A child can transform a parent’s life in unimaginable ways. Certainly for Malini Saigal, a Delhi-based freelance illustrator and book designer, her son is the pivot around which her life rotates. Her determination, as a single parent, to ensure he always has the best has led her to alter their lives in the most fundamental way—in the food the family eats. Three years ago, she shifted to eating predominantly organic food.
“I see it as an insurance for my son,” she explains. “You keep hearing about pesticides in food, liver damage, arsenic poisoning…he’s a growing boy with a hearty appetite. God forbid if something should happen to him at 35 because of what he is eating now.”
Saigal is not alone in feeling that way if the variety of organic food on display at various grocery stores in the metros is any indication. Until a few years ago, one had to hunt in speciality stores for organic foods—foods grown the age-old, natural way, without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Now they’re easily found in grocery stores. But are they really better for your health?
Chemical damage
“Oh yes, everyone benefits from organic foods,” says Neera Vyas unhesitatingly. As a specialist in preventive cardiology at Delhi’s Escorts Heart Institute, much of her advice to patients is focused on their diets. Various studies have shown that most of the foods we consume today in India is laced, to some degree, with pesticides. As Dr Vyas explains, these are absorbed into the liver. Among the many roles liver plays, one is to be the detox centre of the body. It tries to get rid of fat-soluble pesticides by making them water-soluble, so that they can be eliminated with urine. This process of making them water-soluble involves a lot of enzymes and vitamins in the body, which could have been put to better use if the pesticides had not been there in the first place. This is the easy way.
But often pesticides do not get converted to water-soluble compounds directly. The liver then tries to convert them to intermediary compounds first. These form free radicals—potentially carcinogenic—increasing the risk of cancer, diabetes, blood pressure, and a host of other problems. The advantage of organic foods, therefore, is that such a scenario does not arise at all.
Children benefit most