Hi,

Have you ever wondered why our parents keep insisting on us eating healthy food? Why we’re not junk food outside? Have you ever thought what happens to the food once it is inside our body? 

Join me in understanding all of this and a lot more about healthy eating in my conversation with Dr Srihari. I’ve really learnt a lot and have been able to make positive changes in what I eat. I would request you to learn them too. 

Hope you enjoy listening!

Thanks

Transcripts

Interview 1: Healthy Eating

[0.01] Background Music

[0.07] Siyona: Hello everybody welcome to my podcast little mind chats. Minds are little. Not our thoughts. I’m your host siyona I’m not sure if you have ever experienced this, but my mom is constantly asking me to eat healthy and nutritious meals. And normally, i observe that everything healthy is something I wouldn’t prefer eating too much. And… they were most of the times, raw vegetables, fruits, greens…but unfortunately, the food i love things like pizzas, noodles, pasta etc. (she says not nutritious or good for my health). This felt so unfair. I decided to take the help from my pediatrician, Dr. Sri Hari. He has done his MD (doctor of medicine) in pediatrics. Meaning, he is specialized to treat kids like you and me. And to top it, he has done his fellow in nutrition from The University of La Trobe, France. Not just that, he even won an award as an iconic doctor in 2019 for North Bengaluru. I wouldn’t have found a better person to prove my mom wrong. Hopefully….Today, I will be asking him the questions most  

of us (kids) have about food and nutrition. “Hello doctor Sri Hari, welcome to my show.”

[1.40] Dr. Sri Hari: “Hi Siyona, how are you?”

[1.43] Siyona: Hi. I’m quite good. “Why should we (as kids) have nutritious meals? I mean what is the big deal?”

[1.50] Dr. Sri Hari: See, all of you kids grow everyday. The same way like, how a tree or a plant grow every day. Kids grow every day. So, you need to have nutrition to grow. Each cell grows, so you need to eat. How do you get that nutrition is by food.

[2.06] Siyona: “What is a nutritious meal anyway?”

[2.09] Dr. Sri Hari: Nutritious meal is something which is compiled of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, fiber, vitamins, minerals and water. So altogether, which has these in a correct dosage is a nutritious meal.

[2.26] Siyona: “If I look at my plate, how will i know if it is nutritious or not?”

[2.31] Dr. Sri Hari: Oh, That’s a nice question. You have to really see how much of vegetables, dairy products, rice or any of the cereals and pulses are in your plate. If they are bifurcated in correct proportions which is required for RDA i.e., Recommended Daily Allowance and you are done.

[2.48] Siyona: Oh wow!!! “So, why shouldn’t we have pizza, pasta or noodles? They’re all my favorite and always mom refuses for me to eat them.”

[2.59] Dr. Sri Hari: Oh! Mom said they are bad?

[3.01] Siyona: Yeah.

[3.02] Dr. Sri Hari: Not all pizzas and pastas are bad. There is a way how you make it.

[3.07] Siyona: yoo-hoo……

[3.08] Dr. Sri Hari: Any pasta or pizza topped up with good amount of farm vegetables, good amount of cheese, which is like the fat and fiber all of it, the wheat or oat-based crust together is going to be good pizza for you to eat.

[3.22] Siyona: That proves my mom wrong ha ha ha.

[3.25] Dr. Sri Hari: I see that excitement…

[3.27] Siyona: “So, what happens if we don’t eat fruits and veggies every single day?”

[3.32] Dr. Sri Hari: That’s a good question. The thing is, every day you need vitamins, minerals for you to grow. And vitamins and minerals are very very volatile. They are not going to stay for more than a day in your body. You have to have your veggies and fruits every day. Because there are lot of vitamins which are water soluble. So, they get flushed from your body on a daily basis. So, how do you get replace it, by eating it daily.

[3.55] Siyona: “Well, is there any easier way, I could include veggies and fruits in my diet?”

[4.02] Dr. Sri Hari: Definitely, (yes). If something you don’t like, may be lot of kids don’t like apple, make an apple pie out of it. okay?

[4.10] Siyona: oh, nice.

[4.11] Dr. Sri Hari: If you don’t like some fruit, mix it with yogurt to make smoothies, yogurts … you’ll love it. That’s a nice thing, right?

[4.18] Siyona: Yeah. I love smoothies. How is eating fruit different from vegetables. You say that they are all packed with vitamins and minerals. 

[4.29] Dr. Sri Hari: So, you like mom?

[4.30] Siyona: Yeah.

[4.31] Dr. Sri Hari: You like dad?

[4.32] Siyona: Yeah.

[4.33] Dr. Sri Hari: You like both?

[4.34] Siyona: Yeah.

[4.35] Dr. Sri Hari: You can’t do without each other?

[4.36] Siyona: Mmm…….yeah.

[4.38] Dr. Sri Hari: Yeah. The same way with the vegetables and fruits are different. But without them we will not be able to do it. So, you need a package of both of it. Few vegetables are good in few minerals. Few fruits are good in few vitamins. So, you need both of them to be combined in your food.

[4.54] Siyona: “Why do they say you have to have 5 fruits a day?”

[4.58] Dr. Sri Hari: Each fruit will have a different vitamin. so, the basic like zinc, aluminum, selenium, magnesium and calcium. So, they are five very important minerals which is required. So, each combined food would be able to give the nutrition required for that day. So, it’s a Five-Fruit day.

[5.17] Siyona: Oooo….Five Fine Fruits.

[5.21] Dr. Sri Hari: That’s how you go.

[5.25] Siyona: “Is it not true that all vegetables and fruits have a lot of pesticides? Would they not harm us?”

[5.33] Dr. Sri Hari: Definitely. Pesticides is a big problem. Most of the farmers are growing vegetables using pesticides. So, you need to wash them thoroughly before you eat. Because, these chemicals once they enter into your body, they are going to disturb a lot of metabolisms in your body. That’s the whole fear. So, cleaning vegetables and fruits before you eat is a must.

[5.56] Siyona: “Is there any food without pesticides?”

[5.59] Dr. Sri Hari: Of Course, the new fad is organic food. There’s a lot of food which are coming will be organic food. You even have dairy products which are organic now. What’s this organic food all about? Organic food is something which is pesticide and chemical free. Most of them are harvested with only natural chemicals to grow them and war them off the pests.

[6.22] Siyona: Well, pesticides are pesticides. So, I don’t get these natural pesticides concept.

[6.30] Dr. Sri Hari: Natural pesticides are something like neem oils, chamomile oils which keep like repellant action for the pests. And as you grow the organic chemistry is also going to grow. Anything which keeps the pests away is pesticide. That is natural and chemical free. And most of them are using chemicals because they are easily available and natural ones are the ones like extracts from the plants and the organic products.

[6.56] Siyona: Well, that’s great. “What are metabolisms?”

[7.01] Dr. Sri Hari: Metabolism is something where how your body is going to grow on a daily basis and how your food is processed. Okay? Like how you mix flour and then it becomes into a dough, then you make a dosa and then you eat it. The same way the body will do a reverse composition. Like how the dosa goes inside is broken into small pieces and it’s there done into carbohydrates, proteins, fibers and each of them are absorbed in different compartments and how what is required based on it, the bones take calcium, the proteins go into your muscle, the vitamins goes to your skin, eyes to make you good. That how it is. This is called metabolism in simple words.

[7.42] Siyona: I see. So, it’s practically the process of digestion.

[7.46] Dr. Sri Hari: Yeah. Exactly.

[7.48] Siyona: Finally, can you help me explain to mom that i love street food. She keeps me away from it all the time.

[7.56] Dr. Sri Hari: Yeah. Because she is scared about how they are made. Most of the street food are either deep fried and hastened to make it faster and give it to you on the table. So, they try to add a lot of preservatives and tasting agents to enhance the taste so that they are made fast. So, MSG which is very common compound used in all these street foods is going to be very harmful for your body. So that’s why mom tries not to give you street food. But, once in a while it’s always ok. Right?

[8.29] Siyona: Yeah. “How’s MSG harmful to our potty?”

[8.34] Dr. Sri Hari: A very good question. MSG is going to be liver damage product. It’s going to, like kill hepatocytes in your liver, and also due to this the production of the liver enzymes come down. So, your digestive nature comes down and it can eventually lead to cholelithiasis that is, formation of gall stones in your gall bladder. 

[8.54] Siyona: Yeah. We were studying digestion in my old school and the teacher said that if you don’t take good care of your gall bladder, you could get these kind of hard thingies (gall stones) in your gall bladder. (I asked) “How would they turn up in your gall bladder?” and she used to like “well, they just turn up”.

[9.21] Dr. Sri Hari: That is just because they are a compilation of all the compounds, all these chemical compounds, with little bit of dead tissues and they just form stones. That’s what when the body accumulates all these unnecessary pesticides, where else do they go? 

[9.35] Siyona: Ah. They could get flushed out in our poo?

[9.40] Dr. Sri Hari: Not everything happens there. That’s when they form stones.

[9.43] Siyona: I see.

[9.46] Dr. Sri Hari: Smart Girl.

[9.48] Siyona: I just loved the conversation I had with my favorite doctor. Thank you, Dr. Hari, for answering all these questions.

[9.55] Dr. Sri Hari: Oh, thank you Siyona, to get me onboard for your Little Mind Chats.

[10.00] Siyona: Thank You. I’m more convinced now than ever, that eating healthy is the best thing for us to do at this age. Sssshhhh……” DON’T TELL MY MOTHER” 😊. If you have more questions, you could grab this lovely doctor at few different hospitals like the Ramaiah Group of Hospitals, Family hospital and Shirdi Sai Hospital. Before we end this episode, I would like to ask you a question. Now that you have listened to this episode, how do you feel about eating healthy good? If you have an answer to my question, you know where to go. You can get in touch with by my email: siyona@littlemindchats.com. WhatsApp me on +916366305959 or leave your comments on the “get involved page”, on my website littlemindchats.com. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Meet you in the next one. Bye.