Tag Archives: diet

Wholesome Rice!!

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Rice is the staple diet of majority of world’s population. Asian people mostly eat rice with vegetables and lentils. Annapurna is the Hindu god of rice. Her name comes from the Sanskrit word for rice, “anna”. She is often depicted with a rice spoon in her hand.

What is the rice? It’s white part is the carbohydrates: precursor of sugar of the energy. The colour of rice comes from its outer shell or ‘bran’ which holds much of its nutritional value. It’s the bran or the coating which contains minerals and other micronutrients.

When rice is processed (milled) much of the nutritional value is lost when the bran is removed. The result is pure white rice which is high in energy(starch) and low in micronutrients. Polished rice are not good for the diabetic people.

Because milled rice has lots of energy but few vitamins and minerals, it must be eaten with other foods to get a proper people balanced diet.

Purple Sunbird: Beauty in Small Package

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When winter gives way to spring season, the dormant nature wakes up. Every plant and tree begin to bear new leaves. There is a riot of flowers and many of the birds come back to gorge on flower nectar and other insects which also visit the flowers and plants.

If you happen to be in some garden and near flowering bushes, you will hear calls of a bird but will have trouble to locate the bird itself. This bird is very small in size. It is due to its peculiar sounds it makes and its purple colour, you can locate it. In fact the purple colour is of males. It is even more difficult to pinpoint the females which are entirely different in colour. The bird is only 10 to 12 centimetres long. It has a long curved beak. The color looks different from different angles. Depending on the amount of light reflected because color is due to iridescence. Most of the times, it looks black.

Female sunbird is of olive color. The female and male are so different in appearance that you will think them as two different birds.

If it is not possible to get the nectar directly, they puncture the sepal near the nectar to reach the nectar. Although they predominantly survive on nectar of flowers, they can also eat insects particularly when the breeding season is on and requirements of food high.

Although they resemble hummingbirds but they reach for nectar after perching themselves unlike hummingbirds.

The bird is very agile and darts here and there from one flowery bush to another. Hence it is very difficult to take good photos with ordinary camera.

 

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Sitting on a branch

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Piercing the pod for food

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Female Sunbird

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Female sunbird sitting on a wire

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With an insect in its mouth

 

Calories or calories??

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There are millions of people for whom it is almost impossible to arrange two square meals for the families. So they don’t have any choice of what they eat. On the other hand, there are affluent people for whom what to eat or what not to eat is a big problem. They are grappling with obesity problems which are the precursor of so many lethal ailments like heart attack, blood pressure, backache and diabetes. They are always conscious of the calorific value of the foods they consume.

Any student of science or health conscious person is aware that calorie is unit of energy. Our bodies continuously require energy to properly perform normal functions of the body. Even while doing nothing, our body consumes energy called basal metabolic rate.

Calorie and calorie are slightly different. In nutrition science, Calorie with capital C is equal to 1000 calories. Sometimes, Calorie is also called kilo calorie. 1 Calorie is the amount of energy it takes to raise 1 kilogram of water 1 degree centigrade at sea level.

The calorie content of foods consumed  by a human being was determined in the late 1800s by Wilbur O. Atwater, an agricultural chemist. He built a device called a “Respiration Calorimeter” to make direct measurements of heat released by humans from the food they consumed. At 4 feet by 8 feet, Atwater’s calorimeter was big enough to allow a person to step into it. The device measured the amount of heat released by that person, along with the amount of oxygen consumed and carbon dioxide given off.

Wilbur Olin Atwater

Wilbur Olin Atwater (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Using this device, Atwater was able to measure the precise amount of energy contained in thousands of food items. He found that carbohydrates and proteins are worth 4 Calories per gram and fats about 9 Calories per gram. This 4-9-4 system is how labels are determined today. In some cases, dietary fiber is subtracted from the total carbohydrate count because it is assumed that it provides no nutritional calories. Also, alcohol, if present, is accounted for as 7 Calories per gram.

Basal metabolism reactions occurring inside our bodies consume 70% of the calories. Rest 30% if not consumed shall be deposited in the body mostly in the form of fat.