Basic Food and Diet (Part 2 – Understanding and Defining Nutrition from an Ayurvedic Aspect)

The food we eat brings us not only nutrition and sense of satisfaction – it brings us life. Food that is filled with this essence life force must be fresh, tasty and healthy. Ayurvedic nutrition will look at the basic 5 steps to have an individualized approach to nutrition

1. Understand your own constitutional nature
2. Recognise your digestive capacity
3. Recognise your capacity to assimilate nutrients
4. Recognize the signs if you are not completing digesting what you eat.
5. Age of the individual

Ayurveda considers diet along with sleep and lifestyles to be the fundamental foundation of health. Our well being depends on what we eat, how well the food are digested and ayurveda gives high importance to the elimination function process of our body. The condition of our bowels and state of the stools contribute to our health status. We are what we eat.

Ayurveda has created a very simple dietary principle called THE SIX TASTES. According to this principle, all the important nutrients that we need for life, such as fats, proteins, carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins etc are contained in a meal that consists of all the six tastes.

The six tastes are SWEET SOUR SALTY BITTER PUNGENT and ASTRINGENT.

The term TASTE not only applies to the perception of our taste buds located on the tongue, but to the final reaction of food in the acid medium of the stomach. Any meal that consist of food items from all these 6 tastes will be a balanced meal. It has all the nutrients for all the proper functioning of our body and thus balances our doshas.

Thus in order to achieve this state of balance, chosen food to be eaten must be Fresh food with life force with all the principle of tastes as stated earlier, cooked and eaten on the same day . What does ‘Life force’ means? It means that food that you buy must be as fresh that are grown under the sun, whereby the plants collects the ultraviolet rays which are energy from the sun and are grown in good soil environment. Thus I would encourage you to buy more from the local fresh market, farmers market and also the best is to buy organic or bio dynamic farming vegetables and fruits. I personally will buy all local vegetables to support our local farmers and avoid any purchase of imported vegetables – whereby each day we hear about the level of unacceptable pesticides and chemicals the farmers put into the plant and tress that bear fruits.

And to reduce the choice of eating microwave cooked/heated food, processed food such as canned food with preservatives or additives. Microwaving food changes the food molecules and with this radiation process of cooking, fresh food cooked in this manner becomes toxic. And today there are many people who do not even care what type of containers they used to heat up their food – which add in more toxicity due to the leakage of chemicals from poor quality food containers. With today’s modern farming methods, the source of the chosen food is good to know so that we try to eat more free range meat, organic vegetables, drink fresh good quality fluoride free water and reduce the burden of our body digestive system to absorb more chemicals, hormones that are used to plant and to rear the animals on commercial scale.