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)

Posted originally from: TheKitchn

Comments (4)

I use a green curry recipe, the only fat in it is coconut milk, and even though it is the majority of the sauce, the proportion of sauce to veg means that it's actually a pretty low calorie meal. With 1 cup of brown rice, it stays under 300 calories per serving, and it's DELICIOUS.

I'd leave the random "superfood" stuff out, though; somehow I think blueberries would be foul in curry.

I don't think of curry as being unhealthy-I only use a small amount of oil to fry an onion (as one does for most meals) and that's the only fat in it if it's vegetarian, the meat too if not (but no more than any other braised dish). Anjum Anand has been crusading against indian foods unhealthy image for a while now, check out her recipes.

I'm not into the whole 'superfoods' label (mainly pseudoscience plus marketing), but at the same time rail against the concept of healthy food being merely low-fat/low-calorie. I think the healthiest way to eat is to incorporate plenty of fruit, vegetables and nuts into your diet-high fibre and plenty of vitamins and minerals. Eating this way often leads to the almost accidental reduction of saturated fats and sugar as you don't eat more but replace other items in your diet for the fruit and veg.

Since, curry is a generic term (my wife is Indian and she will tell you it means nothing more than "sauce") anyone can make claims about their particular blend.

"... if you take healthy to mean low-fat and low-calorie." But we're more intelligent than to do this, yes? Fats feed your body and allow absorption of certain nutrients; calories are the measurement of how much energy a food provides, something which dieters seem to forget is what you need to actually move and you know, exercise and healthy stuff like that.

It's easy to understand what eating healthily means if you just use the two guidelines of minimal processing and variety. Fats and calories are not your enemies, people!