As you know I’ve been in Pune all this week, and it really is a beautiful city. If I didn’t feel so strongly that I have a lot of important work to do this year in Mumbai, I would love to stay here. The climate is more temperate, and the city itself is lush with greenery and the sound of thousands of birds in the trees calling out greet my open window instead of Mumbai’s constant honking. I can breathe in the fresh, clean air, and even walk around comfortably outside, something that I’m not able to do back in the Big City. So who knows, perhaps if I come back next year for another term, I’ll spend part of the year up here.
Not far from our Bikram Yoga studio there is little cluster of shops and restaurants, and I found this amazing organic dairy outlet called ABC Farms. It’s a tiny shop, and the shelves are made of rustic wood, there are large sacks of grains and they even sell “cow urine”…it’s a true farmer’s store. But what caught my eye were the bottles of organic oils, spices, ghee, (even buffalo ghee, which I will be trying out this week), grains, etc, and the fridges are also full of organic cheeses, paneer, yogurts and milk. I truly believe in the principles of “the Secret” and certainly in my life I have found them to be true. Literally within the first day of landing here in Pune, I made two contacts who helped me find organic meats, and who showed me a good gym, (Gold’s Gym) to train at, I had food delivered to my house literally out of the blue by a Mumbai student who happened to own a restaurant here in Pune, and I found this amazing little store where I can organic products that were so difficult for me to find in Mumbai.
I exchange names with the sweet clerk who tallied up my purchases, (strawberry yogurt, whole milk, smoked gouda cheese, and cow’s ghee) and then gave him the web address of the Weston Price Foundation. I am a big fan of Weston Price, a Harvard educated dentist who did a lot of research on the effects of industrialized foods on the human body back in the 1930s. He took thousands of photographs of secluded communities, documenting the changes in teeth and dental bridges pre- and post-influence of refined food products like vegetable oils and cereal grains and sugar. You should really check his findings out. Consuming Whole Food products and choosing mainly Organics is the nutritional foundation of my health, and it is what I specialize in as a health counselor and nutritional coach. Athletes on my team are encouraged to eat whole eggs, whole milk and quality fats like coconut oil, ghee and nuts, whole grain cereals, and farm fresh produce. There is so much document evidence to support this kind of dietary protocol, and I truly wish to bring more education to the general public and to the fitness community on the great benefits of choosing this kind of traditional diet for long-term health and hormonal vitality. Because of poor journalism and corporate greed, (as well as short-term battling with the scale) the world of dietary advice is strewn with misinformation and unsound practices that ultimately damage the endocrine system, epitheleal organs and overall vitality of people just trying to be healthy.
I hope to find a supplier of organics when I get back to the city, and I’ll keep my Mumbai connections posted on my search!
~Michelle
