Dinesh was unwell. Only a month ago he had been the
blue-eyed boy of his bosses. An MBA from IIM, moving rapidly upwards in the
hierarchy of a multi-national retail chain. At 28, he was grossing over 50 lakh
rupees annually. He was a good team leader. Dependable. Not averse to working
late. He was honest. He never drank or smoked. And he worshipped his work...
Until suddenly he fell sick.
It started off as a
nagging stomach pain. The family doctor attributed it to his odd timings and
irregular food habits. He put him on a regimen of antacids. This gave Dinesh
some relief. But soon the pain became more acute. He started losing
weight, and losing sleep. And one day, while at work, he suddenly vomited blood.
He was immediately rushed to a hospital. He was diagnosed as having a cancer in
the stomach.
Then the treatment began. Surgery. Localised radiation.
Three cycles of chemotherapy…
This was followed by the side effects. Vomiting. Lack of appetite.
Insomnia. Tiredness... The fair, handsome Dinesh deteriorated into a pale,
ghost-like shadow. He lost his luxuriant hair. And despite the doctor’s
assurances that he would soon be back to normal, the physical changes affected him psychologically. “Doctor, why did
this happen to me?” he asked. “Son”, the Doctor said, “It’s very difficult to
assign a cause. Particularly since you are a man with no bad habits. I can only
infer that there must have been toxins in the food you have been eating…”
“Mamma”, Dinesh said turning to his Mother. “You handle all
the cooking at home. And when outside, I have been eating at some of the best
restaurants in town. When that’s so, who’s
poisoning my food?”
Poison in the food. That is an issue that is exercising
every mind today. Suddenly it has been discovered that the 2 minute wonder
food, Maggi Noodles contains traces of lead and mono sodium glutamate
(otherwise known as ajinomoto). These, they say could cause cancer. Suddenly
there is a flurry of activity. Every state is conducting tests with the
product. Some are finding toxins in the samples. Some are not. Some states have
banned Maggi altogether. The authorities have sent show-cause notices to
Nestle, the multi-national company that manufactures Maggi and a whole array of other
highly popular goodies. Notices have also been sent to Amitabh Bachchan and
Madhuri Dixit for having starred in ads, endorsing Maggi Noodles. While
consumer organisations are crying themselves hoarse over the whole issue, the
authorities of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) have
been smugly sitting on a precarious pedestal inside a glass house, throwing
stones at all and sundry.
If Maggi Noodles contains lead or any other carcinogen or
any other banned or dangerous toxic substance, it deserves to be banned, notwithstanding its
popularity with the masses. I shall be the first to concede that. But my
questions are : 1. Why did it take the authorities 40 long years to discover that Maggi Noodles can cause cancer?
2. While they were twiddling their thumbs for that long, how many Dineshs have contracted different types of cancer?
3. If an Amitabh Bacchan and a Madhuri Dixit, who obviously could not have known that Maggi noodles contained carcinogens, are liable for action for promoting a popular product, which they could not have known was a potential danger to society, are not the guys in the food safety department equally, if not more liable for having allowed an unscrupulous multi-national to sell their toxic product in the Indian market place to nearly two generations of kids? Will heads roll in this wing of the government for this irreparable faux pas?
4. What action is contemplated against the media who have been carrying ad campaigns of Maggi Noodles even when the controversy was at its peak?
5. Are Nestle and Maggi Noodles the only offenders? Is there any other reason for their being singled out and being hauled over the coals?
6. If Mono Sodium Glutamate (MSG) or Ajininomoto, a very popular taste enhancer, is such a dangerous substance, how is it allowed to be sold without any statutory warnings in every roadside shop?
7. In China, Korea and several other South-East Asian countries, Ajinomoto is used in every dish. Are these people dying of cancer? Or are we being subjected to scare mongering by some unknown vested interests?
If we scratch below the surface, practically every food is dangerous. My Ayurvedic physician, when prescribing a diet regiment for me suggested that I cut out chicken altogether and switch to mutton or beef. "But Doctor, what about the high Cholesterol content in mutton and beef?, I asked. "You are less likely to have problems with the cholesterol inn the mutton and beef than with the hormones and antibiotics that have been pumped into your farm-bred broiler", he said.
In this context, I would like to reproduce below the text of a lengthy message that has been doing its rounds on Whatsapp and Facebook :
In this context, I would like to reproduce below the text of a lengthy message that has been doing its rounds on Whatsapp and Facebook :
Has the media ever informed you??
That Nestle has accepted
that they add juice extracted from beef in their popular brand of Chocolate, KITKAT!
______________________ That in Chennai High Court, Fair & Lovely accepted that the cream contains the oil from pig fats! ______________________ That Vicks is banned in many countries of Europe ! There it has been declared as poison ! But in our country we see it's advertisements on TV the whole day! _____________________
That Lifebouy is neither
bath soap nor toilet soap ! It's a cabolic soap used for bathing animals ! Europe
uses Lifebouy for dogs ! And in our country millions of humans use it !!
______________________
That Coke and Pepsi are
in reality toilet cleaners ! It has been proved that it contains 21 types of
different poisons ! And it's sale is banned in the canteen of Indian
parliament ! But it is sold in the rest of the country !!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHxzVeak-JE
____________________ That health tonics and beverages from multi-nationals like Boost, Complan, Horlics, Maltova and Protinex ,were tested in Delhi at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (which houses biggest laboratory in India), and it was found that they were made from the waste left after oil is extracted from groundnut !
______________________
That when Amitabh Bachchan was operated for 10 long hours, the doctor had removed his large intestine and had told him that it had rotted due to consuming Coke and Pepsi! And from next day he stopped advertising it. ______________________ That to make pizza tasty E-631, a flavour Enhancer is added which is made from pork.
● If the following codes
are mentioned on food packs then you should know what you are unknowingly
consuming:
E 322 - beef
E 422 - alcohol E 442 - alcohol & chemical E 471 - beef & alcohol E 476 - alcohol E 481 - mixture of beef and pork E 627 - dangerous chemical E 472 - mixture of beef, meat & pork E 631 - oil extracted from pig fats.
● Also look for following
codes on google :-
E100, E110, E120, E140,
E141, E153, E210, E213, E214, E216, E234, E252, E270, E280, E325, E326, E327,
E334, E335, E336, E337, E422, E430, E431, E432, E433, E434, E435, E436, E440,
E470, E471, E472, E473, E474, E475, E476, E477, E478, E481, E482, E483, E491,
E492, E493, E494, E495, E542, E570, E572, E631, E635, E904.
|
I really don’t know whether all this is true. By trying to
find out, I’d only end up not knowing what on earth to eat.
I do know
for a fact that chronic hyperacidity in today’s generation, often leading to
intestinal ulcers and even cancers is substantially due to the use of “refined”
cooking oils. Gone are the days when cooking was done with kaccha cooking oils (groundnut oil, coconut oil, gingley oil, or
sunflower oil). Today, we want our oil to be “clear, light and golden in colour”. The process of refining fresh-pressed edible oil consists of washing the oil in
concentrated acid, followed by neutralising the acid with an alkali. Then the
dark colour is lightened using a chlorine compound. Thus contaminated with a
variety of toxins, the “refined” and “double refined” oils reach the market
amid a flurry of advertisements… In short, with our own myopic vision, we
choose to pay to buy illnesses, while the so-called authorities collect their bribe
and look the other way. Interestingly, with awareness of the advantages of "unrefined" oil seeping in, people are paying more to buy the stuff in high-priced "organic stores"!
Today, the fruits we eat are doctored with poisons. Mangoes
are artificially ripened. Apples are being waxed to make them look attractive. Carrots
and cauliflowers are made to appear fresh even after days, by the simple
process of dipping them in a toxic chemical. Water melons have dyes and
saccharin injected into them. The milk we drink has never come from the udders
of a cow, or for that matter any living creature. The eggs we eat are laid by sex-less chicken… And the authorities allow all
these to be sold unchecked at the cost of the health of the unsuspecting aam aadmi. There are no restrictions on the advertisements of these products either.
And then suddenly they make some atrocious accusations. Like the ones now levelled against Maggi noodles, full 40 years after it had "poisoned" half the population of this country.
Or like the one made by the head of India’s premium medical institution, the
AIIMS when former President K R Narayanan, who was admitted there, died following renal
failure. Narayanan had lived a full and healthy life. Being the son of an Ayurveda
practitioner, he had always relied on traditional Indian medicine, even when he
was President of India. But then, at the fairly ripe age of 85, when he took
ill with pneumonia, he was admitted to AIIMS. One thing led to the other. And a
couple of weeks later, we were told that he had died of renal failure. It was then
that the chief of AIIMS went on record with a most preposterous claim. The
former President had been given the best of treatment, he said. Yet he could
not be saved because his kidneys had been badly damaged possibly due to the
accumulation of heavy metals from long years of Ayurvedic medicines!!
Toxins sold as food by multi nationals are okay. But Indian
medicines are toxin… Drugs that are banned in the European and American markets are sold across the counter in India. Doctors prescribe some of these medicines with gay abandon, even for little children. A testimony to this gross misuse of banned drugs by medical practitioners is the ever-increasing rate of kidney failures and renal transplants that are being reported in India. No, I don"t mean among septuagenarians and octogenarians but in youngsters between 25 and 50! Yet the allopaths have the temerity to claim that their medicines are all safe and that Ayurvedic and Siddha formulations are dangerous! I can't but lament : “Father, forgive them. They know not
what they are saying”.
