Eating is complicated

It is rare to see an advert that says buy one Sukuma wiki, get two cabbages free.

BY DR RICHARD AYAH

Watch an ant, foraging. Likely what you see is either a worker or soldier ant. They are the ones given the task for moving out of the nest every day, to scout the environment and look for food.

They do so relentlessly. And they cover quickly a distance, for such small creatures. Ants are blind.

So, they move using smell and noting physical barriers. And they have a sophisticated system to feedback information to the nest. You may have noticed, that sometimes, a larger insect dies and within minutes, ants are swarming the insect body.

Ants can carry away such a body, many times the size of individual ants, in a very short time. It is not difficult to imagine that ants bringing in such a body will find thousands of ants in the nest, waiting to eat what has been brought in. However, at human level we have a problem. As most Kenyans know, there are two kinds of eating.

The food I eat for myself and the other like an ant that I eat for our society. In both instances, it can be very difficult to hide, when there is excess eating. One kind leads to direct individual medical problems.

Unfortunately, our society has not paid a lot of attention to what it perceives as an individual problem. So there is no police, detectives or specialised agencies to manage how and what we eat.

Instead, the organisations that exist are more concerned about making sure you don’t get poisoned when eating, get short changed when buying food or eat something, thinking it is something else. Think donkey steak. But overall, the assumption is that you will know when you have enough to eat. This is not always the case.

A good Christmas for those who have, summarises the problem. How much you eat depends a lot on the society that you are living in, but also on your individual genetics.

Some people can pile their plates with food, eat every last bit, add more, and then sit back waiting for the next meal, on time. Others complain loudly before every meal, how they eat so little, and only eat this particular food on Tuesdays or Sundays, or they will not eat at all. Somewhere in between are most people who indulge around the holiday period, given the chance, but otherwise the economy is real.

‘Know’ enough is the problem because society gives us cues that food sellers, especially those selling junk food, food that is low in nutrition, but high in profits, use to signal to us to buy more than we need. It is rare to see an advert that says buy one Sukuma wiki, get two cabbages free. So how do you tell, when you have had enough to eat?

If you are the carnivorous type, and weigh yourself as you order your kilo of choma, wet fry, ugali and mukimo, then immediately weigh yourself after eating the said meal, then you will weigh more, by roughly that kilo. You then have two choices. Take a walk to burn some calories or settle back to wash down the meal with more calories.

Take option two and eventually there will be weight gain. But the weight gain is not the same as what you have eaten for the following reasons. Depending on the food, a quarter to a third of it might be water. So, over the next few hours as you talk and pass urine, that will be released. But many people talk less after a heavy meal. Africans are famous for not talking while they eat. A small portion of the food is dietary fibre, that will pass as stool, which is why food rich in fibre is good for you.

But about half the food by weight is usually absorbed by the body. More, if it is highly processed food. Then the body has a task. Will you use the digested food immediately or later? The decision is made in about 45 minutes. What cannot be used starts being stored by the liver, first as glycogen, then glycerides.

Our fat is stored as triglycerides. In the cosmetic and industrial world, glyceride is called glycerol. Pure glycerol has many applications in both the food and cosmetic industry.

This is because it is virtually colourless and attracted to water chemically. So, it is a good filler. Check the label of some hair products, some ultra processed foods and you will see the ingredient glycerol. But the glycerol used in industry is often synthetic, originally from petrochemicals.

Basically, if you eat excess food, you get this filler compound that pads the body. Eventually slows you down physically and blood pressure goes up. Is there a solution to this? There is. Eat just enough, then stop, pause in the middle of the meal, have a conversation.

In other words, being transparent when eating is a good thing, both individually and for society as a whole.

Dr Ayah is a public health practitioner in Nairobi.