The royal repast
By Alka Kashyap

A king’s breakfast, a common man’s lunch and a poor man’s dinner.

THUS goes the age-old formula recommended by our grannies. Time has proven that we were certainly healtheir, wealthier and wiser in the good old days. Even to-day the dieticians suggest a heavy nourishing breakfast, a moderate lunch and a very light dinner. They follow the diet intake in proportion to physical activity. Hence the emphasis on a heavy breakfast is balanced by the activity throughout the day.

As they say: ‘after breakfast work a while, after lunch sleep a while and after dinner walk a mile.

Strange as it may sound, but according to experts the best time to have heavy stuff, like ‘puri chanas’ is in the morning: If you are having it at any other time of the day, then your health is at stake. On the contrary, those who do not have any breakfast are also harming themselves immensely.

Look around and you will see that breakfast takes a back seat while all the emphasis is either on lunch or more often on dinner. Mornings now-a-day are a mad race against time where one barely manages to snatch a few bites and gobble down a pint of milk. How often have you seen the young ones giving ample time to all the odd jobs rather than sitting down and having their breakfast properly. Health experts shun this habit of gobbling down one’s food. But then who cares? Others who do have a little time, have switched on to a more Westernised breakfast in order to save time for a better purpose.

Venture out a few kilometres away from the hub of the city life and you’ll come across a whole new range of breakfasts being prepared. India has always been a country of diverse traditions with more than 20 different breakfasts being prepared every morning.

The rural Punjabis are thankfully preserving the art of preparing and eating their food in their true traditional way. They are voracious eaters and are the healthiest tribe in India. The secret lies in their sumptuous and wholesome breakfast which forms an important part of their morning routine.

Their day begins with a morning cup of refreshing tea. A recent research has established that the morning cup of tea with milk acts as a buffer against the acids produced during sleep in the stomach. According to experts tea also reduces the heaviness of a meal and helps get the intestinal muscles moving. Soft, fluffy butter churned out from cream leaves behind mouth-watering butter milk that is savoured by every Punjabi, better known as "chaati ki lassi". It is taken either by adding salt or sugar.

They often say: ‘"Lassi te larai jini marzi vadhai jao’". You can keep adding water to lassi and it will still remain lassi.

Then follows the preparation of lip-smacking "missi roti". Fresh beson is added to the newly ground flour with a pinch of salt, ajwain, green chillies, anardana, onion, ginger, garlic and coriander rolled in. Your toasted bread is no match to this fine kingsize roasted roti as far as nourishment is concerned. Many a time the "missi roti" gets replaced by hot, tasty "aloo paranthas" A dash of home-made mango pickle or fresh mint chutney really adds to the taste.

So much for the breakfast and of course lots of physical activity in many parts of Punjab. If, however, you are a worker on a normal work schdule, you, too, need to take in sufficient amount of calories before you leave for work.

An American research has established that bosses who eat little or no breakfast were more irritated at their workplace then others. In fact the study showed that an ampty stomach affected their performance considerably and so they were put on a rugular morning diet to improve their efficiency.

A little justice to our breakfast will ensure a bright start to our day. Whatever we eat has to be in proportion to the activity of the day. Dieticians suggest ample amount of fruits and juices, boiled eggs, paneer, milk and butter as essential ingredients of daily breakfast. It need not be fried stuff but has to be rich in calories. One can choose one’s breakfast items from the diet chart given by an expert.

It is time we changed from a tummy filling routine to a more calorie conscious intake. Let’s do away with those wriggly, scrawny scrambled tit-bits left half-eaten on the table. A moment of peace in the morning will certainly make you walk a mile with a smile.