Lo and behold! We have successfully entered into the phase 4 of our campaign “ChEAT with Aditi”.

Let’s rewind for a minute, to get you up-to-date!

The campaign started with JWB taking the Gitais to our super cool dietician Aditi Mehrotra, where their lifestyle habits were analyzed.

After that, our power couple was taken shopping for their monthly food supplies at a local grocery store. Their choices were duly scrutinized and interpreted by Aditi.

It was time for breakfast then! Sadly, our working couple does not get the time to sit and have a proper breakfast in the morning. This gave Aditi a chance to provide her expert guidance to those couples who have a habit of skipping breakfast in the morning.

You’re up-to-date now.

This time around, we needed to know what went into the lunch boxes of the Gitais. Since they both work, they take their lunch at their respective offices. It might be homemade, or store bought. Who knew! We had to take a peek!

So, we asked Sunanda and Anurag to click a picture of their lunch boxes. Here’s what they sent us:

Anurag’s lunch:

Sunanda’s lunch:

Dietician’s Analysis:

At any workplace, the first half of the day goes by attending to the TO-DO list, responding to urgent email and answering endless phone calls, fire-fighting at times, meeting project deadlines. The growling stomach and the hunger pangs are ignored and left unattended. If lunch is not properly planned, the tendency is to mindlessly grab coffee and order in any quick fried snack. Jaipur is dangerously famous for samosa and kachories or daal pakories available at every nook and corner. Being sedentary to add to the misery, one ends up looking like a samosa himself.

Anurag’s Lunch:

Anurag’s lunch looks pretty much balanced. I can see the food groups in place. There are greens and beans and daal and Chapatis. His veggie intake is good. Peas, potatoes, gobhi, beans, cucumber in salad and tomatoes, ginger-garlic and onion in the cooked daal most likely.The habit of eating mint-coriander chutney sneaks in valuable chlorophyll, pushing in Vita-C and iron. 

Sunanda’s Lunch:

Her food tray is a representation of meals eaten by the majority of executives who depend on outside food. I am sure knowing how Sunanda is, she would find even this lunch heavenly considering she does not have time to fix meals at home.  The only healthy dish on her food tray is perhaps the curd with grated cucumber. The origins of the vegetables seem unknown, thanks to so much of masala and oily gravy. Daal looks like a dance floor to the oily tadka hip-hopping it’s way into it. This is a well-illustrated example of “into your mouth onto your waistline”. The commercially cooked food use cheaper quality of the cooking medium. The free flowing use of standard oils and hydrogenated fats get accumulated in the arteries over a period of time leading to high blood pressure, blockages etc. The good thing is Sunanda eats a light tea time snack and simple Dinner and chooses to walk a distance from her office drop to home.

Now the verdict: Indian style of cooking vegetables robs the dishes off the nutrients. You end up eating vegetables, but they are low on their nutrient content. If office lunch is from the tiffin centre and you do not have much choice than to eat the same patterned meal, I strongly recommend, make dinner nutrient dense. It’s quite simple. Get your dinner in a place with enriching soups and pan tossed veggies. This is light on the tummy towards the fag end of the day. Will be absorbed faster and will be nutrient dense. You could add any form of protein with grilled paneer or tofu or grilled chicken. In Indian style, you could do a subz Biryani with  brown rice, Bulghar or broken wheat/daliya or makkai ka daliya or use quinoa or couscous. You could do veggie wraps made with ground Oats along with the soup. Dinners are all about more and more in less and less. Go for one meal bowls. Eat with fork, ditch the spoon. Eat in bowls and ditch the huge Jaipuri thaals with 5 katories.

EAT RIGHT STAY BRIGHT! 

The analysis has moved forward to the last phase of the “ChEAT With Aditi”!  Expect to mess up a 5-star hotel’s kitchen, driving the chef crazy among other things! Watch this space on Monday for the upcoming fun!