🌟 The Vilification of Meat 🌟

Here continues yesterday’s post on half-truths around food and living…

I grew up eating cornflakes and milk for breakfast, accompanied by a boiled egg. 🥣🥚 Kellogg’s cornflakes, chocos, or honey loops were cult favorites in the late 1990s. Apparently, they were highly nutritious.

I wasn’t allowed to have more than two eggs because of “cholesterol”, “hard to digest”, and such half-empty theories.

In my teenage years, vegetable juicing was all the rage, whereas we grew up learning that vegetables are hard to digest unless soaked, boiled, sautéed, or cooked.

🥗 Food Narratives and Societal Dichotomies

About 39% of India is vegetarian but tolerant of others’ food choices—until the wave of religious zealots got access to social media and created a huge dichotomy between pure and impure (meat eaters).

Take, for example, Delhi, India’s capital, where you’d expect people to be intelligent and reasonable. I struggled to find a place to rent because almost every landlord insisted on a vegetarian tenant. 🏠

Similarly, research on Kellogg’s founder shows that his views were rooted in conservative religious beliefs. He believed that eating meat leads to moral decline and an increase in sexual desire (considered impure).

🍴 Food narratives are designed to confuse and divide us—deliberate distractions. That’s why we should practice discernment and reject the superficial binaries imposed upon us. Our bodies are unique, so it’s best to focus on food that gives us energy rather than food that drains us.

🛍️ The Rise of Bizarre Foods

In the last newsletter, I talked about some bizarre foods in the market today, like bedtime cereal.

Stores these days are stocked with “clean” energy bars—filled with nut fats and sugar. They come in small packages, not meant to satiate you, but rather push you to eat more.

The reality is that clean food doesn’t mean it’s better for your condition. For example, diabetes patients are told to quit table sugar and use alternatives like Sugar-Free (popular in India). But Sugar-Free contains saccharin, which brings its own set of troubles that no one discusses.

🔬 Understanding Blood Sugar Imbalances

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) offers a profound perspective:

• Digestion transforms food into glucose (yin)

• Glucose travels via the bloodstream to the pancreas

• There, it prompts insulin production (yang)

• Insulin carries glucose to the liver, where excess is stored as glycogen (yang)

On the flip side, when blood sugar drops:

• Cortical hormones and ACTH (yin) are released

• These hormones convert stored glycogen back into glucose.

In a healthy body:
🧘‍♀️ Insulin (yang) and cortical hormones (yin) work in balance.

But in a failing body:

• Hypoglycemia (excess yin)

• Diabetes (excess glucose)

🌿 Ayurvedic Wisdom

Ayurveda reminds us that our Prakriti (constitution) is shaped by everything—from genetics and habits to thoughts, emotions, and environments. This interconnected view shows why no chronic condition, such as diabetes, has a singular cause or a singular solution (as often suggested by allopathy).

More on the topic tomorrow!

Love,
Zitni Zun <3