Keywords

This book which contains 14 chapters discusses the various aspects of food and human behavior. Many a time, we underestimate the crucial role food plays on one’s behavior/character. One observes many “who live to eat,” and some others, “who eat to live.” There is a world of difference between the two, as the readers would note from details given in Chap. 13, which chronicles the outcome of the first paradox of life “living to eat.” To keep the record straight, one would observe that many of modern-day illnesses could be traced to the wrong eating habit one develops over the years, in one’s lifetime. Indian sages are known, as Vedic books would reveal, to have lived without food for days on end, just subsisting on water. The most illustrative example is set by India’s Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, who observes a fast during 9 days in the holy month of October during Durga Puja, where Goddess Durga, who symbolizes the triumph of truth over evil, is worshipped. Interestingly, during these 9 days, each year, since many past, Shri Modi undertakes this fast. Even during his physically very strenuous and demanding trip to the USA, immediately after he was sworn in as Prime Minister of India, he maintained his 9 days vrath (the word vrath in Sanskrit means fast), subsisting on just fresh lemon juice and plain hot water. The body reacts to the fast. The latest medical evidence shows that even among diabetics, continuous fast over several hours triggers a reaction in the pancreas, which overcomes the “insulin resistance” – the cause being the pancreatic cells become more vigilant and active to adapt to the fasting. Such examples could be multiplied.

I have drawn upon the published work of several of my colleagues working in the area of human nutrition-related behavioral responses. I owe all of them a deep debt of gratitude and to you reader, for that leap of faith, in picking up this book, as the validation of the firm belief of a dedicated and untiring scientist, in the dictum “we are what we eat, let us be healthy and happy in choosing the right food.”