http://www.care2.com/greenliving/ayurvedic-nutrition.html
Ayurvedic Nutrition
In Maharishi Ayurveda (Sanskrit–Ayus “life,” and Veda “knowledge” or “science,” hence “the science of life” or “the knowledge of life span”), a balanced diet does not revolve around fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. Nor are calories, vitamins, and minerals given direct attention. These nutrients are known to us intellectually, not through direct experience. You cannot detect vitamin C in your orange juice, much less the difference between it and vitamin A.
When your taste buds greet a bite of food, an enormous amount of useful information is delivered to the doshas (three operating principles situated in the interconnectedness between mind and body). Working solely with this information, Ayurveda allows us to eat a balanced diet naturally, guided by our own instincts, without turning nutrition into an intellectual headache.
When food talks to your doshas, it says many things, because the different gunas (qualities)–heavy and light, dry and oily, hot and cold–are present in it. But the primary information is contained in its taste.
Ayurveda recognizes six tastes, or rasas: Sweet, salty, sour, bitter, pungent and astringent. All spicy food is pungent. Astringent is the taste that puckers your mouth. In Ayurveda a balanced diet must contain all six rasas at every meal.
It is not necessary to overload a meal with each taste. Just a hint of herbs and spices will add pungent and bitter to a meal. Nor is it good to let the same tastes dominate day after day. The basic rule is simply to give the body all six rasas each day so it can respond to feed completely.
Adapted fromPerfect Health: The Complete Mind/Body Guide, by Deepak Chopra, M.D. (Harmony Books, 1990).
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8 comments
add your comment »This is just in response to Richard below.. Of course processed sugar is loaded with chemicals, but there are other options. These could be either organic, raw, brown sugar, or even honey can be used as a sweetener. I never use just white sugar and I always try and incorporate the sweet somehow!
Thanks for this great information!
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thank you deepak for such an informative article. i love your writings.
i'm a vata, by the way.
be well.
annie!
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thanks...
Kabin
Konteyner
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oops....of course I ment to say in POWDER FORM in my post below...powerful it is, I am sure ;-)
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I only ever buy raw sugar these days. The white stuff does not even agree with me anymore. Recently I had a Chineese meal which I normally cannot digest but on the menue it noted that the dishes could also be prepared without the glutemate (food enhanzer)..what a difference.
If enough people speak out things will change.
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In response to your post Deepak, I must say that one arena that people need to most know about is that Processed Sugar GLucose and Fructose are DRUGS. If you are putting DRUGS into your beautiful and precious body you can balance your Doshas all you wish and it will throw them off again. Large food companies and Agri-Business have put harmful chemical compounds in much of the food that society is eating not to mention the MSG that McDonalds and other companies use and call a spice in their ingredients.
WHen I stopped putting sugar and anything that was a derivitive of processed sugar in my body and stopped suporting large agri-business my health improved dramatically, my eyes began to glow and I jumped out of bed in the morning and I felt more at peace.
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Would they have this in power form so that I could add it to nuddles or pasts dishes?
Love to cook but usually only have time and paitents at the weekend to get involved in cooking a meal with more than two ingredients.
Six ingredients at every meal....that is really too much to ask. Nevertheless if I got a taste for it..cooking more often might just become a good habbit :-)
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Thanks, good to know, feed the dosha a little of all 6. At one time I was more Vata, but now I am Pitta.
Love & Peace
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