Some of the most common food items that we eat every day have high amounts of toxins and poison, leading to short-term stomach discomfort and long-term health problems. However, simultaneously many simple habits can prevent us from these harms.                                     

This is a two-part article, first is the five food items that are making us sick and tips on how you can tackle it smartly to avoid it almost entirely and stay healthy.

Let’s start with some everyday food items.

1:Lentils- or dals

While being the most common food item found in our kitchen,

•  Dals have large amounts of herbicides and pesticides.
• To protect these dals from rodents and weeds, they are sprayed with herbicides like Glyphosate, a potent germ weed killer. This composition is more so in imported pulses from Canada and Australia.
• Considered safe until March 2015, his herbicide was labeled as a potential carcinogen by WHO. Carcinogens are substances that cause cancer in living tissue.
• Glyphosate also damages protein-related functions in the body. It also attacks the immune system and stops the absorption of essential vitamins, minerals, and nutrients.
•  and Kerela in October 2018 and Feb 2019, respectively, banned the use of Glyphosate and revoked license from manufacturers and distributors. The central government has also initiated the process to restrict the use of Glyphosate.
• In 2018, FSSAI had set the Maximum residue limit or MRL of Glyphosate in items like beans, lentils, peas, and soybean. Even though efforts to check excessive use of Glyphosate are being put in place, they are not enough to keep our dals free of toxins.

Follow this advice

• Cooking lentils at high temperatures in a pressure cooker or Kadai is quite an effective method in removing chemical residue, as it decreases the potency of left inside the dal.
• However, for all other forms of consumption, we need to be more careful. Dals consumed as Sprout, cheela, halwa must be washed thoroughly 3 to 4 times for at least 15 seconds, and after when it turns to sprout form, rewash it.
• This same washing process has to be repeated before crushing when you make a cheela batter.
• Another way to ensure minimum consumption of chemicals is to opt for organic Dal brands like 24 Mantra, organic tattva, and Tataetc, as they claim to be low on chemical residue.

2:Eggs It is highly likely that the eggs we consume are contaminated with salmonella, lead, and cadmium.

• Unlike western countries, where steps are taken to sterilize eggs from contamination from salmonella bacteria, the Indian poultry industry lacks these basic rearing practices.
• The 2005 Indian Veterinary Institute, Bareillyreported to have found lead and cadmium in the eggs. Which can be due to chemical mixed in their chicken feed
• Not only that, but the hormones fed to hens also produce more than one egg a day, and the antibiotics help them to stay healthy in those cramped conditions. These chemicals percolate into the egg.
• Gentamycin is a widely used chicken feed in the poultry industry. Traces of this chemical are found in the egg. It is a nephrotoxin substance that has the potential to damage the human kidney.
• Consuming eggs poisoned with lead and cadmium can lead to heavy metal poisoning among children resulting in IQ deficiencies and even mental retardation.
• Salmonella infection is a bacterial disease that can affect your intestinal tract. Other diseases like typhoid fever, food poisoning, and gastroenteritis are all types of salmonella infection.
• In 2017 FSSAI had laid standard parameters like eggshells must be free of blood rings, must not have fecal matter on them, and must not be cracked.
• From a hygiene perspective, they have emphasized the storage conditions for adequate moisture and temperature to reduce microbial contamination. However, their execution is far from reality.

Advice 

• After eggs are bought, they must be washed carefully with soap and water to remove surface contamination and refrigerate separately from other groceries.
• It’s advisable not to consume raw eggs but to cook them thoroughly till the yolk and white become firm. Reaching an internal temperature of 71 C will ensure the destruction of any salmonella bacteria.
• While difficult to check, Eggs must be consumed within two weeks after it has been laid.
• You can also go for brands like eggs and hen fruit which offer desi brown eggs at a reasonable price; being a big corporation, they have to maintain a certain quality standard that reflects their product.

 3:Meat The meat industry in India is highly unorganized and unregulated.

• Because of which the meat is kept in quiet unhygienic conditions; due to this, the raw cut meats are easily contaminated in the storage itself.
• Even more dangerous broiler chickens are injected with a high concentration of growth hormone and chemical-based feed, which increases their body size.
• Antibiotics are often given to chickens to boost their immunity; consuming this chicken leads to antibiotic resistance in the body, which leads to the body not responding to medicines.
• These antibiotics and unhealthy growth hormones have links to harmful effects like obesity, male fertility problems, early-onset puberty in females, and many more.

Advice 

• After buying meat, wash it thoroughly with warm water for at least 15 minutes; this would remove any form of contamination from the surface.
• Refrigerate it in the freezer immediately if you are not consuming it and separate it from other food items so that even if some trace amount of contamination it doesn’t propagate to other food items
• Cook the meat at high temperatures for at least 2 hrs. This will make sure to kill the bacteria and decrease the potency of antibiotics and growth hormones.    
• Avoid eating tandoori chicken and chicken tikka; these are smoked meat, but this cooking process does not reduce chemicals.
• It is better to opt for desi murga, which might be a bit expensive, but it has a high nutritional value compared to broiler chicken.
• Expensive high nutritional strong smell
• It’s easy to identify desi chicken meat, have a strong smell, and the meat is firm. Unlike the broiler, the meat is soft. You can contact your local chicken farmer or visit websites like fleshkart, zappfresh, and thefreshmeatmarket to buy desi chicken.

4:White processed foods They are essentially refined carbohydrates with low fiber content

• Few examples of white processed foods can be polished rice, white bread, biscuits, and maida, which can be easily found in our Indian kitchens.
• While making these products, the whole grains are refined, meaning most bran and germs are removed to increase their shelf life.
• The bran and germ contain all the nutrients like protein, fiber, vitamins, antioxidants, and minerals; since they are all sucked out, it leaves behind the refined form of carbohydrate, which makes these products too easy to digest.
• They spike up your blood sugar and insulin level instantly.
• Emulsifiers made from vanaspati, glycerol, and organic acids are added to bread products to increase their shelf life. It also allows non-mixable liquids like oil and water to mix smoothly.
• Potassium Bromate and Potassium Iodate is added to maida to increase the volume of its end product; However, it is a banned substance in India. Several reported cases where big bread manufacturers use it improve the shelf and make the bread more fluffy and appear fresh.

Advice

• White processed foods are the kind of foods that aggravate your stress levels, so avoid eating refined food at all costs.
• If you cannot bread altogether, try switching to your local baker after confirming all the ingredients that go in the bread.
• Generally, biscuits have high sugar and refined flour content, so it’s better to look out for ingredients; for example, sugar in cream biscuits usually has 40 grams of sugar per 100 gram; that’s a lot of sugar in it just a 100-gram biscuit packet. So it’s better to clear off from this stuff.

It is good to switch to honey-based or low sugar biscuits or rusk; smaller players prepare many such products. Few links are shared in the description section.

Even regular atta, for that matter, must be mixed with it to reduce its GI index.

5:MilkIn addition to water, commercial urea and melamine is added to milk to increase the protein content falsely

• Ammonium sulfate is added to increase the lactometer reading by maintaining the density of diluted milk.
• Salicylic acid, Formalin and Hydrogen peroxide, Benzoic acid are added to preserve and increase the shelf life of the milk.
• Since milk fat is expensive, some milk manufacturers skim the fat and compensate for non-milk fat like vegetable oil. Detergents are added to emulsify and dissolve the oil in water and give it a bubbly look.
• Harmful impacts of this milk can be renal failure, inflammation of the intestines, kidney problems, and disruption in hormonal functioning. 
• The cattle injected with growth hormones like estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone can lead to the growth of another hormone called insulin-like growth factor or IGF-1, which can stimulate the growth of tumors and affect the risk of cancer in the body.

Switch to a little expensive milk; check the milk at home.

• Try switching to your local doodhwala with a good track record; you can also visit his farm to check the quality of milk he is producing.
• You can also try other brands, dairlylac, Design milk, dear cows, and farmvilledirect, who claim to give the best A2 milk with no preservatives added to them.
• There are also milk testing kits available in the market to help you determine the purity of milk you are drinking.    

Thank you for reading our article

Please check out the second part of the article for the following five food items harming us.

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