Eating in Front of the TV? Here's Why You Should Pay Attention to Your Food

Similarly, kale and goji berries may be fashionable but instead of paying those huge mark-ups to food marketers, why should we not choose local, seasonal strawberries that are also packed with phytochemicals, and simple palak, spinach greens to be part of our daily diets? Traditional practices of cooking with only seasonal ingredients in Indian kitchens or consuming only seasonal fruit ensured a balanced and nutritious diet round the year. Eating guavas and oranges in winter, melons and mangoes in summer, singhada in the monsoon are all instances of mindful eating that we need to get back to.

Local gastronomy is a big trend in the world of gourmet dining. But what the champions of “Californian” style food, or Noma tourists tend to forget is that all these “high cuisines” are based on front-footing local ingredients. Having arctic ants and foraged foods on fancy plates may be utterly chic. But the chic-ness is firmly rooted in a philosophy of food that takes pride in the local context: instead of importing lemon from southern Italy, use arctic ants to give the same flavour!

Cooking fresh food in the kitchen instead of relying on processed foods is also a healthy traditional practice that we need to go back to. Cooking up MasterChef inspired dishes may be a new fad in metropolitan India and if you are an inventive cook, you may want to rustle up some of those dishes for your parties. But simple, home-style dishes have their own virtues. The spices that we used with particular vegetables, the many cooking oils of each region flavourful and nutritious in different ways, slow cooking techniques… all the ways in which our families cooked before the globalisation of the palate began changing our ways of eating were particularly attuned to our bodies and minds. To be cognizant of these is mindful eating too. And healthy.