The Diet Culture Lie: How Egyptian Food Was Never the Problem

I cannot remember a time I did not struggle with my weight or how I looked. Now, in retrospect, I realise I was not even fat. I was okay. But the numbers we heard and compared ourselves to always stayed in the back of my mind, even when I was swimming every day, sometimes twice a day.

When I started “dieting”, I became scared of the days we would gather at Teta’s because of all the “unhealthy food” I believed would ruin everything. The day we had lunch at her house suddenly became a “bad day”, so I would think: you know what, khalas, just eat whatever. And the funny thing is that whenever we thought of “fat”, we blamed mahshy, rokak, béchamel, before we even blamed French fries, Coke, chips or sushi.

This fear stayed with me for years until I started cooking from Teta’s book and realised: wait… who told us this was unhealthy? Yes, some dishes are richer, but a lot of traditional Egyptian recipes are balanced, whole and slow cooked.

We celebrate peanut butter and coconut oil as “healthy fats” but forget that ghee, a natural and heat stable fat, has always been part of our kitchen. Now the world is moving away from seed oils and rediscovering whole ingredients, slow cooking and what is now called ancestral diets.
We have been doing that forever.

Take mahshy betengan, my favourite.

Nutrition for the whole pot:
About 3,200 calories
About 140 grams of protein
About 130 grams of fat
About 390 grams of carbohydrates

Per serving, if we say 5 servings:
About 640 calories
About 28 grams of protein
About 26 grams of fat
About 78 grams of carbohydrates

A complete meal with meat, vegetables, rice, broth and fat.
Not a “side snack of shame”, but a proper and nourishing lunch.

And this is without changing anything. No adding protein. No cutting the rice.
This is the same mahshy our grandmothers made.

If I described this as a trendy “one pot balanced meal” made with grass fed fat and slow cooked vegetables, you would think it came from a wellness blog.
But it is simply Teta’s mahshy.

And remember, these are the festive foods.
What about the everyday things?
The mesabbek, the okra, the stews that simmered quietly on the stove, meals that nourished entire generations without labels, without macros and without guilt.

Bamya, for example, is high in protein, high in fibre, rich in vitamins and antioxidants and naturally low in processed ingredients. Add a side of rice or baladi bread and you are around 570 to 600 calories, a full and balanced home cooked plate.

Kabab hallah is the same. Beef, onions, tomatoes, spices and a spoon of ghee. Whole ingredients. Slow cooking. Nothing artificial.

Between mahshy (about 640 calories), bamya (about 370 calories) and kabab hallah (about 370 calories), most Egyptian dishes fall exactly where modern nutrition wants them to be: whole ingredients, natural fats, vegetables, slow cooking and real protein.

Our grandparents’ generation ate differently not because they were trying to be healthy, but because life was different. They cooked from scratch. They sat at the table. They ate real food.

Sometimes I feel a little sad that we drifted away from that without realising. Years of being scared of food that was never the enemy, only to replace it with habits that made us feel worse.

Because everything needed to be fast.
We started eating in a hurry, from takeaway containers, power bars or Special K cereal (which I personally feel victimised by). It was expensive, tasted bad and was never filling. Food became something quick, something convenient, something you “just grab” because you are tired.

And although the harm is done, and although when I think of food I often picture myself eating on a lazyboy in front of the TV, maybe we can bring some of it back. Slowly and gently.

Let us make mahshy again.
Let us make bamya.
Let us make kabab hallah.
Let us eat at the table, even if it is once a week.
Let us start slow.
Maybe we will find our place at the table more often.

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Author: Mary Sheirf

Teta Loula is an Egyptian cookbook project inspired by my grandmother’s kitchen. I write about Egyptian food the way we actually cook it at home: one step at a time.
Contact: ahlan@tetaloula.com