Indian cuisine "Hotel" food not good for your health, right?

Dear Friends,

By hotel food, I am referring to items like Idli, Dosai, Poori, Chapathi as well as non-vegetarian items like biriyani and fried meat dishes.
It is common knowledge that hotel food can have excess of oil, salt and sugar and may not be made with the freshest of ingredients. Hence it is best to minimized the intake of these foods.

Let me share with you my problem:
My mother has high sugar levels and cholestrol. My dad has beginning stages of cholestrol. They are on medications for this. They are 58 and 65 yrs old.
So I would like them to have healthy meals all the time.

They live in the Gulf and I do not live with them. They don't have any friends to spend time with. So unfortunately, the only outing option they have is to go to a hotel 2/3 times a week in the evenings. They go for grocery shopping in the big malls and tend to get dinner at the Food court there.

I think this is really bad for their health.

I have tried to tell them many times, that this frequency is not good for them at all. The rest of their meals in the week is pretty healthy. My mom is quite conscious of health and nutrition. But this hotel outings are their only "weakness".

Also when they go out to eat, some times there will be left overs and that is eaten the next day.

Do you all think this is reasonable given their health condition?

I have tried many things over the last couple of years to take away this habit:
1. Got them some interesting health books so that they can become aware of these "lifestyle" illnesses and what they can do get back in top shape.
2. After a lot of compulsion they go for 20 minutes walking each evening. (I think this is too little but they don't seem to increase this duration)
3. I send them some interesting articles and tid-bits about better eating.
4. I speak to them on the phone for 30 mins to 1 hour every alternate day. I tried to give suggestions from my reading - e.g. why don't you try brown rice? Why don't you shift to chapati for the evening? When you go out to eat, puri is so bad for you since it is simply deep fried and potatoe isn't good at all sugar+cholestrol problems?
5. My mother will not cook non-veg at home. (they both like non-veg food) So I tempt her by sending some really good pictures and recipes that I try out, so that she can cook biriyani at home and not have to go to hotel to have their weekly treat.


Let me give you some examples of their habits. They need to go to China for 2 weeks for my father's business. And guess what they did there: they cannot get accustomed to chinese cuisine. So every day for dinner, they went to Kentucky Fried Chicken!!! And they think cole-slaw is just "veggie" and ate a lot of it. (But it is full of mayo which is so fatty!!)

And they think "dosai" is such a harmless and simple dish to eat out. But I have seen how in a dosai they will put at least a ladle of oil to make it crispy and tasty. And usually the chutneys are full of coconut and pretty fatty too.

I try to be cautious not to "bug" them too much and try not to keep nagging them. And sometimes I get tired and tell myself, they need to be careful of their own health. I can only try to help.

Ofcourse one part of me, knows that our food sense is one of the few pleasures they can have and so I should let them be. (We have a few other very stressful aspects happening in our life too.)

So am I missing something friends? Or am I over-reacting to their low exercise and hotel food indulgence.

Please let me know about your experiences with senior parents? Or if you have any advice me!

Thank you so much!

~alady.

 

Dear Tashidelek2002,

Thanks for your honest opinion.

I am definitely not saying and do not believe that my parents stupid at all. But there might be some un-awareness. For example, in their grocery stores nowadays there are so many "canned vegetables" - like tomatoes and beans. They have been using these till 6 months ago - thinking it is better - since (1) it doesn't rot and won't be wasted like fresh vegetables, (2) since it is processed in a factory only good quality veggies are being used, etc. Until I told them there is a lot of preservatives and sodium which is not good for them. And then they see the point and avoid it.

So my question here was to get some anecdotes from ILites on their experiences, any strategies to be able to help their parents, etc. And since this forum is about diet and nutrition, I wanted to know about indian cuisine in hotels specifically.

Thank you again.

Regards,
alady.

 

Dear Subhaganesh,
Thanks for sharing your experience too.
I hope other readers will have some ideas to share with us.

Best regards,
alady.