On her birthday on October 26, we are looking back at an interview she gave to Pinkvilla in November 2020 that still feels incredibly relevant. If you grew up in the 90s, Raveena Tandon was both a beauty and fitness inspiration. No crash diets. No fancy superfoods. Just dal-sabzi, homemade ghee, and a lot of swimming. Also read | Mira Rajput interview: Why she doesn’t believe in ‘good’ or ‘bad’ food and swears by intuitive eating over strict diets
That’s a lot of probiotics. So dahi is something one should have if you don’t have access to coconut water. We have become more concentrated towards food. But, yes, I have been careful for sure. It is simple, but it is exactly the kind of pattern global health guidelines push for. As per the World Health Organisation (WHO) guideline on healthy diets , a wide variety of foods, including fruits, vegetables, pulses, whole grains, and lean sources of protein, help ensure a healthy diet. Diverse diets, based on a wide variety of foods between and within food groups, are associated with a greater likelihood of meeting vitamin and mineral requirements and reduced risk of diet-related noncommunicable diseases, per WHO. Raveena was clear about what she cuts out. We try not to have, nor have we encouraged the children to have, aerated sodas. A lot of high-sugar-concentration drinks are also a no-no. I get organic haldi (turmeric) from my farm, and we make this kada, which we also make the children drink… it is a mixture of a little bit of ajwain (carom seeds), laong (clove), kali mirch (black pepper), pure organic haldi, adrak (ginger), and then you boil it together with a pinch of pure ghee. That no-soda, no-high-sugar-drinks rule is textbook WHO. The organisation has consistently flagged that diets containing significant amounts of highly processed foods, which are often high in sodium, sugar or unhealthy fats, are associated with negative health outcomes. Swapping those for homemade options like her kada is the kind of low-sugar, whole-food approach nutritionists like. No punishing weight routine, no two-hour gym sessions. Her mix of yoga, swimming, walking and running is essentially what the WHO recommends for long-term health.
Adults aged 18–64 years should do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity throughout the week, or do at least 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity, or an equivalent combination of both, according to the WHO. Because i feel the stomach needs to remain full, in the interview, when asked about her daily diet, Raveena said something most of us will relate to: “The regular, like for lunch, dal, bhaji (veggies) and my dahi (curd), is something that I regularly eat. Because every day he sits on YouTube and other channels, bringing out different recipes, in fact, my husband has become a gourmet chef.
Sharing more details about her home food philosophy in the same interview, she said, “We make our own homemade ghee. When we are having lunch, our conversation is about what’s for dinner; and then when we are having dinner, the concentration is on ‘what do we make for tomorrow for lunch’.
