Why we need Disruptive Eating

Our concept revolves around so many WHYS.

Why 70% of US population are overweight?

Why obesity rate in the US inched up to 36% despite everyone’s Herculean effort at the price tag of $100 billion plus per year for the last 10 years at least?

Why obesity rate for African American women is 56%, Hispanics women 46%? Is the low income populace disproportionately affected?

Despite of such hullabaloo about obesity or overweight prevalence, why 60% of adult US population does not know about BMI, the body mass index?

Why per capita per day meat consumption in the US is 330 gms, way above than 220 gms for Europe and more than double, 160 gms for China? 1 pound = 454 gms and 1 Oz = 28 gms

Why 64% of world agriculture land is used for animals’ feed?

Why world meat consumption accounts for 21% of greenhouse gases, more than emission by all modes of the transportation from the aero-planes to the motorbikes.

Why the world meat consumption pattern is 36% pork, 31% chicken, 25% beef, 6% goat when one pound of goat needs 127 gallons of water, beef 1800 gallons, pork 600, lamb 700, chicken 500.

Why Heritage food USA has ‘Eat Goat to Save Goat’ campaign? Male baby goats are killed within a week of birth as there is no demand for the goat meat in the US. The goat cheese is wildly popular though.

Given the goat is healthier than even chicken, see MSU article ‘Why Goat’ at our website. For the same amount of meat, the Goat uses 1/3^rd of grass needed for beef and 1/5^th of grain for pork.

The whole grain is good. Why Sam’s club and GFS don’t have parboiled rice and whole wheat flour and they are two biggest suppliers for the restaurants here in the US? White rice or bread is not whole grain.

Why protein is meat or meat is protein here in US? People are eating excess protein and that too from the wrong source. Adult man just needs 56 gms and woman 46 gms of protein.

Why lentils is not eaten here even when Canada is the largest producer of lentils? Lentils may be the cheapest source of protein as well as the dietary fiber?

Why people here is the way out of ideal #ProteinProfile of 25:25:50 for meat:milk:vegan? This is my take, no survey here.

Why the US alone wastes $165 billion of food, 60% by the grocers, 40% by the consumers.

Like there are so many Whys. If these Whys bother you, you may agree that  we need to disrupt the way we eat, hence the Nirmal for Disruptive Eating. We rely on four things:

1.  You don’t need ‘Meat for Protein’ - Focus on alternate protein like lentils, soya chunks, tofu and other legumes which has more or equal protein with much less fat- key to achieve the ideal #ProteinProfile. #MeatFree is not about eating vegetables and fruits as they are not protein.

2.  The world is not becoming vegetarian overnight - Focus on the goat meat – healthier than chicken and most sustainable meat, we devised a way to serve the boneless goat, a first for any restaurant.

3.  Why Indian food is the key to #DisruptiveEating – first, lentils and goat meat are staple food items in Indian cuisine, India being 2nd largest producer of both. Second, Indian food is Curry based. Curry is made from the base sauce of tomato or onion or spinach mixed with plenty of spices. It makes the food tastier. Like you eat Soya curry or Chicken curry, your taste buds won’t complain because they would enjoy the dominant taste of the spices in Curry. No surprise India has 500 million vegetarians, 65% of total vegetarians in the world. Third, Curry is liquid and you are forced to eat with the whole grain, rice or bread like we can’t drink our lunch or dinner. And fourth, because your stomach is limited and you are eating more whole grain, you are eating less meat, hence avoiding the excess protein and excess fat.

   Curry may counter the recent WHO guidelines which revolve around the processed meat and the red meat. But the issue is cooking at the high temperatures as people here normally eat grilled meat. See this link:

  http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/23/456654768/turning-down-the-heat-when-cooking-meat-may-reduce-cancer-risk .

   The boiled or stewed meat could be a solution. Any curry with its ingredients is boiled and cooked with the meat or vegetables at 220-30 F. And it is far better and healthier. See this link -http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2222970/Boiled-stewed-meat-better-heart-burgers-grilled-steak.html

4. Food exclusion is not the forced eating – As a food vendor or the restaurant, we can limit the choices. Two examples here. We used to have both-the white bread called Naan and the whole wheat bread called Roti-at Nirmal.  Similarly we used to have the lamb and the goat and both taste almost same. We discarded the Naan and the lamb altogether. The patrons complained initially but majority of them made switch to Roti and Goat off course knowing why we did take such drastic step. Like Naan is synonymous with Indian cuisine here in the US and we may have lost 20% of the sales.

The obesity rate for the Asians including Indians in the US is 12% as compared to 36% for the general population. As we Asians are not very much in the physical exercising, our food and eating style does play a greater role. Given that being overweight or obese is precursor to most of the health issues we face today, a reduction of 20-25% overweight prevalence in the next 5-10 years has potential to bring the healthcare costs down drastically.

What we need? We need Nirmals all across the US. First to provide food what we vouch for- the protein substitutes and the goat meat. Nirmal may be among 2-3 restaurants serving the goat meat or may be among 10-20 restaurants serving lentils or soya chunks out of 300+ restaurants in Washtenaw county.

Second, the message. The restaurants are the best way to convey any message as people eat almost half of their meals outside. For example, you interact with Nirmal once, you won’t forget BMI. From our logo to our menu to the entrance poster to our toll-free number – BMI can’t escape from your attention.

Third, Nirmal makes Indian food affordable and positions it as a tastier and healthier alternative to the tacos, burgers and pizzas, the low income populace does not have access to the healthy food.

What Disruptive eating does – empower each of us to change the world-how?

First, the health equality – key to fight the income and educational inequality – 3 components of the social inequality.

Second, less meat consumption, less greenhouse gas, we join fight against the climate change, if 100 million people in the US skip meat one day per week, total savings of meat would be whopping 3.6 billion pound a year

Third, say lentils and goat become hugely popular here and in the world, both have similarity, could be grown anywhere, lentils have drought resistant varieties, Canada is the largest producer, goat could be raised anywhere from the Himalayas to the sub-Saharan Africa and we don’t need the farms to raise the goats. Both could be great tools to fight the global poverty and hunger. How?

The world has almost 20% of unused or infertile land. Why can’t we grow lentils? The lentils crop makes the land fertile in the long run. Or say the meat consumption pattern reverses in next 10-20 years for goat with 50%, chicken 30%, how much savings it would entail in the grass and grain.

How many poor people we can feed from this saved grain? How much agriculture land we can free from the animals’ feed and use it for the humans’ produce or the human living. The world population would be 9 billion in 2050 from the current population of 7 Billion and we need food and space both to accommodate them.

Recently I was accepted as a leader by PreventObesity.net. We may be the first food vendor in their rank. Another first would be our App or video game for disruptive eating (still at concept stage). Like we can’t stay away from the disruptive technology for long. This App would be a game changer and would take real and imaginary inputs and outputs. Like you just go on entering what you eat, whether you use recycled or bio-degradable products, how much food you throw, how many minutes do you work-out, how many times a week you cook at home. You can get bonus points for eating goat and lentils and get penalized for eating excess protein or calorie. The point you earn can use for fighting the drought in a country, saving a town from the tornado or getting drowned due to the global warming or feeding the hungry people all over the world-the imaginary outputs. Then based on your effort, you could be among 10 Heroes to be featured at Nirmal website every year with some real benefits.

The key is #EatRight not just #EatHealthy. Eat Healthy takes care of self. #EatRight starts from the self to the family to the community to the country to the planet. ‘I am OK’ is not enough, we need to care for others being OK too. Like we can go to a restaurant and ask for whole wheat bread or the goat meat or the soya chunks. This may work for the Indian restaurants easily as the curry is so flexible. And yes there are 3500+ Indian restaurants in the US. That would create the demand. We the people can challenge the status quo, very few businesses do.

The history has our back. Just in this same community, President Kennedy in 1960 at the University of Michigan asked us to serve and change the world and the peace corps was born. And it made USA unique and stand tall in the world. We have another opportunity to make the world better just with #EatRight and bring a food revolution starting from here. The world needs that, are you ready?