It’s advisable sometimes to stop awhile and make a list of the things we’ve downloaded into our tummies on any single day simply to check the ingredients. How much of what we consumed that day was processed food and how much unprocessed? You may be shocked to know the results of your self-test.

Our bodies need natural food, just like we know infants need their mother’s milk. The problem is how do we get some? As a rule I have found the more urbanised a family, the more consumer-oriented its habits, the less the chances of its getting access to things that are naturally produced. Urban kids don’t just eat appalling foods, they have now got into appalling shape.

What is natural food? I define it as food that is first grown naturally, without growth hormones, chemical pesticides, synthetic fertilizers. That is one thing. Second, after it’s been grown that way, it is eaten within its natural life and has never been “processed.” You’ll be surprised to know that almost nothing that you can get in your super markets today might even remotely fit that bill. Which is why many of us remain almost addicted to indifferent health even when our pockets are loaded with cash.

So who doesn’t yearn for natural food? Food markets and food manufacturers use that yearning to add the term “natural” to a host of products that are neither natural nor food and in fact are quite unnatural. Let me give you the example of fruit juice, the kind that comes in tetrapak or other containers. We all love it. We drink lots of it. We think by drinking it we are pouring good health and nutrition down our throats.

Normally a fruit which has become ripe will begin to ferment in a few hours. Fermentation is a good and natural process. We eat and drink fermented foods every day from rotis to dosas, apams, idlis, toddy, neera and curd. We also drink alcohol and wine, products of fermentation. All of these are natural products because they are the result of millions of beneficial microbes working to break down the sugars that come naturally in fruit or grain.

In normal course, one can never eat more than a single apple or a single mango at a time. The advent of juicers has changed all that. It means that in a single drink we will now be having the equivalent of 6-8 apples or 3-4 mangoes, that too without their fibre. This is one aspect. The second is that the juice, left to itself, would begin fermenting in a few hours. That is a natural process. Therefore, any juice that comes to you in a bottle or box that can last several months on a shelf is something that is profoundly unnatural. Obviously the juice has been treated to ensure that the good microbes involved in starting or maintaining the process of fermentation are systematically eliminated either by high heat or through the use of chemicals so that the natural process is arrested and the juice doesn’t get rancid or bad.

As a general rule, the longer any food is kept – either in the interest of marketing long distance or for sale in locations where it has not been grown or harvested – means that considerable unnatural things have been done to it.

Conventional food processing will use either salt, sugar, oil or other additives that will freeze or even embellish the outward appearance of food. White crystal sugar, for instance, is the greatest preservative. Jams have 50% white sugar and 50% fruit pulp. However, your body does not need even a teaspoon of white sugar in its entire life-time. Similarly with salt. We use salt to preserve fish since it inhibits the work of microbes. But these substances are really bad for your health. You must avoid foods that have them like the plague.

As a thumb rule, the further away you get from the source of food growing and the longer the period between the harvesting of food and consumption, the more additives are bound to be added. Anything that anyone else tells you to the contrary is cock and bull.

So you find you live in a place where there is little access to naturally grown food, what next?

Seek access to organically grown food which is another name for naturally grown food. Organically grown food does not use chemicals or any artificial stuff. Generally its staying power is quite long. Organically grown tomatoes, for example, will last three weeks outside the fridge without any deterioration in quality because they are not filled with excess water. For access to such organically grown food make it a habit to visit organic food stores (you can find lists of them at: www.ofai.org) or try to access unprocessed foods at every occasion you get whether it’s milk, vegetables or fruits you need. As for fruits like grapes and apples, you should only eat those sourced from certified organic farms. My family and I have now stopped eating grapes and apples from the market completely.

As far as fruits are concerned, concentrate on those fruits that come seasonally. Eating apples from New Zealand or from Himachal Pradesh in Kerala is bound to fetch you only bad stuff since no apple has been made by nature to survive that long without treatment. In order to travel huge distances, the fruit has to be removed before time. It has then to be frozen, then thawed out and artificially ripened at destination. As it was removed before it was ready to ripen, it will never be sweet. Americans pretend to have access to fruit from all over the world but most of it is absolutely tasteless.

In a state like Goa for example, where I live, nature produces consecutively every two or three months a different variety of fruits. We have jambuls, carvandas, cashews in the months of February and March; from March to May we have an astonishing diversity of mangoes, jackfruits, and more berries; from June to August we get pineapples. In the post monsoon, we have a vast variety of bananas and papayas. All these fruits provide sufficient nutrients in natural form. There is, for example, more nutrition in the berry than in broccoli. Growing broccoli in a country like India requires special care, expensive pesticides, green houses, all of which not only make it expensive but also unnatural to eat.

Finally, stick to traditional food recipes. Food cooked with the use of traditional recipes comes closest to natural food for the simple reason that most of these recipes are based on ingredients that are sourced from the region itself. This has led in fact to the amazing diversity of Indian foods. In fact, if one takes diversity of food as an indicator of the quality of civilization, India and China are the two most advanced countries on the planet. The US, dominated by its homogenized, junk food industry would probably be classified as an underdeveloped country.

Traditional food only appears monotonous. Fish curry and rice, for instance, are daily eaten by huge masses of coastal people from Maharashtra to Kerala. The curry is made from coconut (natural) and the rice and fish are also natural products. The fish is eaten fresh and never from cans. I have been on a diet of fish curry rice now for the last 40 years and I know that all the nutrients that my body needs come within this basic menu which is never the same everyday since the curries are made with a variety of chillies, souring agents and greens so that no curry is the same (or has even the same colour) on any day of the week.

In conclusion: every time you buy food check out the ingredients, rule out those with salt, sugar and preservatives forthwith. Buy fresh food as a priority and remember that food with a long storage date has been treated so effectively that if it can stay immune to bacteria outside for six months it will also be immune to digestive bacteria in your own intestinal gut and pass through without acknowledging your existence. Whenever you see fresh food on sale, stop in your tracks and grab it. If you cannot source organic food, stick to home food as a first choice but only if its Indian. There’s a tradition of some 5,000 years behind that cooking against which the feeble waves created by the junk food industry hardly stand a chance.

(Published in Prevention, April 2010. Please ack or credit.)