The introduction of the concept of a carb heavy meal came in with the East India Company and their Europeans. But those meals were for more than 200 years largely restricted to the few upper class elite.
Indianised chinese food arrived in the early 1990s. While the Europeans meals still focussed on bacon and sausages, the chinese variety was totally refined carbs. It also was targeted as a cheap variety of street food affordable to all and most tasty food ever made in India.
In this article we shall explore the strange phenomenon of feeling thirsty and craving for a soda after a chinese meal.
What consists of a chinese meal?
There is either noodles or fried rice combined with the veg or chicken manchurian. Quite a few of them go for chilli chicken or chilli paneer as starters. These are really poor quality processed food items mostly carbs in nature. To hide the bland taste and texture, they are heavily flavoured with those famed sauces. Finally the oil which is used for frying the rice and cooking the noodles is the lowest quality that the street vendor can afford.
If you are a pre diabetic or in early stages of insulin resistance, here is what happens.
Carbs getting converted to fat and craving for water
Carbs get digested quickly and convert to glucose and released into the blood. Because of that the glucose levels in the blood rises. One small chinese meal can easily raise your blood sugar level quickly. The body enters into a panic mode now to bring the blood sugar levels down fast.
The liver gets to work fast by converting glucose to glycogen (fat) to be stored as body fat. However the body mechanism is such that two fat molecules have to trap one water molecule in between them. That is the reason why we feel thirsty.
Another reason is that a chinese meal gives a shot of glucose to the body. This causes a spike of blood sugar. As the body fights to lower the sugar levels, there is a sudden drop of level. That is why the body craves for a fresh dose of sugar which is our good old soft drink or soda as it is called in America or Europe.
Those hot and spicy sauces also add to the thirst.
Consider your options carefully
Street side chinese food is cheap as well as tasty. It is damaging the health of both young and old people. Especially people in those category like students are vulnerable. It is however the onus of parents to understand this threat and ensure they educate their children on the harms of this kind of street food.
Water weight is the first weight you lose
Any kind of diet plan which shows initial weight loss is mostly because of the loss of water weight. There is always a substantial amount of fat stored in the body. Dieting mixed with exercise works at first because when this fat is shed, water also leaves the body along with. That is how each and every diet plan shows results in the beginning.
However this weight loss is temporary because the moment you start eating normally, your weight will get back to the original. Why metabolic balance program is so successful all over the world is because this is the only method which does not focus on exercising and dieting only.