Many people think that healthy takeaway food means simply avoiding a burger and fries or KFC chicken. Often, ethnic foods such as Chinese or Indian are seen as the healthy option – perhaps because they don’t come with a side order of fries and a coke.
Unfortunately, it’s a nutritional minefield out there, and things are rarely what they seem.
I am a great fan of Indian food – so here’s my take on ‘healthier options’ when eating Indian.Dairy Fat
Most curries are made with either cream or ghee. This will obviously vary from chef to chef and the menu on offer. Ghee is essentially clarified butter (unsalted butter is simmered until water has boiled off, the surface is spooned off discarding the milk solids at the bottom).
There are some that claim pure ghee has health benefits – however I suspect that most ghee used in modern Indian restaurants is probably a different version (perhaps vegetable-based) than the traditional pure butter version.
Garlic Naan
Fattening and Calorie Dense
A typical meal will also be accompanied with a flatbread and copious amounts of rice. Most people choose a naan (nan) bread. A naan is made from white flour, and is usually brushed with butter or ghee just before serving.
There are other breads such as roti, paratha, chappati, and all the variations that go with them. Typically a roti is made from wheat flour or a whole wheat flour blend.
Effectively you have a very calorie-dense meal with very little in the way of vegetables.
A diet like this will be fattening for most people. However there are choices you can make to eat healthier Indian food.
How to Make an Indian Takeaway Healthier
I used to get a chicken curry with naan and rice. That was enough to do me for two meals. Nowadays I’m even more choosy.
Once a fortnight I go out by myself and eat an indian meal at an incredibly leisurely pace. I have sat in the restaurant while others have come and gone. This is the anti-thesis of the fast food mentality.
I order a selection of entrees and sides:
- A chicken tikka entree. Typically this is pieces of boneless skinless chicken marinaded in a varying array of flavors. This is not served in a sauce – it’s just the chicken.
- Roti. Often the roti breads are a far smaller serving size than the naans and use wholemeal flour.
- Salad. I ask for as large a serving as they will make. In most places the salads are delicious, and usually consist of a mix of cucumber, capsicum, cabbage, carrot, etc. Only once has a restaurant looked bewildered at my salad request. They ended up serving me with what looked like some quickly thawed frozen veg from a bag!
- Sometimes I’ll get a glass of red wine.
That’s it. Due to the pace of the meal (and the level of protein) I feel completely satisfied. Other options include vegetarian curries. You just need to ask.
Never Enough
Just last week, in the time it took me to consume the above, a couple near me consumed a creamy curry and rice each, a naan each, asked for extra rice, and asked for an extra naan. An astonishing amount of food, eaten in a very short space of time (you tend to notice these things when eating alone!).
We really do need to re-learn the lost art of enjoying food.
I think we should listen to the INDIAN people posting because I’m pretty sure they would know better than any American who somehow thinks they are an authority figure on the subject. Indian people grew up eating Indian food…So they know what’s authentic.
Florence, Lakshmi, Manjunath
I am no expert but over the years i have realized a few things:
1. Forget calories. Eat fresh, home cooked food as far as possible.
I did this once for a month without expecting any wt loss. I ate basic rice+ veg/lentil curry in the afternoon and night which i cooked with 1 to 2 teaspoons coconut oil. The cooked rice would fit 1 to 1.5 servings of a bowl. I wud eat a snack mostly sweet, in the evening and breakfast as cereal with milk and tea/coffee with sugar. Surprisingly, i noticed that i lost a few kilos without doing too much exercise other than the 10min to and fro walk to the station and some yoga stretches. Just my personal experience.
2. Always sit and eat in a relaxed way; not walking and eating. Eat when hungry.
3. Remove processed food as far as possible; if you crave for a sweet or something eat it, but make sure your main meals are healthy and unprocessed. Eat fruits, nuts, etc.
4. When you eat regularly like this, eventually you can feel the loss . When you touch ur tummy for e.g u feel that your are losing inches. For me, when i have eaten a lot of processed food i notice my tummy has grown fat.
5. Exercise but start slow and build up if you have never done before; don’t start with a big bang and then quit.
I wud say losing wt and eating healthy is a personal journey, what works for my body will not work for another. But this you would find out for urself. Pls do not blindly follow all the fad diets which are there on the internet.
Coconut oil and unprocessed butter/ghee are not unhealthy!! That is a concept promoted by the West and studies have proven that coconut oil is one of the healthiest oils in the world. See the book ‘The Miracle of Coconut Oil’, i forget the author’s name. Also Ayurveda says ghee calms the nerves. so you will see in South Indian meals, a little ghee is added to the rice. Yes of course if you eat too much butter,oil, etc or for that matter even too muc rice, wheat etc you will gain weight…The key is moderation but please by no means avoid coconut oil/butter. In fact since the introduction of vegetable oils diseases have increased in the modern world!!
I can tell you there is nothing healthy about Indian food, well at least what you get in restaurants in rich Western countries. Traditional Indian food is nothing like what you get in restaurants. A typical Indian meal is roti, some kind of curried or spiced vegetable(usually a dry one), a lenti soup and rice, that is typical Indian food. The kind of food you get in a curry house is not healthy at all. In fact one full plate of food from an Indian restaurant buffet has as much as 3000 calories!!!
Chinese food in Western countries is just as bad, with a bigger emphasis on meat, deep frying, and fat. Take out Chinese in the West is horrible.
I think in general restaurant food is not healthy, it tastes good for a reason, restaurants add in unhealthy things like fats and sugars to make you want to eat and enjoy it.
Even Mediterranean style take aways who people assume are healthy are not.
If you want a good healthy meal you will have to make it yourself or if you are rich get a personal chef.
pplz shud just eat rite and go out there and get ative insead of all these diets that are runing thier bodys bt then again its ok :p
You have it quite wrong. Authentic Indian food is way more balanced and nutritional than what you portray it to be in your comment here. A meal is a balance of carbs, proteins, vitamins, minerals and fibre, etc. And you are completely wrong about the amount of oil used. True that some dishes do require more oil than others, but that is mostly the case in food cooked during celebrations. I’m sure it is less than the amount of cheese and cream added in Italian cuisine that seems to be a staple in America!
I agree. The person who said that is wrong.
try indian food & it will drive u crazy.
i can garuntee u dat its much better den any american or chinese cusine.
i will suggest all of them who have never tried our nutritious & finger licking food dat they must have it.
Whoever said you eat either rice or bread, but not both, is quite wrong. You don’t eat them together, that’s true, but it’s very common to first have bread and meat/veggies/lentils, and then have rice with meat/veggies/lentils.
Masalaa Chas is NOT south Indian
. In south India its called Moru and doesnt have the masalas (jeera etc) that Masala chas has.