Half or Whole?

This was in response to a video clip which has been circulating on social media from the Toronto Star, an online news site, on a segment called The Dish.

There, health reporter Megan Ogilvie analysed a boneless chicken roti from Ali’s Roti Shop in Toronto, saying it was one and a half pounds of food, and questioning whether people could put that much food in their “tummy.” She said the “roadee,” as she pronounced it, was almost 1,200 calories, comparable to those in 28 Chicken McNuggets from McDonald’s. She then suggested that the roti be cut in half and eaten as two meals.

Trinis took umbrage at this and there were numerous posts, memes and videos on social media to that effect.

They said eating a whole roti could sustain them for a day, and that the natural ingredients of a roti could not be compared to the chemical ingredients in a McNugget. They also lambasted Ogilvie for her pronunciation of the word, saying that if she was going to report on it, she should have at least researched the name and learned to say it properly.

Local chef Wendy Rahamut responded on Facebook with two photos of a goat roti – one of the roti on a scale, and the other of the roti split and spilling out onto a plate. The caption read, “My Goat Roti weighs in at 594 gms! No I will not be cutting it in half. It’s from Rajkumars Roti shop in San Fernando. Tender dhalpuri chocked (sic) full of succulent curried goat.

An absolute delight, best Roti in Trinidad! No comparison to the anemic (sic) Torontonian rodee!” Even Carib Brewery got in on the action, with a GIF image of a roti being weighed against a bottle of Pilsner Light beer on an old-fashioned scale.

“1200 calories or 12 beers? I think we can fit both in our #tummy!” said the caption.

Dr Keisha Roberts, who has a PhD in human health and nutrition, and is the founder of Health Options Consulting Ltd, told Sunday Newsday her recommendation on how much roti to eat would be based on the number of calories an individual needed.

“Roti is part of our culture. There is nothing wrong with it. However, based on the caloric needs of the client, they can have the whole roti or half.” She said she would give her 12-yearold son half a roti, as he needed about 1,600 calories a day, while an athlete would need 4,000 calories so he could eat a whole one.

Otherwise, she had no problem with people having roti because it was a complete meal packed with carbohydrates, vegetables, legumes and protein.

She said the only thing she recommended to her clients was that they do not put potato in their roti because both were of the same type of carbs - starchy, complex carbohydrates.

If the body had more of a carbohydrate than could be used, it would be converted to fat.

Roberts also did not appreciate Ogilvie’s comparing roti to chicken nuggets, which she said were high-fat protein coated in carbohydrates with no fibre. She said the carbohydrate in which the nuggets were coated was a high-glycaemic carbohydrate.

“This means that the sugar becomes easily available for the body, resulting in the blood sugar being increased more that it would without the coating.” On the other hand, a roti could contain vegetables such as pumpkin, bhagi, bodi, channa, spinach and more. She said pumpkin had fibre, vitamin E, and carotenoids for eye health; spinach contained manganese, iron, magnesium and a large variety of vitamins and minerals; and split peas and channa had fibre and protein.

“The glycaemic response, the effect on your blood sugar, that a person would have to chicken nuggets as opposed to a high-fibre roti is completely different.

Also the lipidaemic response would be different.” She explained that when someone ate highfat protein, the saturated fats in the blood was high. In the case of a roti, although it also contained fat, the fibre would trap some of the fat so that the percentage of fat that entered the blood stream was reduced.

However, she stressed that the effects of local foods on the blood and physiology so as to exactly determine the glycaemic and lipidemic responses had not been evaluated. Therefore she said one could only make inferences based on existing science.

Roberts also had an issue with the generalisation in the video clip because roti in Toronto was different from that in TT or even St Vincent and the Grenadines.

She said dhalpourie in TT was very thin and had a lot of split peas, while roti in Toronto was thicker and had very little peas, so TT roti had the added advantage of fibre.

She criticised Ogilvie, saying the reporter’s statements were not based on science but on what she felt was right or wrong.

However, registered dietitian Kimberly Suraj agreed with Ogilvie, saying that in general, the people of Trinidad and Tobago overeat.

She said she often told patients and clients a whole roti was too much. “We teach that it is better to have more, smaller portions instead of having large meals. So I would say buying a roti and having half at lunch and half in the evening – nothing is wrong with that, and it would be the better option.

“Generally we eat too much. The serving sizes at fast-food places are large and that is why we are seeing obesity in children these days.

We see children in the hospital, ten, 11 years old, with type II diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and they are all on medication.

It’s no longer only older persons, and it’s simply because of their diet.”