Stale is Fail

Fresh food keeps you and your body healthy whereas stale food fails to do that.

In ancient India there were no refrigerators so here were fewer leftovers and food was prepared fresh and consumed, also, most women were homemakers, unlike today. With evolution and technology, things have changed every household has a refrigerator. Every gadget has its pro and cons.

There are a number of benefits of having a refrigerator if used in the right way but now a day’s people are using it as a dumping yard. Because of refrigerators, we have started buying more, storing more, eating more leftovers and also started eating non-season foods which is one of the reasons for being unhealthy.

So now the question is whether the old way of freshly cooked food was better as compared to less cooking or cooking at once and storing it in the refrigerator and reheating and consuming it.

When food is exposed to heat, oxygen, light, and many other factors (cooked) it’s nutritional value reduces and it degrades faster than raw food. There is no life (prana) left in the food which means it is dead food which is of no benefit to the body. Once its leftover and kept in the fridge its properties change and its nutritional value reduces further making it heavy for the body to digest. Reheating food causes further nutritional degradation. For example, vitamin C and all the B vitamins are very heat sensitive.

In some cases, leftovers could be healthy than the alternatives. Our ever so busy schedules do not allow us to spare enough time to cook, hence there are several occasions when we actually end up eating a lot of leftovers. Packing last night’s leftover could be a healthier option in this situation as compared to picking up food from a fast food chain or having an ice-cream or a packet of chips or biscuits. This does not mean that leftover food is good for health.

Preparing meals at home and saving leftover is something that many people all across the globe do as a part of weekly menu planning. This routine practice of cooking more and using is as leftover can cause a lot of health issues like

• Food poisoning
• Indigestion (digestion in the body happens at 2 levels one is in the stomach which is macro and other at the tissue level which is micro, fresh food helps in the process of digestion hence proving the body with vital energy, leftover or stale food reverses this process leading to indigestion)
• Acidity (when food is kept in the fridge for long it starts to ferment which acidifies the food, eating this food leads to acidity)
• Diarrhea
• Weight gain
• Low immunity levels
• Elevated cholesterol levels etc. These all can lead to a bigger health issue.
• Leftover food decreases the body’s vital energy or force.
• It can cause foodborne illnesses if kept for too long even though they don’t taste bad

Cooking every single meal may not be realistic in some countries but at least try to avoid food that is been cooked more than 24 hours before
Try to cook simple and basic meals during the week and if you are well planned it’s not difficult. So plan your week well and put in that effort to prepare fresh food for good health…