Max Bupa’s Junk the Junk Campaign: Celebrity Nutritionist Pooja Makhija Shares 7 Secrets for a Nutritious Diet

Dispels myths related to junk food and diet intake to help youngsters stay healthy

New Delhi, September 15, 2017: On the occasion of National Nutrition Week, and with the objective of encouraging people to take a step towards healthy living, Max Bupa has rolled out Junk the Junk - a thoughtfully devised social media campaign targeted at the online audiences. The campaign takes into account all factors that appeal to the younger, online audiences – social media, challenges, stand-up comics, selfies and conversations.

Max Bupa’s #JunkTheJunk campaign challenges social media users to quit junk food for a day/ week, switch to healthy/ home-made food and spread the motivation through selfies and videos of themselves with the healthy food. The netizens are also urged to challenge their friends to do the same. Max Bupa has also roped in the East India Comedy team artists Angad Singh Ranyal, Kunal Rao and Azeem Banatwalla and other Twitter influencers such as @SahilBulla to take up the challenge and inspire their followers.

Realizing there are various myths around what constitutes junk food, dieting and eating healthy, Max Bupa collaborated with Nutritionist, Clinical Dietitian & Celebrity Food Guru, Pooja Makhija to educate people about Junk Food and help them understand how to identify the ‘real’ junk food in their daily intake.

The celebrated nutritionist who has coached some of the most admired celebrities such as Deepika Padukone, Sonam Kapoor and Sushmita Sen, shared some easy-to-implement health hacks and dispelled common myths among people preventing them from successfully adopting a healthy diet.

7 Secrets to a Wholesome Diet & A Healthy You

1.     Incorrect Cooking Can Turn any Food into Junk
 

Chapattis, bread, pasta or even noodles are not bad for health if they are cooked the right way. The cooking process determines how much nutrition is retained in the items being cooked, thus playing a very important role in turning healthy food into junk.

2.   Identifying Bad Food

Inherently, all food is good food as each food item contains some or the other vital intake ingredients, collectively forming a complete and wholesome meal. The two food items to avoid in excess are oil and sugar. Contrary to general perception, one can lose weight even while including rice in their diet as long as they don’t consume rice in the form of fried rice or oily biryani. Refined sugar intake in tea, coffee or other drinks and desserts should be avoided or should be restricted to the minimum.

3.     Carbs are Essential, But Intake Needs to be Moderated

Carbs provide energy and should comprise about 60 to 65% of our diet. However, the intake needs to be managed – 2 breads, one bowl of rice or one bowl of noodles is within the threshold of good carbs. Sufficient carbs intake will ensure that the body functions as desired i.e. utilizes Proteins for growth and Carbs for energy generation.

4.     To Get Skin Right, Include Oil in Diet

Some people’s first attempt at losing weight and ‘staying healthy’ involves giving up oil altogether. It is never recommended to exclude cooking oil from one’s diet completely. Oil intake is vital to ensure joint mobility and heart and brain functioning. Many people also believe that oil is unhealthy for skin and results in breakouts. In fact, 2-3 teaspoons of oil is recommended for preparation of any dish to ensure the skin also gets the required nutrition.

5.     Juice is NOT all Good

The process of juice extraction from fruits and vegetables results in the loss of healthy fiber, making the concentrate high in sugar content. Fruits and select vegetables should be consumed as whole to allow the body to absorb the nutrients sufficiently. Also, one should always consume fresh and seasonal fruits and vegetables.

6.     Evening Snacking – Onto Healthy Substitutes

Most people indulge in unhealthy snacking during the evening, given the gap between lunch and dinner. To avoid junk eating, one should keep snacks such as bhel, khakhra, makhanas, roasted peanuts, roasted channas, vegetable sandwich or roti wraps handy as healthy alternatives.
 

People opting for Nutrition Bars need to be vary of the ingredients as most bars offer a combination of chocolate, caramel and protein. Instead, one should consume nuts and dry fruits in limited quantity.

7.     BREAD is BAD

All breads, whether Brown or White (regular) are made from Wheat Flour. Brown bread is the caramelized form of white bread and is not healthy. However, multi-grain bread with solid grains/ seeds is richer in fiber, although still made from wheat flour. One should not eat more than two slices of bread at a stretch as wheat flour is difficult to digest.

Max Bupa’s #JunkTheJunk campaign has received an overwhelming response from the netizens. The campaign has crossed 1.3 million Likes on Facebook, while on Twitter, Max Bupa reached out to over 2.1 million individuals with their campaign hashtag. Total impressions for the campaign so far amount to 2.2 million and 5.4 million on Facebook and Twitter respectively.