Let us Body-talk

Indian spiritualists keep on preaching people not to give much importance to their mortal bodies but work to uplift their immortal souls, in-spite of the fact that each of these spiritualists is found involved in working day and night for his/her physical comforts, luxuries and pleasures. This duality of conduct in preaching something to others and following a different path by themselves is for the only reason that they very well understand the value of their physical bodies as the foundation of their existence in the world. Others are preached the other way to misguide them and to do their business of spirituality. The basic fact of life is that a person who is unable to keep fit by him/herself for a reasonably long time can not do any good to others or the society. A good health is a primary requirement for each of us.

Generally, it is said that women are more conscious about their looks than the man, but the logic denies it. In general, duty of a man is to primarily take care of his family for which he has to be physically more robust than his woman. For working out of home as a bread-earner too for the family requires him to be healthy. So, the men may not be involving themselves in body-talk like women but they are naturally more conscious about their health.

Men are naturally designed and evolved to be physically more robust than women while the women are supposed to be more beautiful and attractive than the men. For this reason, the media concentrates more on women's beauty issues than toughness of the men. This makes us to feel that women's body-talks dominate in human societies.

In wild animals and birds, say peacocks, lions, goats, bulls, etc.male counter-parts are considered to be more handsome and attractive than their female counterparts. But the human civilization has reversed this natural trend by devoting more resources for beautifying their women. Share of body-care products for women proves this trend.

In-spite of more resources being diverted towards caring women's bodies, the fact remains that the world women are more sickly than the men. It is because the men concentrate more on nutritive diets for themselves while the women keep busy with beauty products for their bodies. Health of a person depends on nutrition rather than on cosmetics.

Since, men and women bodies are designed to perform different functions, their nutritional requirements too are different. Men need foods rich in proteins to build muscles in their bodies while women need more of oily and softer foods to get their skin-glow over a layer of fat over their bony curves. Water content in a woman's body is about 52 percent of her body weight while that in a man's body is as high as 63 percent. This is because the female body has more fat in it needing less of water. Protein-rich foods too need more water for cooking and absorption than the foods needed by women.

I am of the opinion that many food items existing in Nature have gender biases with some suiting male bodies while others for female bodies. Animals too show gender biases for some fodders in use. The subject of gender biases of foods is still in its infancy, but I list here some food items with their biases.

Some foods for men are wheat, pearl-millet, black-gram, Bengal-gram, while for women, suitable food items are barley, sorghum, green-gram, Pea, respectively. Of course, there are a lot which are good for both as their bodies too have so many common factors for good health.

It is generally observed in modern societies that women feel more satisfied with their bodies than the man do for their bodies. To keep up this satisfaction, women are more conscious about their bodies than their male counterparts.It is because men live naturally healthier than women for their out-of-home duties and responsibilities.

In ancient civilizations, concepts about a healthy body were different in different societies both for male and female bodies. Persons used to look the ways they thought to be more attractive to the opposite gender persons. These differences have been narrowed down now with tall medium-built bodies considered to be better both for men and women.