An Immune India: The Natural Way
Are you worried about immunity of your kids? Well you are not alone, just follow mother nature and you will be fine. The more natural food habits you have the more strong and immune your kids will be. Let us dwell a bit further in to the topic.
A few days ago I wrote about our visit to the Nature Farm to see how our food is grown without using any artificial chemical like pesticides etc. While we were taking a walk in the Mango Orchards and herb gardens, our host Ram Babu and the family that lives on farm were making holistic meal for us.
They had prepared a completely natural lunch for us using food grown on the farm. Check the picture of the thali to get some idea of what all we had. Oh and I just want to add that I could not add all the items on menu at one time. So there was more to eat than what meets the eye in the picture below 🙂
Let me help you with some of the items on the plate:
- Lemon rice
- Porridge based on 3 types of millets using Jaggery as sweetener
- Bottle guard curry with raw mangoes
- Chutney made of herbs like basil, mint, ashwagandha, amla, with a dash of Jaggery to make it mildly sweet.
- Hand pounded rice
- Lentils ( fancy word for Daal )
- Curd and Curd Raita ( diluted curd with garnishing of herbs and spices)
All the items were grown on the nature farm, using techniques that our farmers have used for hundreds of years. This makes sure that the food actually nourishes the body and not dumps pesticides in us.
When the food is grown naturally and cooked in a holistic manner with herbs known for their immunity enhancing qualities you get what we call in Sanskrit “ Naivadyam” or the food for the gods.
As per our ancient Indian scriptures our body is the temple in which the Dev or God resides. Now is it not important to nourish this body with wholesome food, that makes it strong and immune to diseases?
Not only for computers the GIGO principle works for our body also, Garbage in Garbage out. So what do we do? Today most of us have totally forgotten about our natural foods and are moving towards highly processed foods that just offer taste but are totally devoid of any kind of nutrition.
Then the new age mothers and fathers complain that their kids keep on falling sick. Well are the kids to be blamed? If you are serving them foods taken out of a packet ? But if you trust the ancient wisdom of our ancestors they will not fall sick and will have a strong immunity developed naturally.
Have you checked the advertisement for any of the packed food almost all of them say
“Now with added vitamins and minerals .”
I have a simple question if the product being peddled needs extra vitamins and minerals to make it good, then how good it really is?
So what is the solution? I think the easiest way to increase immunity in the kids is to inculcate the habit of eating as much natural food as possible.
Encourage your kids (and show them by example) to eat vegetables and fruits. Here also it is a good idea to procure locally produced food that has not traveled long distance and stayed in cold storage. Remember locally grown food is more nutritious and environment friendly as it has not traveled using fossil fuels. Thus you will be killing two birds with one stone increase immunity of your kids as well as helping mother earth.
- Add some herbs like Garlic to your food it will do wonders for the immunity.
- Encourage kids to play outdoors; a video game is the worst gift you can give to your kids.
- Avoid all refined flours like maid and switch to whole grain foods
- Add a variety of grains to your food besides Wheat and Rice go for Millets and corn too. The more varied your food the more will be the immunity you and your kids will develop.
- There was a reason our ancestors loved the thali with many kind of foods as it provided a balanced diet. How can a maida pizza even compete with the great Indian Thali?
- When traveling always eat what the locals eat and avoid fancy food. What is the point of eating pasta in a Himalayan village when you can have the best of local cuisine there? Local food will always be fresh and will suit the weather of the place you are visiting
But above all the best tip to increase immunity in kids is to let the kids be kids. They love to play in mud, run after butterflies, climb trees and do all things that kids have been doing for ages, so why stop them now? The more kids do what they enjoy, the happier they will be leading to better immunity in the kids.
The more your kids enjoy the activities they do the more strong they will be for there is no stronger immunity than being Happy and a smile on the face of the kids.
We thoroughly enjoyed our lunch under the Mango Tree , which was not just delicious but also nutritious. With a renewed dose of immunity I was ready to face the onslaught of dust and pollution on my journey back to Hyderabad.
This is my entry to An Immune India contest organized by Indiblogger in association with http://www.daburchyawanprash.com, which is your one stop solution to increase immunity, even my grandmother trusted Dabur Chyawanprash.
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Beautiful narration and an equally beautiful presentation but somehow whenever I think of your blog, your chitrahaar post comes to my mind.
Good luck with this one. 🙂
Thanks Saru…keeping my fingers crossed… 🙂
This is such an interesting and informative post! The meal looks so tempting! Good luck for the contest Prasad 🙂
Thanks for stopping by Shilpa, appreciate your comment here…
Interesting post….yes, I agree that Porridge , Lentil and Curds are immunity boosters 🙂
thanks Uma…