Healthy Living

Why are you here?” she asked.

I told her I’d been sick for a long time. The first week I had a fever, fol­lowed by a cough in the sec­ond and third week that just wouldn’t go away. I didn’t know it that morn­ing I vis­ited the doc­tor, but later that night I’d have another fever.

After she checked me out, I asked her if there was any­thing I could take that could make me bet­ter. Some kind of sup­ple­ment perhaps?

Well, the most impor­tant thing you can do is watch what you eat.”

And that was all she said on the mat­ter. Wise doctor.

Food is the best med­i­cine. There really isn’t any­thing more impor­tant than the food we give our bod­ies. There is no mag­i­cal sup­ple­ment to make up for what we eat every­day; if we eat well, there wouldn’t be a need for any sup­ple­men­ta­tion. The ques­tion then was; how was I eating?

After done quite a bit of read­ing on diet through the ways, one way to answer that ques­tion seemed to be: It depends on who you ask. Browse through the diet and nutri­tion sec­tion of a book­store and you’re likely to go nuts on the width and breadth of con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion. One camp swears by the veg­e­tar­ian diet, oth­ers on a meat-rich diet, some say fat is good for you, some say fat will kill you. Eat­ing raw is the best way. Or not. Milk builds your bones. Unless you’re lac­tose intol­er­ant. Cho­les­terol is bad for you. Bad cho­les­terol is a myth. Eat like the Oki­nawans. But not white rice, as refined grain is bad for you.

Burger Bench & Bar

January 2, 2010

in Healthy Living

Back in August of 2009 I wrote that I wanted to eat bet­ter; that inspired by Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cot­tage I wanted to eat foods that were as real and unprocessed as possible.

I think I may just have found a mother-lode today.

Burger Bench & Bar, found on the first floor of Orchard Cineleisure, is a fast food burger joint quite unlike any other. Accord­ing to them, their burger pat­ties ‘are always oddly shaped’ because they’re hand-made, and they believe that ‘fast food does not have to be processed by machines or arti­fi­cially flavored.’

Unprocessed, hand-made food com­ing in the shape of a burger – one of my favorite foods ever – I am so in. And, I am lucky to report, the most impor­tant part didn’t dis­ap­point; I had the mush­room beef burger and it was deli­cious.

The mushroom beef burger, absolutely delicious.

The mush­room beef burger, absolutely delicious.

It was pricier than a typ­i­cal fast-food meal at S$8 a burger, an extra S$1 for potato and radish chips, and S$2.80 for a drink. But you know what, I’d rather pay a lit­tle extra to know that I’m eat­ing some­thing real – not some­thing that’s been pumped full of chem­i­cals and dinged up in a microwave. Good stuff, I will be back, and if you’re in the neigh­bor­hood, go check it out!

No preservatives, no MSG, no processed meat? Booyah!

No preser­v­a­tives, no MSG, no processed meat? Booyah!

My Food & I

August 28, 2009

in Healthy Living

If you’re won­der­ing about it from my veg­e­tar­ian posts, no, I haven’t become a vegetarian.

What drew me to explore veg­e­tar­ian restau­rants is what I’ve learned about food these last few months, which made me look for places that serve nutri­tious and envi­ron­men­tally friendly foods.

This post is about that learn­ing jour­ney, but I want to warn you that it’s slightly over 2000 words long. If you don’t want to go through all that, Mark Bittman sum­ma­rizes the impor­tant points in his much more enter­tain­ing TED talk, which will only take you 19 min­utes to watch.

Liv­ing the Life

It all kick-started for me when a friend intro­duced me to British chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s TV show River Cot­tage. I instantly fell in love with it.

In 1997, Hugh moved from the big city to the coun­try­side for an exper­i­ment in self-sufficiency. He learned how to grow his own crops, rear his own ani­mals and every episode he took the best advan­tage of these beau­ti­ful har­vests, using his culi­nary skills to whip up delec­table dishes. Here’s a taste of the first episode:

Watch­ing River Cot­tage made me real­ize how far removed I was from where my food came from. Whereas Hugh grew and slaugh­tered his own meat for exam­ple, I thought of my meat com­ing from the super­mar­ket in clear plas­tic wraps. The sources of my food were intel­lec­tual facts in my head, but never some­thing I had expe­ri­enced first­hand, and it made me inter­ested to learn more about food and where it came from.

Look­ing through the Sin­ga­pore Veg­e­tar­ian Food Guide I got the other day from my veg­e­tar­ian syn­chronic­ity, I decided to try the Liv­in­Greens restau­rant along Beach Road for din­ner today.

I thor­oughly enjoyed an avo­cado salad (the avo­cado spread was great), a potato wedges starter (deli­cious with the dip) and the mango sushi (crunchy and full of fla­vor) with my girl­friend. Also had a cof­fee sub­sti­tute called orzo for the first time, it’s made from roasted bar­ley and had a sat­is­fy­ingly sim­i­lar taste to a warm cup of cof­fee. This is all part of my recent drive to eat healthy and be healthier.

This next part’s gonna sound kinda sappy and out of point, but when­ever I have a great meal out with the peo­ple I love, I feel like the luck­i­est per­son in the entire world.

I was attend­ing a PDR (Per­sonal Defense Readi­ness) class this evening near my work­place, and think­ing of what to have for din­ner I was sick of the usual unhealthy food choices in the area, and in my life in general.

Want­ing to find bet­ter places to eat, I searched online and found veg­e­tar­ian Yes Nat­ural restau­rant just a short drive away (I’d eaten an oily chicken rice din­ner just a few meters away and never sus­pected a health­ier option was just around the corner!).

After park­ing, I walked in the place and an Indian gen­tle­man and I reached the only small table left at the same time, so we agreed to share it. He was quite friendly and we started talk­ing, he shared that he was a life-long veg­e­tar­ian, and I told him about my quest to find health­ier places to eat.

Lo and behold, he turns out to be a mem­ber of the Veg­e­tar­ian Soci­ety of Sin­ga­pore, whips out from his bag an extra copy of the Sin­ga­pore Veg­e­tar­ian Food Guide he’d helped to com­pile, and gives it to me!

How cool is that!

Note: This is a short post to remind myself that not all my blog posts need to be long and lov­ingly slaved over, but can also just be sim­ple updates on my life for my friends. Namaste, friends.