Zimbabwe' No.1 Food & Recipe Website
Top Diet Trends Of 2015 You Need To Know!
By Amin Ali
2015 will be the year of liberal diets – no food curfews or flavourless regimes. Just learn to make the right choices. Here are the best five you need to know about.
1. Good Lard:
Blanket bans have never worked. So how could an absolute veto on fat survive? First of all, fatless food is flavourless. Secondly, the body needs some amount of good fats to function properly; finally, weight gain isn’t always about fat consumption. It could be a high salt or sugar diet too. So, this year will be the year of fat resurgence. Food writers, chefs, restaurants and health experts will go back to the golden age when fats were not all that bad. You may still be wary of a binge, but it won’t harm to dig into fatty meats, ghee, coconut oil, creams, creamy yogurts or full fat cheeses once a while. Just watch out for good fats on the market shelves. Various theories suggesting `saturated fats are bad for you’ have been given a serious simmering by counter researches. The biggest blow to these was journalist Nina Theicholz’s book The Big Fat Surprise, establishing that fat intake is not solely responsible for cholesterol and heart disease. In fact, a study in reputed journal Annals of Internal Medicine stated that lack of saturated fats in the body could be damaging.
No wonder Indian chefs are going back to greasing their dinner plates – from lacing their foods with cocoa butter, grapeseed, avocado and pumpkin oil to stir-frying in natural fats. “You just can’t cook without fats. Most cuisines involve oils and fats for either cooking or dressing to extract the best flavour out of the ingredients. Good quality unsalted butter, flavoured butters and oils with high smoking point will be extensively used along with duck or chicken fats this year for French and Italian preparations,” says chef Sujan S of Olive.
Chef Vikram Khatri of Guppy by Ai, a specialist in Asian cuisine, insists that every meal must comprise at least 8-10 per cent fats. In order to get this balance right in your daily diet, he cites the example of Indian, Asian and European cuisines that anyway use oil, cheese and even animal fats in the preparation. Khatri also recommends extra virgin linseed and sesame oils as healthy options.
2. DASH
(Dietary Approaches to Stop Hyper tension): This diet plan was originally developed as an eating style to help lower blood pressure. Soon, it emerged as a viable and popular plan for weight loss that could be followed for life. High on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, poultry, fish, low-fat dairy and nuts, it is a diet plan that lets you lose weight without making you feel you are on strict diet.
3. Paleo Diet:
Want to stay lean, strong and energetic? Then why not eat like a caveman? An acronym for the Paleolithic Age or the Stone Age, when man first used tools, a true Paleo diet helps cleanse the body of transfats and sugars. Lean and undercooked meats, seafood, nuts and seeds, lots of wild plants and healthy natural fats form the core of this diet. Processed food, starch, grains, legumes and alcohol are a complete no.
4.No Fixed Diet:
This is a diet plan you’d love to follow. No forbidden food or perfect cuisine. One diet doesn’t suit all body types.
The safest bet is just to eat seasonal produce and local ingredients.
5. Ingredient Vacation:
Do you also give up salts and fats when your doctor asks you to avoid sugar? This diet plan lets you give up or cut down on only that one ingredient which is affecting your health or metabolism. This lets you eat without making drastic changes in the diet.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
