Coffee, lunch or dinner?

That depends on where you land on the friendship scale

 

It’s a question that is asked often of us: who is your 3 am friend? As in, who would you not hesitate to call in times of need, no matter what time of day or night it was. And frankly, only the very fortunate among us would have even a couple of friends who fit in that category.

 

But when I was last asked that question, it got me thinking of the many different kinds of friends I have on my list. And how, the best way to differentiate between them is on the basis of what kind of meal/drinks we sit down for together on a regular basis.

 

At the bottom of that list are what I call my “coffee friends”. These are people who are notch above casual acquaintances and a notch below close friends. These are people I am happy to catch up with every month or so, but would not dream of whatsapping on a regular basis. The relationship we have is restricted to coffee and cake; it never extends to a proper meal. When we meet, we are happy to exchange notes about the world in general and the latest social media controversies. But it never goes any deeper; and it never reaches the level of real confidences being exchanged. 

 

On the next rung are my “lunch friends”. This list mostly comprises women with whom I have an independent relationship that does not involve our respective husbands. So, instead of doing ‘couple dinners’ we do ‘solo lunches’. And frankly, I would not have it any other way. It is with these “lunch friends” that I have the most interesting conversations; with whom I discuss my deepest thoughts and share my darkest fears. It helps that we go back a long way. These are women who have seen me through my worst and celebrated me at my best. But despite the closeness of our bond, we remain determinately “lunch friends”. Heading out for dinner together somehow seems like a bridge too far.

 

So, who are my “dinner friends”, you ask? And since they come on top of the list, would it be fair to describe them as my closest friends? 

 

Well, that’s a tricky one. Some of my “dinner friends” are, indeed, part of my core group. They are people my husband and I have been friends with for decades, and with whom we have a very high comfort factor. These are folks with whom I can be myself. I can slip my shoes off, put my feet up on the sofa, and gossip with them late into the night, secure in the knowledge that none of my indiscretions will come back to bite me in the derriere. 

 

But then, there are those who qualify as “dinner friends” only because of social and professional obligations that we have to fulfil. So, while we may drink and eat, laugh and joke, exchange confidences, discuss our lives, a certain je ne sais quoi is missing. There is a faux-intimacy to these interactions; they don’t have the authenticity of real friendship. 

 

Are these categories watertight? Do the people from one friendship group ever migrate to another? Sure they do. Some “coffee friends” become “lunch friends”. More rarely, “lunch friends” make the transition to “dinner friends”.

 

As for 3 am friends, I am still stuck with the same two I have had for the past two decades. And I know I am lucky to have them.

Eat, drink and be merry

As it now turns out that coffee, chocolate and wine are actually good for you

It has long been my fantasy that science would one day discover that all the stuff that we enjoy eating and drinking – potato chips, chocolate, red wine, coffee – is good for us. And that all the stuff that we loathe – salad, low-fat dressing, green tea, and other such ‘healthy’ options – are actually bad for us. Well, this week I am happy to report that we are half-way there.

A recent study conducted by the Luxembourg Institute of Health, the University of Warwick Medical School, the University of South Australia and the University of Maine (phew! It takes a global village to bring you good news these days), found that those who ate 100 gms of chocolate a day – equivalent to a bar – had reduced insulin resistance and improved liver enzymes. And since insulin resistance is often a precursor to diabetes, which is a risk factor in cardiovascular health, having a chocolate bar could potentially be better for your health than glugging glasses of wheatgrass (that bit of extrapolation is entirely mine, not to be laid at the door of those worthy professors!).

In fact, the same study also looked at the consumption of chocolate alongside tea and coffee. Both these drinks are high in polyphenols, a substance that exists in chocolate and makes it beneficial to cardio and metabolic health. So, the best think you can do is eat your chocolate with a nice steaming cup of coffee or tea.

But don’t celebrate just yet. This is not a license to cut a generous slice of chocolate cake or even tear open a bar of Snickers at snack time. The kind of chocolate that is good for you is one that is closest to the natural product, cocoa; not the processed, sugar-heavy stuff that is stocked in your fridge. So yes to dark chocolate bars with a high cocoa content; no to milk chocolate with industrial quantities of sugar and fat added to it.

Okay, I admit, this is not ideal. But I will take it. Especially since it comes close on the heels of another bit of good news. A joint study carried out by researchers from Belgium and the Netherlands on gut bacteria concluded that diversity – in terms of having many different kinds of bacteria – was good for your gut, and hence, for your health. And one way of increasing that diversity was to drink red wine and coffee.

Red wine has always has its cheerleaders, who credit it with doing everything from reducing cholesterol to bettering cardiovascular health. It is rich in antioxidants, such as quercetin and resveratrol, which play a part in reducing the risk of cancer and heart disease. And red wine is credited with playing a major part in the famous ‘French paradox’, which refers to the fact that while the French eat more dairy and fat, their rates of heart disease are much lower than, say, those of Americans.

Red wine is also an essential element in the so-called Mediterranean diet, which is widely believed to be the healthiest way to eat and drink your way to a long and happy life. Have a glass or two (low to moderate consumption is the key; drink the way Europeans do, no British-style binge-drinking) along with a diet high in fruits, vegetables, unrefined cereals, lots of fish, very little red meat, and lots of olive oil, and you are good to go for another few decades.

But while you clearly can’t go wrong with red wine (so long as you remember to drink only a couple of glasses), coffee too has been getting good press of late. An American Diabetes Association study last year found ‘strong’ evidence that drinking six cups of coffee per day could reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes by 33 per cent for both men and women. However, the results were the same with both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee, so it is unlikely that the magic ingredient is caffeine. But either way, I’ll take it (black and with just a splash of Stevia, thank you).

Especially since coffee seems to offer other health benefits as well. There is evidence that it increases dopamine production in the brain, which explains why you feel so good after that first cup of coffee in the morning. Studies have shown that those drinking four cups of coffee a day had an 11 per cent lower risk of heart failure. And high coffee consumption has also been linked to a lower risk of Parkinson’s, though this benefit seems to be limited to men. (Coffee? Sexist? Who knew?)

So, this Sunday morning, as I sip on my fourth cup of an Italian roast and decant a nice bottle of a light fruity red so that it is ready to drink by the time lunch is served, I send up a silent prayer. Please God, make goji berries and quinoa evil, and turn potatoes into the next super-food. And cheese. Oh yes, please don’t forget cheese!

Word of mouth

Why food is probably the most mood-altering substance around...

Last week I wrote about the kind of woman I could imagine being best mates with. And how I couldn’t possibly be friends with a woman who refused to break bread – yes, literally – with me. To be honest, I’ve always thought this to be something of a personal idiosyncrasy; my obsession with classifying people by what they do or do not eat. But going by the contents of my mail box, I am coming around to the view that I am not alone in judging people by their relationship to food. As the cliché goes: you are what you eat.

Speaking for myself, I believe that food is the most powerful mood-altering substance around. What I eat or drink has a direct connection with how I feel. And how I feel has a direct co-relation with what I want to eat.

When I’m feeling a bit blah about the world, nothing cheers me up more instantly than a quick-fix of chocolate. On particularly stressful days, a judicious dose of carbohydrates can have a calming effect. And there’s nothing to beat the caffeine rush of a cold Diet Coke on a warm summer day.

But just as a good meal can have me burping with satisfaction for days afterwards, there’s nothing quite like a bad meal to put me in a vile mood for the rest of the day. First of all, there’s the opportunity lost, a meal that I will never ever get to enjoy again. Then, there’s the small matter of all those empty calories that have been consumed without any concomitant pleasure.

Small wonder then that I am always so disgruntled at the end of a bad meal – and as hungry as when I began eating. No matter how many calories I have scoffed, if the food doesn’t satisfy my taste buds, it doesn’t assuage my hunger pangs either. So, after a dissatisfying meal, I invariably end up eating another meal to make up for the first.

And then begins the self-loathing. What was I thinking? How could I possibly have eaten a sandwich after that three-course French meal? How could I have come back home and stuffed my face with chocolate after dining at a friend’s house? Why on earth can’t I just let one bad meal go?

But no matter how hard I try to resist, food continues to exert its visceral hold on me. 

It’s funny how this stuff works. I must have a steaming cup of coffee beside me before I feel ready to power up my laptop and begin to work. But slip a sandwich into the mix and suddenly all I want to do is surf endlessly through all the trashier news sites on the internet. Somehow in my mind coffee equals work but coffee plus food equals mindless surfing.

Similarly, I don’t really feel like I am on holiday unless I can order a really sinful treat for my room service breakfast (think French toast, pancakes, waffles, or anything that can induce a sugar rush). But once I’m at home, it doesn’t feel right eating anything other than organic muesli with low-fat milk first thing in the morning.

In times of stress I long for the comfort food of my childhood, the nursery delights of nostalgia. The bread pakoras of the school canteen; the mashed potato toasties mum would make for an evening snack; the frosted cupcakes that were served at every birthday party; the illicit chaat that I had sneak away to eat. Just a tiny mouthful of any of these is enough to transport me back to the safe, secure haven of my school days.

I only have to plop one oversized, overflowing puchhka in my mouth to be transported back to my days in Calcutta when we would stand at the balcony for hours waiting for our favourite vendor to come trotting by (there was just something about his water mix!). Unfortunately, I have never found a puchhkawalla to match his skills in all the years since.

There’s nothing that makes me obsess more about food, though, than being on a diet. That’s when I begin to dream about such high-calorie treats as a greasy biryani, a creamy risotto, fluffy puris, full-fat ice-cream, baked cheesecake, and icy-cold magnums of champagne.

Ah, champagne! There’s nothing quite like a bit of bubbly to elevate an utterly ordinary meal into a memorable occasion. In fact, Sunday brunch at a fancy restaurant never seems quite right without copious quantities of champagne (or Prosecco or any other sparkling wine). There is just something so celebratory about the loud pop as the bottle is opened, the hiss of the wine as it hits the glass, the frothy bubbles that always threaten to spill over and stain the table-cloth, and that first sip that hits the roof of your mouth with memories of great meals past.

Ah, happy days!

Thought for food

Let’s hear it for the five key ingredients of a feel-good diet

If you are as dedicated a dieter as I am, you must have noticed how the food orthodoxy changes on us every few years, leaving us thoroughly confused as to what we should (or should not) eat to lose weight.

First, it is that carbs are good. Then, it is that carbs are bad. And now, it is that only a certain kind of carb (the refined kind that leads to a spike in sugar levels) is implicated in weight gain. One diet regimen tells us not to mix carbohydrates with protein on pain of death. Another insists that we need a judicious mix of both. One school of thought has it that milk is the elixir of human life; another insists that it is toxic to anyone above the age of five.

In other words, one man’s meat becomes the same man’s poison if we give it enough time.

I don’t know about you, but this sort of blurry indecision makes me quite dizzy (and not just from the hunger induced by my latest master-cleanse). After all, what is the point of dietary rules if they are going to be reversed every few years as medical science changes its mind yet again on what is good or bad for us?

My way of coping with this is to simply wade through all the information floating around and zero in on the tips that suit me best – and then stick to them through thick and thin (sometimes quite literally). And for the benefit of my fellow-dieters these are the five favourite elements of the weight-loss regimen that I have drawn up for myself.

1) Coffee
Ah, coffee. Now, how could you possibly go through the day without its enticing aroma to keep you awake and interested? I know I couldn’t. I need a caffeine fix to jolt me into consciousness in the morning – and another in the evening when I am beginning to flag. And just to be on the safe side, a couple of shots in between.

Now for the good news. Recent medical research suggests that coffee increases your resting metabolic rate – which means that you burn off fat more easily (and are half as likely to develop diabetes). So, the number of cups of coffee you drink is directly related to the number of calories your burn off. Time to invest in a good espresso machine, don’t you think?

2) Red wine

First up, the bad news. You aren’t allowed to guzzle a full bottle over the course of the evening. Only a couple of glasses are allowed if you want to reap the health benefits of the antioxidant flavonoid phenolics that red wine contains. How exactly does this work? Well, a substance called resveratrol, contained in grape skins and seeds, increases the good HDL cholesterol and prevents blood clotting and plaque prevention in arteries and thus contributes to your cardio-vascular health.

So, why not just eat grapes, you ask? Now, where would be the fun in that?

3) Chocolate

This one comes with a rider. You have to choose a dark chocolate which has a cocoa content that is higher than its sugar content. And limit yourself to a couple of squares instead of wolfing down the entire bar. But if you stick to these rules, your body will benefit from the antioxidants that cocoa contains, which reduce degeneration of aortic arteries and help shift fat deposits. In layman’s terms, this means that a judicious amount of chocolate actually helps in metabolising fat and turning it into energy (or so, at least, I would like to believe).

4) Sleep

If you truly want to lose weight, then don’t lose any sleep over it. Recent studies have shown that dieters who cut back on sleep while trying to lose weight had 55 per cent less fat loss compared to those who clocked up 8.5 hours of shut-eye. This is because sleep deprivation causes the body to release higher amounts of something called ghrelin. And increased ghrelin levels stimulate hunger and food intake, so that you find it more difficult to stick to your diet and eat more than your otherwise would. They also reduce energy expenditure (so whatever you eat doesn’t metabolise as easily) and thereby promote retention of fat.

In other words, if you sleep less while on a diet you will eat more and your body will store what you eat as fat instead of using it up as energy. So make sure you get a good night’s sleep if you want to lose weight.


5) Laughter

Laugh more; weigh less (especially around the midriff). Okay, I exaggerate but only a little. Laughter does have an effect on our weight, albeit in a roundabout way. If you are happy and contented, the level of such stress hormones as cortisol and epinephrine in your body remains low. And that’s a darn good thing because increased levels of cortisol are directly related to fat deposition in the abdominal area – the so-called ‘toxic fat’ that is related to heart disease and an increased risk of strokes.

So, to sum up: being on my kind of regimen means sleeping for 8.5 hours; waking up to a nice, steaming cup (or two) of coffee; snacking on dark chocolate; drinking red wine; and laughing as long and hard as you can.

Now, that doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Try it. You may or may not lose weight. But you will be a much happier person at the end of the day.