You say counting calories is not correct, why?

I am an analytical chemist who understands a lot about these estimations in food industry or in environment or in the medicine or anywhere. There is nobody to control all these because most of the national nutrition associations work closely with the food industry.

I furnish you some of the values which give you some important information. Potatoes had in 1978, 87 calories/100g, but it was 68 calories in 1990, carrots 1978, 35 calories and in 1990 only 24. Ragi, in 1978, 240 calories and in 1990 only 194 and avocado, 240 in 1978 and in 1990, 205 calories, if we measure now it may be also different. It can be because of modern analytical methods or the allowed fluctuations in the measurements. Counting calories can make one desperate because what you count is always not correct. Consider the amount and it is easy to calculate and the success is almost pre-planned.

When I buy some processed food I found a lot of information in the label, but what are the important ones for me?

The calories present in that food, fat, sugar and salt content are important. Moreover, information about the chemicals as additives or colouring agents and the nature of the food, whether it is radiated or genetically manipulated.

All other matters are only advertisement for the industry. Many western countries try to make this a law, the lobbyists are working against this in many countries, but to our surprise Great Britain has this law as a traffic light system, green is good, yellow, not very good and red may be a colour of love but it is the worst. If we can achieve this it is easy for you to avoid all these bad foods for our health, no wonder the food industry is against this. Only the knowledge and thus avoiding these foods has a deciding effect on the industries because only the unsold products make them to change their policy and products.

Are you not a friend of food industry?

We need food industry but, the food industry should also keep up their responsibility to the society and produce food where we know what the constituents are.

Nowadays, if a sheep or any animal is butchered, there is no waste as food except the skin. The chemicals make even the waste from the animal tastes well to our tongue.

The animal feed is worse than this, e.g. animal feed caused the Mad Cow disease in England. The industry heated the animal feed only to 70 degree C instead of 121 degree C to save money. You have to spend money to dispose the waste properly, but, if it is in the processed food, the industry can earn more money and this is our fate. You can change this by eating fresh food and it is worth to do so.

If the industry stands for its responsibility to our health and use less chemicals I would be glad to recommend its products.