Why you need CAKE for celebrations

Cake is a form of sweet food made from refined flour, sugar, and other ingredient, that is usually baked. Earlier, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate, and that share features with other desserts suchas pastries, meringues, custards, and pies.[i]

 

The most commonly used cake ingredients include refined flour, sugar(both are high in calories), eggs(adds cholesterol and that’s how even blood test report of vegetarians shows elevated cholesterol level with high + regular intake of cakes!!) , butter (fattening) or oil or margarine (even worst), a liquid, and leavening agents, such as baking soda or baking powder. Common additional ingredients and flavourings include dried, candied, or fresh fruit, nuts, cocoa, and extracts such as vanilla(further addition of calories), with numerous substitutions for the primary ingredients. Cakes can also be filled with fruit preserves, nuts or dessert sauces (like pastry cream), iced with buttercream or other icings, and decorated with marzipan, piped borders, or candied fruit.

Why cakes are so common to cut and required in all you celebrations. This is something society norms now, as standard will diminish without 3 floors, 5 floors cake or you just want to ape the west. Birthday celebrations, marriage anniversary, ring ceremony, baby born, now some families are only finding the reason to bring cake at home so they will celebrate pets birthday too with cake. Even celebrations of our traditional festivals are having cakes instead of traditional dishes.

Culture rich Indians have associated food with season called ‘Ritucharya’, and every festival had its particular dish which was grown in that season and therefore was healthy for our system. For e.g. celebration of Makar-sankrati with ‘Til-gud’. As makar-sankranti comes in month of January, season winters, intake of til-gud was suggested to give calcium, essential oils from sesame seeds which help in prevention of pain related to bones such as back pain, knee pain etc. as such kind of pain increases in winters. So, traditionally we had this practice to make at home but now we are clinging to cheapest way to celebrate – cake which is devoid of nutrients, gives no nourishment but increases obesity.

If we can celebrate festivals according to seasons why can’t other occasions like birthdays, marriage anniversary with dish according to season. For e.g.:

·       March – June month: Mango barfi, mango lassi etc.

·       July – October: Modak, flaxseed laddu, besan laddu etc.

·       November – February: Dry fruits dish, Gujiyas, Tilgud etc. 

th  These are healthy options, retains nutrients which gives nutrition at cellular level of our body.

Now even lower middle class and lower class population can afford the cake which was once known to be rich class food. Therefore obesity is a global issue now. Further long term ingestion of refined products causes constipation, GUT dysbiosis, weight gain, fat deposit around belly, problem with insulin sensitivity and diabetes; worst situations where products made with refined flours start adding toxins in our body.

Refined flours made from refined wheat for cakes have 0 nutrients as shown below:

Component	Whole wheat	Refined wheat
Bran per cent	14	Below 0.1
Germ per cent	2.5	Below 0.1
Total dietary fiber per cent	13	3
Insoluble dietary fiber per cent	11.5	1.9
Zinc	29	8
Iron	35	13
Vitamin B6	7.5	1.4
Selenium	0.006	0.02
Folic acid	0.57	0.11
Total minerals per cent	1.8	0.6

If the refined wheat is losing all essential nutrients, you can imagine how nutrient deficit products will be made out of refined flours. We love and buy processed foods (usually made with refined flours) because it appeals to taste + they are rich in several nutrients (marketed to trap health conscious people) but we forget to check the nutrition information at the back of products.

False labeling

 Toxin comes in body through all unhealthy products and once it enters the body it goes nowhere; all the toxins gathered from processed foods such as saturated oils, colors, artificial sweeteners, emulsifiers, refined palm oil, acidity regulator, anticaking agent etc. will stick to the linings of large intestine and causes thousands of disease to rise such as constipation, piles, skin problem and low immunity.

MSG, E319, E500, E452(i), E150a, E296 these agents further deteriorate our health in same fashion with double attack unless your body knows how to throw them out of body and your system is healthy + strong enough to do so. We all are blessed with GUT linings and the benefit it provides for overall wellbeing but we love to spoil it as the gratification of tongue is in center and goal to achieve.

PFA labeling act warns that the package, label or advertisement of edible oils and fats should not use expressions like ‘super-refined’, ‘micro refined’ ‘double refined’ ‘anti-cholesterol’, ‘soothing to heart’ or ‘fat free’.[ii] But I am sure most of us have seen such kind of labels on oil packaging. 

 

Therefore awareness is the key for everyone, because you know value of your health and life than any product company.

Takeaways:

Stop intake of refined flour preparations like cake, pastries etc. as they are devoid of nutrients.

We should switch to traditional dishes and preparations for celebrations.

Exclude intake of packaged products made from refined flour.

Stop relying on products claiming healthy for you, start reading labels for information.

 

References:

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[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cake

[ii] https://indiankanoon.org/doc/61800811/