Ashish Agarwal

Food, Prevention & long-term health | 15 yrs in Banking & Investing (GIC, TPG) | Researching pesticides, ultra-processing | BeforePlate | IITR | IIMC

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

If you want to live a long, healthy life, the most powerful lever is not treatment but prevention. And that is driven by everyday inputs most of us have stopped paying attention to. Food is the biggest & most controllable of these inputs & often most ignored.

This is where I write about that, in plain language:
- the bigger picture of how our food and health systems actually work
- simple, fundamental healing and prevention basics
- myth-busting the food and health claims we take for granted, and
- honest life experiences, what worked and what did not

No miracle cures, no fear-mongering. Just the fundamentals of staying healthy for the long run. If that sounds useful, follow along.

Why I do this: for 14 years I worked in finance, the last seven investing at GIC, before that at TPG and Credit Suisse, much of it around healthcare. One thing kept nagging me. As economies grow and we live longer, chronic disease keeps rising, yet almost all the money and attention goes to the cure - hospitals, drugs, now weight-loss drugs - and almost none to prevention. Because prevention does not fit the capitalistic business model.

It became personal watching the food environment my own two kids are growing up in. We have access and good intentions, and still, real nutritional knowledge is rarely taught and usually discovered only after something has gone wrong.

So I left to work on this full time. Long term health driven by real inputs. Prevention before Treatment.

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

Europe bans a pesticide because its own regulators decide it is too dangerous for European farmers, then the same companies keep manufacturing it and ship it out to countries like ours.

A joint investigation by Public Eye and Unearthed found that in 2018 alone, EU countries exported around 81,000 tonnes of pesticides banned for use inside Europe. Paraquat, a chemical linked to Parkinson's disease and banned in the EU since 2007, made up close to 28,000 tonnes of that from the UK alone. India was one of the destinations.

I find it hard to accept that the same chemical judged unsafe for a French or German field becomes acceptable the moment it lands on ours. It is the same chemical. Only the rulebook is different.

This isn't really about one company. It's about a system where the safety line moves depending on which country you're standing in, and countries with weaker enforcement end up carrying the risk that richer markets have already ruled out for themselves.

@D2Emag and @pesticideaction have both reported on this in detail, if you want to go deeper.

Why is a chemical judged too dangerous for European soil considered acceptable for ours?

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

This is good to see, and misleading claims on packets deserve exactly this kind of action. But labels are something we can at least read and question. The harder problem is what we cannot see at all: a 2022 study found that about 80% of the pesticides used in India, by volume, are in the most hazardous category, sprayed long before the product ever reaches a shelf or a label. If I may add one sincere request: the same energy going into policing what is written on the packet is needed even more for what is sprayed on the farm, since that risk never even makes it onto a label for us to question.

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

India has been a dairy-drinking, wheat-eating civilisation for thousands of years too, ghee, paneer and roti are about as central to how we eat as anything gets. So the sudden rise of gluten-free and dairy-free as a lifestyle statement here has very little to do with genuine intolerance and a lot to do with marketing. Most people who switch never actually get tested, they just swap paneer for a packaged almond or soy milk that turns out to be mostly water, emulsifiers and gums, and call it the healthier choice.

The bigger shift is probably lifestyle, not biology. People who ate this way for generations were also far more physically active, working the land, walking everywhere, out in the sun all day. Exercise is now well documented to improve gut motility and grow a more diverse, more protective gut bacteria population, and sunlight drives vitamin D, which helps maintain the gut's own lining. Swap that for a mostly indoor, sedentary life running on packaged food that's known to disrupt those same gut bacteria, and a lot of what gets diagnosed as a sudden dairy or gluten intolerance may really be a gut health problem we created, not our biology changing overnight.

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

This is such a common pattern and deserves a lot more attention. It goes even deeper on the regulatory side too. A 2022 Pesticide Action Network UK report found India permits 91 highly hazardous pesticides, and Indian wheat is allowed up to 50 times more chlorpyrifos residue than UK wheat, a chemical the UK banned in 2019 for harming children's brain development.

And it isn't only about what India allows on its own farms. A 2020 investigation by Public Eye and Unearthed found that EU countries exported 81,000 tonnes of pesticides to countries like India, Brazil and Colombia, even though these were banned for use in the EU. This included large companies like Syngenta and Bayer.

Sad part is that pesticides are invisible poison, so it mostly escapes attention.

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

In April 2024, spice mixes from two of the biggest, most trusted names in Indian kitchens were pulled off the shelves in Hong Kong, Singapore and the Maldives, and flagged for import checks by the US FDA.

The reason was ethylene oxide, a gas used to sterilise spices that is also classified as a carcinogen. These are not obscure export-only labels. They sit in almost every Indian pantry, including the one I grew up with.

These were not caught by anyone here. They were caught because Hong Kong and Singapore actually test for ethylene oxide in spices, while FSSAI at the time did not screen for it the same way in the domestic market. So the exact same batch that gets rejected the moment it reaches a market that tests for it can sit quietly on our own shelves, never flagged, never recalled.

For me, this isn't about one bad batch from one brand. It's about whether we can catch a risk like this ourselves, instead of waiting for someone else's lab to find it for us.

I don't think this means we stop trusting Indian spices. I think it means trust should sit with an actual test result, not a familiar name on the packet.

When did you last see an Indian food safety finding that left you reassured, not worried?

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

The bright red in a lot of sweets, candies and jams has nothing to do with fruit.

A good example is a dye called erythrosine, or Red 3. Back in 1990, the US banned it from cosmetics and lipstick because it caused cancer in animal studies. The strange part is that it stayed legal in food, the stuff we actually eat, for another thirty-five years. The US only moved to pull it from food in January 2025.

Closer home, the problem is rawer. An illegal industrial dye called metanil yellow, a known neurotoxin, still turns up in cheap laddoos, turmeric and dal. Studies have found common food colours in Indian sweets and street food well above the legal limit.

And children eat the most of this. The bright orange drink, the green ice cream, the pink sweet. In the EU, several of these dyes must legally carry a line on the pack saying they may affect activity and attention in children. Here, most of us have never been told.

A colour on a label is decoration. It is never nutrition.

Do you check the colours in what your kids eat? Honestly, for years, I did not..

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

GLP-1 drugs have been a popular new phenomenon, and there is some real short-term, immediate weight-loss benefit. But there is another side which gets far less attention.

The first is that the weight tends to come back. In the STEP-1 trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, people regained about two-thirds of what they had lost within a year of stopping, and the same pattern has since shown up across several other trials. The drug works only while you keep taking it, so for most it quietly becomes a lifelong weekly injection.

The second is that a fair part of what you lose is muscle, not just fat. Some studies put it as high as a third or more, which matters more as we age.

And the deeper part is that these manage the symptom while the cause stays the same. Our weight problem comes from ultra-processed food and our everyday lifestyle. Both are hard to stay disciplined with, and the moment we slip it can turn into a vicious cycle, which is probably why a drug feels easier. The harder but more lasting fix is still real food and a better lifestyle.

Genuinely a powerful tool. Just one that works best alongside fixing the basics, not instead of them.

I saw this myself at a naturopathy centre I visited earlier this year. Several diabetic patients there were reducing their insulin doses within just a few days - not from any drug, just from eating clean whole food and resting. The body responds to real food faster than most people expect.

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

In 2019, twenty adults checked into a metabolic ward at the NIH Clinical Center in the US and agreed, for a month, to eat only the food they were handed.

For two weeks they were given ultra-processed food, and for two weeks food made from whole ingredients. The clever part: both diets were matched for calories on offer, and for sugar, fat, fibre and salt. People could eat as much or as little as they wanted at every meal.

The result surprised even the researchers. On the ultra-processed diet, people ate about 508 more calories a day, and gained weight. On the whole-food diet, they lost it. Same people. Same hunger scores. The only thing that changed was how processed the food was.

It was not really about sugar, or willpower. Ultra-processed food is soft, calorie-dense and quick to eat, engineered to slip past the signals that tell your body to stop. You finish more before you ever feel full.

I keep coming back to this because it is exactly the kind of food multiplying on our shelves, sold to us and to our children as normal.

What is one packaged food you genuinely cannot stop at a single portion?

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

Dr. Emrani, this is a genuinely useful list. Fasting insulin especially - most people have never had it checked, and by the time HbA1c moves the insulin resistance has often been building for years.

The one thing I find myself thinking about alongside these is the upstream input that drives the numbers in the first place. In a NIH trial run by Kevin Hall, people eating ultra-processed food consumed around 500 extra calories a day without consciously trying to - because the engineering of the food bypasses the satiety signals that normally keep us in check. That kind of sustained, repeated insulin exposure over years is a big part of how HOMA-IR and fasting insulin end up elevated in the first place.

The test catches it. The food is often what created it. Both matter.

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

@MyPet27503134 @SamaHoole That is very nice. Hope he sees even more tangible benefits soon!! All the best

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

Fun way to get people thinking about their gut. The biggest lever underneath all of it is what you feed it. A diverse, fibre-rich, mostly whole-food diet builds a healthier microbiome. Ultra-processed food works the other way. Emulsifiers, the additives that keep packaged food smooth and stable, have been shown to thin the gut's protective mucus lining, and preservatives, which sit in almost everything with a long shelf life, can quietly suppress the very good bacteria they are designed to keep from growing. Your gut really does reflect what you feed it.

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

In addition to training, another point that often gets ignored today is food. You genuinely cannot out-train a bad diet, and that becomes truer with age, when muscle and metabolism get harder to hold. Train the mind, move the body, and fix the plate, and the three compound on each other.

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

Glad to see this getting a film, it is badly needed. Adulteration is at least the part of the food problem people can sometimes see. The harder one is the invisible layer, the pesticides sprayed at the source. A few things worth knowing: of the pesticides registered in India, close to 60% are in the extremely hazardous category, and they make up the bulk of what we actually spray, many already banned in the US and Europe. Mancozeb, for instance, is banned in the EU for hormone disruption but still widely used here. And residues are only ever tested one chemical at a time, never as the cocktail you actually eat across a day. In Punjab's Malwa belt the cancers rose so visibly that the night train to the cancer hospital in Bikaner became known as the cancer train. This deserves exactly the national attention the film is trying to bring.

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

This is such a useful thing to flag, most people have no idea that dark patch is a warning sign. What is worth adding is what drives that insulin resistance in the first place. For most of us it is years of refined carbs, sugar and ultra-processed food spiking insulin again and again until the body stops responding well. The encouraging part is that it often improves when the food changes, sometimes faster than people expect. The skin is really pointing us back to the plate.

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

Sanya, fair point on the marketing hype around a lot of these. I would not discredit supplements as a whole though, that is really a separate debate. My own preference is simply that we get the basics right first: clean, chemical-free food with fewer pesticides, and cutting back on the ultra-processed stuff. Once the everyday plate is genuinely sorted, supplements can absolutely have their place on top. We just tend to reach for the tub before we have fixed what is on the plate every day.

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

This is a great way to frame it. Real, whole food works with your satiety system, it triggers the fullness signals that tell you to stop. The flip side matters just as much: ultra-processed food is engineered to bypass those very signals. In an NIH trial, people ate around 500 more calories a day on ultra-processed food without feeling any fuller. Same hunger, far more eaten. It is not only what you add to a diet, it is what you remove.

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

Sangeetha, you make a really important point, and the carb-plus-refined-fat plate with a desk job is exactly the modern trap. One nuance I would add on the last bit: a home-fried samosa or khakhra is processed, but not quite ultra-processed the way a packet of chips or cream biscuits is. The NOVA system draws that line - ultra-processed is defined by industrial additives, emulsifiers and bliss-point engineering built to extend shelf life and override the signal to stop. Our traditional fried snacks are oily and carb-heavy for sure, but the packaged stuff layers a different kind of harm on top. Both worth cutting, just for slightly different reasons.

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

@SamaHoole Unfortunately I have been unsuccessful in pushing my father towards it. He just completely dismisses me and is not willing to leave his sweets and his pill. Any suggestions anyone?

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

I had seen an even more amazing result, which was on my previous trip to Naturopathy. There was a diabetic patient who, after four days of stay there, did not take his insulin and his blood sugar was under control. This was a person who used to take insulin for diabetes for more than five years and that is when this whole concept of preventive health through food really attracted me. You are doing a great job. Some of your posts are really insightful and nice. Thank you for sharing.

[Ashish Agarwal @beforeplate]

There is a lot of truth here that we underrate. I have lived with chronic, low-grade inflammation myself for years, and what helped me most was not a single ingredient but cleaning up the inputs - a week at a naturopathy centre, simple whole food, fixed timings, and cutting ultra-processed food as a category, because that is where the refined oils, added sugar and emulsifiers all sit together. Emulsifiers in particular thin the gut's protective mucus lining and disturb the microbiome, which is exactly where a lot of that quiet inflammation starts. Real, whole food in, processed food out, made a real difference for me.