Whats exactly the problem with your eating out

As a prelude, we gotta tell you this – Replace ‘Parippuvada’ with cutlet / uzhunnuvdada / meduvada or any other deep-fried food, and the same title and the explanation below holds good!

For starters, there is nothing really wrong with your Parippivada! However, they are deep-fried, and any deep-fried food is a lot of calories because of the oil it contains. As long as you stay within your calorie requirement (i.e make sure your calorie intake is not more than calorie expenditure), there is nothing wrong in having such deep-fried food once in a while!

HOWEVER, most of the time, especially the Paripuvadas that you buy from hotels/restaurants are fried in reused oil! The leftover oil is often mixed with some fresh oil and reused. This can cause grave health issues.

What’s the problem with re-heating oil !?
The smoking point of an oil is the temperature where the oil breaks down and starts smoking. At the smoking point, the molecular structure of the fat changes and turns into the highly potent trans-saturated fat which is extremely unhealthy and bad for the heart – causing high cholesterol levels.

Heating also causes the oil to undergo a series of chemical reactions like oxidation, hydrolysis, and polymerization. During this process, many oxidative products such as hydroperoxide and aldehydes are also produced, which are absorbed in the fried food. These compounds are also carcinogenic (causing cancer) in nature

Reheating the oil reduces the smoking point of the oil. The added salt in the food that was fried also reduces the smoking point of the oil significantly. The oil once used may also have leftover food particles and can be easily contaminated with bacteria

Fine, but what are the other options?

We all munch on paripuvada, mostly when we are traveling for work, or cannot eat lunch/dinner on time and need a snack to quench the hunger. In such cases, nuts such as almonds, cashew, walnuts, peanuts etc are a great substitute. They are easy to carry and non-messy to eat – you do not need a dining table to eat them and you can munch on them even while traveling.

Nuts also contain healthy fat and a moderate amount of protein! However, as with any kind of food, it is important to stay within your calorie requirement and do not gorge on the almonds/cashews