Lunch on a working Tuesday. Habits that survive a busy week. The unheroic half of eating well.
Everyday eating
How much cooking oil should one person use in a day?
India’s dietary guidelines put added oil and fat at 20–50 g a day depending on how active you are — about 27–30 g on a 2,000 kcal diet. What that is in teaspoons, in a month’s shopping, and where a fried snack fits inside it.
Everyday eating
Why am I so sleepy after lunch every day, and how do I stop it?
The 2 pm slump has three causes stacked on top of each other: a large, carbohydrate-heavy lunch, the glucose rise and dip that follows it, and a body clock that dips in the early afternoon anyway. Two of the three are fixable at the plate. Here is how, and when the sleepiness is a sign to get a blood test.
Everyday eating
I feel weak and hungry all day during the Navratri fast — what should I actually be eating?
Nine days of vrat food is nine days of sabudana if you let it be — and sabudana is starch. Here is what the fasting staples actually carry per 100 g, which combinations keep you full and steady, and how to build a fast that does not end in a 4 pm headache.
Everyday eating
I work in Surat and I want a lunch that survives the commute and the heat.
Local, specific and honest about the constraints — the heat, the commute, the office fridge you do not have, and what a Surat kitchen can and cannot deliver to your desk.
Everyday eating
Healthy food becomes boring after three days.
Healthy food gets boring on about day three. It is nearly always a texture and dressing problem, not a vegetable problem — and both are cheap to fix.
Everyday eating
I don’t know what I’m going to eat tomorrow, so I decide at the last minute and decide badly.
Most people do not have a food problem. They have a 12.40 pm decision problem, repeated five times a week. Move the decision and the problem mostly goes away.
Everyday eating
I need a lunch that survives a desk and doesn’t wreck my afternoon.
The 3 pm crash is a lunch problem, not a sleep problem. Here is what to eat at your desk on a Surat working day — including the four we send out most.