Health or Friends?

I'm sharing a personal experience about how eating clean or rather your intention to eat clean could hurt other parts of your life. Being rigid about my meals doesn't help me.Why? Isn't it good to eat clean all the time? Isn't it healthy? I will create problems in my body if I don't eat clean. These maybe some thoughts that go through your head when you've chosen to go the alkaline way and someone asks you to eat a meal you shouldn't eat as part of the diet.

Friendship is all about experiences you share with a person, the more number of experiences you share with a person usually leads to friendship. If a friend is giving me something to eat, even if it's something that isn't good for you, but a single spoon isn't going to have any negative impact on your body. I'm talking about food, not alcohol or cigarettes. Those are a complete no.

What happens when you say no?  As a normal part of friendship bonding, you have to do several things to get closer to people. So if out of love and affection a friend is feeding you, and you say no, they'll feed someone else and they'll get closer to other people.

This is a challenge I faced in my life and I don't want any of you to ever have to face this ever. It doesn't feel good when you're losing your friends for your health and when you feel that you're losing friends for health. You'll stop caring about your health and choose friends.

We're human, we crave love more than we care about anything else in the world. That's why even though our loved ones are doing things that may damage their health and their lives, we continue to be with them and not lecture them about their health all the time because of our fear of losing them.

Eating at fancy restaurants, guys night out full of drinking, all these things have been promoted by the culture, people do that because it's what they seen in movies and on TV. Since people became health concious, super markets started an organic section, and now, there's an entire super market for organic foods called 'Whole Foods' in US. Multi national companies give the people what they want, people want burgers, they get burgers, they want pizza, they get pizza.

It's simple how these things work. But in my experience, you're friends probably won't support your endeavours, they'll probably say you're out of your mind. But facts and data don't lie, the same friend who doesn't care about health will probably have a heart attack at the age of 35 or 40. He'll be diagnosed with diabetes, and will live the rest of his days repenting his situation. If you're the person headed for those signs, heed this advice now and get healthy.

Change for your life, others will follow. Your true friends will support you nevertheless.

Cheers,

Prithvi

Alkaline Bananas: A Superb Snack

Woah!, I was just looking at the calendar to see how many days are left in May and I saw another whole week. 5 Fridays in this May, that means 5 posts. As you know, I keep alkaline eating easy, I don't go into complex exotic recipes involving half a dozen fruits half of which you won't find in India and the remaining half for which you don't know the Indian term. My ideas are fairly simple, primarily because, if they weren't, I wouldn't be using them myself.(lazy me ;)).

Having said that, let me take my favorite fruit of all time for this week's alkaline food, banana.The fruit that is available throughout the year, is cheap to buy. The benefits go on and on, but let's take a closer look into how we can use it as part of our alkaline diets. As an important note, bananas have a high glycemic index, what this means is that the sugar(glucose) content is high in them, this causes the sugar to be absorbed into the blood stream faster and causes a spike in the blood sugar levels. This isn't very good, because it is best to have a sustained blood sugar level without fluctuations. If a fruit/vegetable has a low glycemic index, it will get absorbed into the blood gradually and keeps the body stable. If you've ever felt a sudden spike in energy after eating some junk like McDonald's or KFC or something like that, this is what it is. Fluctuating blood sugar causes sudden feeling for a craving, sometimes in the middle of the night, or at odd times, this won't happen if you eat healthy foods and maintain the alkaline balance.

To be clear, a banana and a McDonald's meal can in no way be compared, in other words, don't worry about a high glycemic index as it is a natural sugar and as a part of an alkaline diet, it will blend in perfectly. (If you plan to go on a banana diet for an entire week, that maybe a different story ;)).

3 Ways we can use Bananas in our alkaline diets are
1) Fruit: As simplistic as it sounds, bananas and a couple of almonds make for a terrific snack during the evening, I usually feel hungry at about 7pm, I grab a banana, grab a couple of almonds and I needn't worry about dinner till about 9:30.

2) Banana Sundae:  Typically, sundae is a word used to describe an ice-cream sundae, but in our case, we are referring to an entirely alkaline dish. Sliced bananas, served with honey on top make excellent dessert. Slice the bananas, place them horizontally on a plate and pour honey over them and it is ready to eat.

 3) Salad: You may know from my previous posts that I mix and match fruits and veggies in my salads. Well, a banana is no exception, multiple times per week I add bananas to my salads and it makes for an awesome salad. Bananas, being sweet, neutralize the taste of any non sweet alkaline foods and make the salad palatable.

This concludes my post on bananas and their alkalinity. Although bananas are not highly alkaline, focus on natural foods is my priority as I believe that nature has made food available to us if we just look.

Give me your thoughts, I want to know. What do you want to hear about? Post in the comments.

Cheers,

Prithvi

Apple: The Alkaline Fruit

Continuing strong with our articles about specific alkaline foods, the fruit for today is Apple. After having discussed 2 veggies over the past 2 weeks, I find that a fruit is the necessary sweet required to maintain the balance.

Apples are amazing fruits, I like many things about them. Firstly  that they are sweet, secondly that they have almost no seeds (seeds are in the center and can be thrown away), thirdly, they make excellent additions to salads and are my favourite.

Here are 3 fantastic ways to use apples in your alkaline diet, again, keep in mind that these ideas are for daily usage, not to give you an exotic usage idea that you will never use, the objective is to eat alkaline.
1) Cut Slices
2) Snack
3) Salad Additive

Although some of the items may seem redundant, bear with me, they are awesome.

1) Cut Slices: At a pH of 8, apples are amazing for a dish when cut and served with some chat masala(ground spices powder). While an apple alone may not serve to be a meal, it certainly plays a role in making a good portion of the meal.

2) Snack: If you're familiar with my eating schedule, you'd know that I eat a small portion of salad for breakfast, a large portion for lunch and brown rice with curry for dinner. Having lunch at 1-2pm and having dinner at 9pm creates quite a large gap. I find myself getting very hungry during the 6-7pm time. To get over the feeling, I simply eat some almonds(5 max), or bite on an apple. Unlike watermelons, apples can be eaten any time without the need for a big cutting procedure. An apple serves as a snack very well.

3) Salad Additive: A salad without apples is incomplete for me, I rarely have salads without apples. Apples form a significant portion of my salads every single day. I like all alkaline foods, but the problem with cucumbers and neutral tasting foods is that they don't satisfy the taste buds at all, in that case, I add something like an apple or dates to make the salad taste better.

This post is a quick read, ask questions if you've got any.

Apples are alkaline, and are great to eat.

Your questions are welcome.

Stay Alkaline, Stay Healthy.

Cheers,

Prithvi