By Diana Rohini LaVigne

Special to India-West

The Indian Business and Professional Women organization and Silicon Valley Reads hosted their annual book reading event at the India Community Center on Sunday. The topic focused on the content of New York Times bestseller “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” written by Michael Pollan. The panelists discussed nutrition and its intersection with lives of American eaters. Panelists included Lisa Richardson, MA, Registered Dietician; Liz Kniss, SCC Board of Supervisor, District 5; Ashish Mathur, Co-Founder and Executive Director, South Asian Heart Center; John Silveira, Director, Pacific Coast Farmers’ Market Association and was moderated by the author of My Half of the Sky, Jana McBurney-Lin.

Being hosted in California, the most food regulated state in the nation, Silveira made it clear we are a privileged state in terms of the high level of access we get to fresh food and that California is considered a shipping state which means we produce more than we can consume. Californian’s have better opportunities than most of the country when it comes to food choices.

But does this translate into Californians making better food choices? Panelist agreed that culture and habit tended to have a bigger impact outcome than the availability of choices. Kniss, who grew up on a farm, added, “No matter what culture you grew up in, food is a very defining cultural medium. The cultural aspect of eating is very important.” She also spoke about the dilution of the family meal from a time of talking, sharing and relaxing to a time of catching up on television and trying to be highly optimized in getting your food intake as quickly and easily as possible. It is a big shift and often can’t provide families with the proper nutrition needed for good health.

Silveira commented, “It isn’t practical to require everyone to shop at just Farmer’s markets because our most precious commodity today is time. Shopping takes time. We need to reprioritizes our lives so food is takes precedence.”

Richardson was cautious about the way we went about changing our habits and noted a new emerging condition coined orthorexia nervosa which is the excessive focus on eating healthy foods. She doesn’t encourage getting overly stressed about food because it will compound any existing health issues. “If you were a perfect eater, nobody would like you anyways,” said this nutritionist with a chuckle.

The book’s practical advice gave simple ways to make changes in your eating. Eating foods with only five ingredients or less, avoiding foods with ingredients your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize and shopping around the edges of your local grocery (eg buying fresh food, not the more processed food in the center isles) are ways to make a difference.

Silveira offered another change to make. “The right thing to do is to know where your food is coming from.” Another modification he suggested was to eat what’s in season.

“We’ve really gotten lazy about food these days, so we now seek out what is most convenient,” Kniss added. This is rarely the healthiest path to follow.

But it was Mathur’s shocking statistics that left the room, filled with a majority of Indians, speechless, “South Asians have four times the risk as others of getting heart disease. And it is entirely preventable.”

He suggested the book offered some new ways to think about food consumption. “The author in the book said ‘Think of food, not food products.’ which is something that really jumped out at me. It makes sense,” Mathur noted. If it’s got a label, don’t eat it was another saying he attributed to a doctor working with him at the South Asian Heart Center.

At the end of the day, there are foods which might taste delicious but will never be healthy for you. Although Mathur says a samosa can be reduced from its typical heavily fried 800+ calorie form to a more healthy food, things like Gulab Juman don’t have any known healthy alternatives.

Mathur warned, “Most South Asians believe because they are vegetarians, they are eating healthy. But an Indian vegetarian diet is not based on vegetables. It is a grain based diet with staples like rice and roti. Any vegetables added are often overcooked which significantly decreases any nutrients in them.”

Silveira told India-West, “Our food system is at risk but it won’t go away if we support it.” His message is support the local farmer.

For more information on Farmer’s Markets, visit cafarmersmkts.com. For more information on the South Asia Heart Center, visit southasianheartcenter.org.