sleep loss.
- Hygiene: You know about washing hands before eating. What you may not know, is how Helicobacter pylori is transmitted and how it damages the stomach. Avoid places where people or situations can cause bodily fluids, dust, pollutants, insects, or filth to contaminate the food.
- No spoilage: This one is obvious. Don’t let the “respect food” philosophy convince you into eating spoiled food just because you don’t want it to be wasted. Simply throw it away.
Miscellaneous info
- Rice and flat-breads: Remember this: It is not necessary that that rice grains should be separate from each other when cooked. It’s more important that rice is cooked with sufficient water for the right duration (or even boiled with excess water and then drained). Most varieties of rice need four or five cups of water per cup of rice (provided you open the pressure cooker after 1.5 hours of switching off the flame when you hear the first whistle). I know you’d be surprised if you’ve been taught to use just two cups of water. Do a bit of searching and understand the role of amylose and amylopectin. Freshly cooked rice has reasonably separate grains, and that texture feels good while eating. On cooling, rice will clump up, and that’s normal. Using less water to ensure that cooled rice grains remain separate, is counterproductive. Rice cooked with insufficient water can cause sleep loss. I’ve also noticed that many people don’t ensure that chapathis and parathas get fully cooked (inner portion).
- Cooking knowledge: There are many stalls and eateries, where the people who cook the food are not professionals. They need to be trained. Even people in well-to-do families are often not taught how to cook. This leads to serious errors not just in the way they cook food, but also in how they use cooking equipment. I’ve heard of certain European schools which teach children how to cook. Wouldn’t it be prudent to have a professional cooking course in school or at least in college? Cooking and cleaning are basic life-skills. Knowledge about what constitutes a well balanced diet (and why it’s necessary) is also essential.
- Hair loss: When the digestive system suffers from the effects of bad food, the body seems to go into a state of distress. Sleep loss is one characteristic, but I’ve noticed that excess hair loss (from the head) also happens. Given that DHT (DiHydroTestosterone) is one reason for baldness, I’d suspect that excess DHT or testosterone is produced when the body goes into this distress mode. I’m not sure about this, but I did notice a drastic reduction in excessive hair loss, once I started getting better sleep as a result of eating food that passed my Stomach Test.
- Identifying what causes it: Flatulence and loss of appetite can be signs that certain foods caused trouble in the digestive system. Different people respond to various foods differently, so over a period of time, diligently figure out which foods are affecting your sleep. It can be food from a hostel, a restaurant, a stall, a bakery, cafe or a packaged snack or even from somebody at home who does not understand the principles of cooking. Make sure you get well-cooked home-food.
- The best drink: It’s not coffee, tea, beer, or a carbonated beverage. The best drink is DiHydrogen Monoxide (water).
- Cooking time and water quantity: As mentioned above, rice requires 4 to 5 cups of water per cup of rice. Upma requires 3 cups of water per cup of rava. Chapathi’s and porota’s/parathas need to be heated until properly browned (but without any black burnt spots). It’ll become crisp at this stage. Alternatively, avoid flour and refined flour if it isn't cooked/baked properly. I’ve noticed a strong correlation with consuming it and the eruption of dandruff and skin flaking.
- Recognizing problematic meat and dairy: Although food-poisoning symptoms are well known, a recent problem has manifested after eating meat, which appears to be a urinary tract infection or kidney stone, but is probably not. So doctors will prescribe urine tests and ultrasound scans, and everything will turn out normal, but the excess urination, urinary incontinence and a cringing feeling at the kidney areas won’t stop. I’ve found this to happen with some purchases of chicken, fish and dairy. It sends the kidneys or bladder into overdrive. Causes excess urination, and the kidneys or bladder reacts adversely to various foods. Also, one loses appetite but does not feel weak. When this happens, and the doctors have confirmed that it isn’t a problem they recognize, the best thing to do is to throw away the meat and switch to eating very small meals of vegetables and upma only when hungry. Drink plenty of water and wait for a few days for the problem to resolve on its own. I don’t know what causes it, but my guess is the various chemicals used in farms or heavy-metal contamination.
- Eskimo diet: I came across a person who claimed to suffer ulcerative colitis on consuming grain, fruit or vegetables. He survived on a meat diet (which isn’t exclusively meat though, as per the stories of Vilhjalmur Stefansson). There is a critique on such a diet, and there’s speculation on whether the lack of a diverse microbiome or helminths could be a reason for the problems. In any case, this was interesting information, which is why I’m mentioning it here, but the advice and constant monitoring of a doctor is necessary if one chooses such remedies.
The Impact
When you see people who snap and get irritated at the slightest annoyance, there’s a good chance that they have not got proper sleep. Sleep loss does that to people. There’s a lot of friction in this world that can be avoided when people are calm and composed. Having access to food that passes my Stomach Test is one part of ensuring good sleep.
We really need to do a lot more, to ensure that our loved ones and the people of our country have access to well cooked, nutritious food. Knowledge, training and awareness are a large part of ensuring it happens.
