Three decades ago, ice-cream was considered a special food in our household, bought only with our parents’ permission, usually from the seller on his tricycle, on a hot weekend afternoon.
My mother would give my brothers and I the same amount of money each — it was up to us to buy one top-end delight or two cheaper ones, before we sat down on a spread of old newspapers to enjoy our cold dessert.
Eating out was special, too, something that happened only on our parents’ salary day at Kentucky Fried Chicken, now known as KFC. Sometimes, when one of was us was sick and had no appetite to eat, our father bought a Family Plate home as a treat.
According to my mum, when she was small, a cake was only eaten once a year, during Hari Raya Aidilfitri. One whole cake could not keep a family of 12 full, so even though my late grandmother could bake, it remained a luxury food item.
It may be financial constraints that made these ordinary foods special, but the advantage of keeping them exclusive extends beyond saving money.
Last year, health journal The Lancet published a research paper that indicates people in Chad, Sierra Leone, Mali and Gambia have healthier diets than those in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan and Canada.
It looks like a country’s wealth may grow in parallel with its citizens’ unhealthy food intake. Some of the world’s poorest countries have the healthiest diets, made up mostly of plants and unprocessed foods.
The research also points out that while high-income countries eat more healthy food than low-income countries, they have substantially poorer diets overall, due to a higher intake of processed foods.
NO LONGER SPECIAL
Take ice-cream, for instance. This processed food is no longer special. I see schoolchildren eating ice-cream at bus stops as they wait for their rides home after school like it’s the most natural thing to do. What was special to me, is now normal.
In urban areas, eating out or buying outside food is becoming a daily occurrence and adults often cite time constraints as the main reason for not being able to cook their own meals.
But, if we are not careful, this habit, over time, can be a health booby trap. Eateries exist to make a profit, so dishes are designed to taste good — more oil for crispiness, more butter for a fuller taste and excessive sugar to hook you on sweet desserts. The health of the patrons, almost always, never comes into the picture.
A restaurant menu is designed for you to eat more. Many customers end their meals with desserts when the main course is more than enough to fill their stomach.
And, to justify their high prices, restaurants often serve a dish for one person that can comfortably feed two hungry adults, encouraging food intake beyond what is necessary for the body to function.
Overeating has become so entrenched in our culture that when the chef of New England Patriots’s quarterback Tom Brady revealed what he prepared for the illustrated athlete and his wife, Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen, comments about the family’s strict diet ranged from “bizarre” and “insane” to “miserable” and “not a way to live”.
Their household diet is 80 per cent vegetables and 20 per cent lean meat. They have a firm set of dietary rules — no white sugar, and white flour and grains are whole, like brown rice.
But a sports nutritionist on medical website WebMD approves of the diet, explaining that it is “a good approach” and “a wonderful way to eat to stay healthy, fit and young”.
Perhaps our approach to food has become so excessive that even a healthy diet by one of the greatest quarterbacks to have played in the NFL is seen as restrictive.
CURBING APPETITE
I am not advocating a restrictive diet, but treating non-essential foods as special is a good start to curb our appetite for unhealthy food.
By making what was once special, ordinary, we not only lift the joy we get from anticipation, but we become unhealthy in the process by consuming too much, too often.
Keep your cake quota for birthdays and have your dessert once a month, preferably after lunch, not dinner. Eat more plant-based foods and prepare meals for your family instead of buying them.
In this trying economic climate, this shift in practice is necessary for both the body and the wallet. As prices soar, one way to mitigate excessive spending is to eat out less and trim on unnecessary (often unhealthy) food items.
But, even if you can afford to splurge on food, keep in mind that if overeating isn’t curbed, this nation will become one of those rich countries, forced to use their wealth to manage the lifestyle diseases they could have prevented.
Having lost 25kg of excess weight, Women, Fashion & Health Editor Syida Lizta Amirul Ihsan believes that sustainable changes lead to big differences