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Krish Ashok

@krishashok

Jun 5

You can read your entire evolutionary history in what your body does to food. Every gene you carry is a note your ancestors left about what they ate. And what we eat today has left no note yet, because we haven't had time to adapt to it

Start 100 million years ago. Our monkey ancestors ate insects. We still carry chitinase, the enzyme that breaks down insect shells, except ours barely works now. The leftover capability is also why people with shellfish allergies also tend to have dust-mite allergies

60 million years ago, our monkey ancestors started eating fruit. Almost every animal makes its own vitamin C. We don't. A gene called GLO broke in our primate ancestors and never got fixed, because fruit gave us vitamin C for free. That broken gene is why scurvy exists and why we need citrus in our diets

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Krish Ashok

@krishashok

May 10

India makes more milk than any country on Earth. Italy has 400 cheeses. India has roughly zero aged ones. Ever wondered why?

What India does have: paneer (acid-set, fresh), chhena (softer, fresh), khoa (reduced milk solids), dahi, lassi, buttermilk, ghee. So, it’s either fresh acid coagulated, fat-preserved or liquid ferments. No aged solids.

Aged cheese exists because European peasants needed calories in winter. It’s a way to preserve a nutritionally complete food (milk) when plant sources of food are scarce. The idea is to concentrate nutrients 10x, reduce water, and store for months. India, on the other hand, had year-round milking and no winter to speak of

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Krish Ashok

@krishashok

Apr 25

India has a strange blind spot when it comes to eggs. For starters, we have, against all common sense, declared it non-veg, which automatically comes attached with moral baggage, and then on top of that, even in families that eat meat, the idiotic idea that eggs are “heating” (taseer) reduces its daily/weekly consumption.

From first principles:
An egg is a complete biological starter kit. Protein, fats, micronutrients, packed in a self-contained, cheap, scalable unit.

If you had to design a “default human food” from scratch, you’d find it difficult to find something that looks too different from an egg

In a country where the term “death by carbs” literally describes our current state of affairs when it comes to diabetes, eggs are the easiest way to fix this imbalance. It requires no fancy supply chains and no expensive inputs. Highest quality protein at the lowest price point per gram of protein

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Krish Ashok

@krishashok

May 31, 2024

There is no single word in the world of food that elicits more fear and loathing than FAT. It doesn't help that the scientific establishment has thoroughly confused the layperson over the last 70 years with conflicting messages about dietary fats 🧵

For starters, the sugar lobby shifted the blame to fats in the 1960s nytimes.com/2016/09/13/wel…

Then the food industry got reckless with partial hydrogenation that resulted in trans fats, and interestingly enough, "trans fats are bad" is pretty much the only thing almost everyone agrees on when it comes to fat. Funnily enough: most people don't realise that the actual level of the problem is quite small now pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34342900/

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Krish Ashok

@krishashok

Mar 20, 2024

A few protein facts to cut through the Influenza led Infogeddon 🧵

Most gymbros are overthinking protein and most old folks are not getting enough for basic body maintenance. Surveys regularly reveal that more than 80% of Indians do not get enough protein in their diet. Older women are often the worst affected

Many people overestimate the amount of protein in dal while also not realising that a balanced vegetarian meal can get you all the protein you need.

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Krish Ashok

@krishashok

Mar 3, 2023

What did people eat before European colonisation?

Here is one specific vegetarian example from Tamil Nadu. This meal is typically made once a year as part of a religious celebration to remember ancestors

Unsurprisingly, none of these dishes contain the following ingredients: Chillies 🌶️ , Tomato 🍅, Potato 🥔 , Cabbage, cauliflower, beans, carrot 🥕 etc. Because all of them arrived post-colonisation.

Interestingly, no coriander as well. It is estimated that coriander arrived with the Greeks (circa Alexander), so while it is tempting to believe that these dishes pre-date that, there is no corroborating evidence.

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