Indian Superfoods: The Healthiest Meal In the World?

Reader Glen just sent us a link to this story and recipe by English chef and nutritionist Gurpareet Bains. Bains has made a rather outrageous yet intriguing claim: He says that he has invented the "world's healthiest meal."

Straining believability even further, this "healthiest meal" is curry! Now, we know that curry usually isn't so healthy, if you take healthy to mean low-fat and low-calorie. Our curry recipe starts out with a rather astonishing amount of oil!

But Bains has created a fast, inexpensive chicken curry that also packs in a lot of popular antioxidant foods, like blueberries and Goji berries. He says that this combination of "superfoods" is a great way build up resistance to cancer and Alzheimers, and he also says that a single plate of this curry and pilau contains as many health-boosting antioxidants as 49 bowls of spinach, 23 bunches of grapes or 9 helpings of broccoli. Wow!

What do you think about this dish? We think it's a bit of a stunt, but we also really like the progression towards lightened-up curries that still showcase spice and flavor.

• Chicken curry with blueberries and goji berry pilau at the Daily Mail

See more about Gurpareet Bains at his website, as well as more info about his upcoming book:

• Gurpareet Bains

(Images: Daily Mail/SWNS)

Comments (14)

Interesting read. Most of the Indian food that one comes across in the west is very far from authentic. Indian home food uses much less oils and and limited # of spices, and has mind boggling variety from one region to another(expected from a country of billions with history of thousands of years). Most of Indian restaurants in the west usually features food from the state of Punjab.

Two super-ingredients in Indian cuisine are Turmeric and cinnamon (according to http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/the-11-best-foods-you-arent-eating/) . Moreover, each and every of the spices have medicinal properties.

I think it is a bit more complex than how many antioxidents you consume... what about carb versus protein, and the qualities of the carb? That looks like white rice to me...

The other question I would have is whether it is spicy? Researchers have found an extremely high rate of stomach (and esophogial) cancer in places where spicy foods are consumed (the spices damage the lining of the stomach and esophagus)... This *does* have chili powder....

Well, that might be, but it looks like the slush that melts off of my tires in the garage after driving in dirty snow. How appetizing!

Looks like a publicity stunt to get his name in the news. A truly nutritious meal would have far more fruits and vegetables.

healthy eating isn't about a single perfect meal. to eat for health, you have to eat well for a lifetime.

I'm with zini. Many of the curries I've made from India are not unhealthy at all.

mschatelaine I'd be interested in references to studies linking cancer to eating spicy foods. I've not seen them and I'm highly skeptical of your statement. Thanks.

I remember seeing an article about how eating hot - that is, high-temperature - food lead to an increased risk of esophageal cancer in some populations. Some components of curry - specifically turmeric (which isn't spicy-hot) actually contain compounds that may help protect against cancer.

"Curry" is a pretty broad term, which I've never heard used by anyone in my (Indian) family. We are (most of us) pure vegetarians (no meat/chicken/fish) but not vegans (we eat dairy and some of us eat eggs).

I do think the food eaten by most Indians is probably overall the healthiest food in the world. A typical meal would consist of whole wheat roti (bread), dal, two or three vegetable dishes (sabji -- and in India, it would be whatever is in season), and for those who have a little more money, some rice. Add to that chutney and yogurt, and that's it.

And zini is completely correct about the comparison to Indian restaurant food -- home food is nothing like it!

www.vegrun.blogspot.com

I don't care how "healthy" it is or not, it's Indian food, therefore it's good - I sadly cannot claim any Indian ancestry, and my understanding of the cookery techniques is fledgling at best, but Indian is definitely my go-to comfort food, yum!

As Susmita says, a typical Indian meal has dal (lentils & beans good, yes?), several veggie dishes, bread, chutney/yoghurt, maybe rice, and possibly a meat dish for a meat-eating family (but certainly not every day). Compare that to the typical way of eating "curry" in the West - rice, one or two meat dishes, possibly a bit of bread, possibly a veg dish or a dal although unlikely, probably skip the yoghurt but grab some commercial chutney, and it's clear that eating Indian food the way the West eats it isn't that great, whilst the way that Indians eat it is pretty good for you, even before you take into account the extra properties of e.g. turmeric.

@mdorothy:

"The 'hot' sensation produced by exposure to pepper is apparently due to two natural carcinogens: capsaicin in chili type peppers and safrole in black/white pepper. There are four cookeries in the United States that are noted for their high pepper content: Mexican-American, Cajun, white Creole, and black Creole. Each is largely confined to a single ethnic-cultural group which is concentrated in some counties. By use of county population and mortality data, significantly higher rates for stomach and liver cancer were found in counties inhabited by these four ethnic-cultural groups than in matched control counties. This involved both sexes. The cancer increase was dependent on the concentration of these groups in a county. These results strengthen and extend an earlier case-control study which found odds ratios above 5 for the stomach cancer association with capsaicin pepper. It is further evidence that capsaicin is a human carcinogen."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12208187

"Laboratory studies indicate that capsaicin, the hot-tasting component of chili peppers, may be carcinogenic. A population-based case-control study was conducted in Mexico City during 1989–1990 to evaluate the relation between chili pepper consumption and gastric cancer risk. The study included 220 incident cases and 752 controls randomly selected from the general population. Information was collected by interview. Chilipepper consumers were at high risk for gastric cancer compared with nonconsumers (age-and sex-adjusted odds ratio = 5.49, 95% confidence interval (Cl) 2.72–11.06)"

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/139/3/263

You're linking to an article in the Daily Mail. The end.

mschatelaine
From your second link:
Chili pepper consumption may be a strong risk factor for gastric cancer, but further studies are needed to test this hypothesis.