Hi, I look forward for some Good Tips as well as benefical suggestions on the following condition of my mama, especially from the specialist in this field respected Mamta,

My mama has undergone open heart surgery and doctors recommended her to be very careful from now ownwards regarding her diet.we tend to consume lot of oil while making sabji's and curry's in our homes.

How should I go or what changes should I make while making sabji's curries,meat,daal, from Normal way to specific diet that had No/very less cholestrol, No salt, (has to put little though for taste),very little Oil, etc,

I am not good in cooking I need easy way/steps to keep in mind while making Food for my mama. Doc's recommended to increas intake of Vegs, fruits,food -No cholestrol ,No salt,No fat, etc.., I am confused how to make food in such a way that sounds so ugly and tasteless.....which my mama will simply refuse to see let alone eating it.... any help suggestions would be greatly appreciated from all.

Thank you,

I can see that foods not cooked in a lot of oil must seem ugly to you, but I doubt whether they're necessarily tasteless. Surely there are all sorts of Indian dishes which don't require huge amounts of oil. Most of the Indian dishes we cook have a little oil to fry the onions and spices, but don't contain vast amounts of oil.

You could consider steaming. The Chinese have a huge range of delicious steamed dishes, but your mama might not be acquainted with them, so they might not work for her.

I have a Scottish friend in his sixties who had open heart surgery 10 years ago. He lives well on a Mediterranean diet, and enjoys Indian food too. So it's not necessarily going to be that bad, perhaps.

We use Olive oil rather than Ghee to keep the saturated fats down to a minimum (and use as little as possible when make things)

Hope your Mama is doing well and recovering from her operation.

Olive oil in Indian cooking? I find that weird, but I'm being over-conservative, perhaps.

We cook, and make salads with, olive oil a lot, especially since we have olive trees here in the South of France on the Med coast, and we harvest them each winter for olive oil made in the local mill.

But olive oil is Mediterranean for us, and quite divorced from Indian and Chinese food, which we mostly live on.

Am I being too restrictive here?

Phil

Rwisy

It's absolutely not necessary to use tonnes of oil in cooking most Indian dishes (excepting deep-fried ones, of course) and one does not lose flavour at all. Flavour comes from good quality flavoursome ingredients and spices, not from volume of oil/ fat. Infact, one quickly gets to the point where dishes made with too much oil seem very unattractive with an unpleasant oil slick shimmering on the surface.

The key purpose of the oil in most curries is to fry the onion and spices at the beginning of the process and, provided you keep a careful eye on the pan, and move the ingredients about quickly, so that they do not catch on the bottom of the pan and burn, then you really will not need much oil.

It may also be worth considering exactly which oil to use for cooking - saturated fats are worse for one's health than unsaturated ones. Saturated fats are the ones that increase cholestrol and come primarily from animal sources such as fatty meats, whole fat dairy products etc. Unsaturated fats can protect you from high cholestrol and come primarily from vegetable oils - try and use olive, Canola, and soy oils instead of ghee/ butter/ animal fats.

Whilst it may seem odd to suggest olive oil for Indian cooking a non-virgin olive oil does not have the strong and distinctive flavours of virgin olive oil and will not really impart any strong flavour to the finished dish. We use sunflower oil for most general purposes in our house.

In terms of reducing fat in other areas, you can make sure to buy less fatty cuts of meat from the butchers and make sure you trim off excess fat before cooking. In general, poultry contains less fat than red meats. If you are worried about the meat being less succulent if it contains less fat, do consider cooking it on the bone rather than boneless and this increases tenderness in the finished dish.

As for salt - my mum (Mamta) cut salt out from much of what she cooked from when we were young (because of health reasons), using just a small pinch to season at the end and again, one quickly loses the taste for it. Your mama will need to make some compromises for the good of her health and she may miss the salt at first, but she will certainly find herself getting used to the reduction pretty quickly and find herself more able to taste the other spices and flavours that too much salt can actually mask.

You might also want to buy one of those books that gives you a breakdown on various raw ingredients so that you can better understand which foods are high in cholestrol and which are not. A food can be high in fat without being high in cholestrol and vice versa so it's important to investigate this and choose your ingredients accordingly. For example, fish, beef, pork and turkey are much lower in cholestrol than lamb. Eggs, as you probably know, are very high in cholestrol as are most dairy products.

In terms of reducing meat overall and increasing fruit and vegetable there's really no easy answer other than changing the balance of dishes you create for a meal. Your mama may not like this but sometimes "harsh love" is necessary. I'm sure she will understand the reasons behind the changes.

Hope this helps,

Kavita

Hope your mama is keeping well. Don't be too frightened, most people make quite good recovery from heart attacks and live for a very long time. I hope that yuor mama is one of these people.

I agree with everythig Kavita says. making changes to your life time of habbits is not easy, but can be done. Moderation and sensible changes are all that is required. I am not sure where you live, but most cardiac units give you a pretty good idea about diet after one recovers. Most countries have a Diabetic Association website of their own, which gives good nutritional advise.

Take care

Mamta

reply to Phil

... but Olive Oil is not English so maybe I shouldn't be using it at all and just living off a diet of fish and chips, bacon and eggs, pot noodle and pork scratchings.....

However I like many varied foods but I'm also aware of health issues (many years in my past concentrating on what I ate as part of my weight training)So I love curries but don't see any harm in substituting a less saturated fat ...

I use Olive oil for all my cooking.. even frying eggs (on the odd occasion I have fried eggs), and I eat toast and sandwiches without butter or margerine on them... it may not be everyones taste but its my way of making things a bit healthier...

:-)

Hi Askcy,

I guess I'm just less adventurous than you when it comes to cooking. I love olive oil, especially the stuff we get from our local olice oil mill once we've harvested our olives each year.

But it belongs firmly in the Mediterranean side of our cooking. For Indian and Chinese, we use peanut or sunflower oil. Are those less healthy than olive oil?

Cheers

Phil

Olive oil is supposed to be second only to that new oil that Walkers Crisps have started using ...

A vegetarian friend once told me to do all my Chinese stir-frying in olive oil, since other oils 'released free radicals'.

It sounded like a news announcement about emprisoned far-left political activists. I've completely forgotten what is was supposed to mean, and I carried on regardless. Perhaps I was mistaken.

Phil

HI, Thank you all for your suggestions and advice.I will try to keep them In mind while choosing and preparing Food for mama.

Kavita, thank you for explaining in detail, It was very helpful and much needed.

Rwisy

hi,

hope your mama recovers qiuckly. my mother in law also went through a tough phase with heart attack and surgery...

u can try salads with no fat salad dressings, dishes made with tofu (thai)which helps with good cholestrol, wheat bread without sugar and olive oil for any dish but little in quantity, fruits and steamed vegetables and a bit of exercise and 100 percent care with love and affection where they are not looked after like patients they recover faster...these worked for us hope they work for u too...

all the best

rgds,

aartee

use rape seed oil, bettere than olive oil for cholestrol,widly available (tesco)and take the higher temperature and has a 'familiar' taste.