Simaneka Mbeeli
Black parents discourage children from eating while standing. They do not allow children to sing while eating. Boys are not allowed to eat with hats on. These are some of the food taboos, besides restrictions towards certain foods. This article links food taboos to intermittent fasting, a contemporary method that is believed to help people burn fat. It will also compare the food taboos to the eating habits of French women who are believed to defy obesity, despite eating high-calorie food.
The food and nutrition guideline tells us that we should eat three meals a day on average and that we should try to maintain a healthy weight. Maintaining a healthy weight is becoming difficult because if you do not know what led to the metabolic syndrome that caused the fat accumulation, you would not know how to do the correction accurately. There are, however, some predictable contributing factors to this obesity pandemic, including, but not limited to, snacking. Snacks mostly include highly-processed carbohydrates, and seed or vegetable oils – think of biscuits with cream in between.
In the book Why French women don’t get fat, Mireile Guiliano discussed some learning tips that we can emulate to achieve healthy weight while eating food that we enjoy. For example, French people have a tendency of eating only when they are seated at the table. This is similar to how our grandparents don’t allow us to eat while we are standing. French people do not multitask while eating, which is like no singing while eating in the black social context.
In our programmes of Health Promotion Intervention at Nam foodBIBLE, snacking is an idea that we do not co-sign with. The reasons for not supporting snacking are linked to the benefits that intermittent fasting has on the regulation of blood glucose levels. When one is eating a lot of meals containing food that is high on glycemic index and food with high glycemic load, while living a sedentary lifestyle, it is likely to culminate in insulin resistance which leads to the accumulation of visceral fat and the protruding belly. One may argue that sugar is not responsible for insulin resistance, since other factors also contribute, which is a valid point. However, if we use an analogy of a drunk person getting in a car accident, we would point out that alcohol consumption was the cause and not the tree that they ended up hitting. For that reason, the sugar and high fructose corn syrup in snacks are to be blamed for insulin resistance that causes us to overeat.
In conclusion, eating high-quality food and fewer meals a day can help people control their appetite and avoid eating. This is simple to follow when you only eat while seated, like grandmothers and French women suggests.
* Simaneka Mbeeli is a Food Science and Technology graduate, MBA Health Management Candidate. Mbeeli encourages you to consult your doctor before implementing the advice from his platform (Nam FoodBIBLE). He also encourages you to contact him and ask for peer reviewed research papers that guide this Keto diet weight management programme (0814644210).