CHAPTER
13

The Ayurvedic Perspective on Nutrition

In This Chapter

More people are aware of the herbal and skin-care sides of Ayurveda than with its nutritional theories. As an Ayurvedic nutritionist, I have found so much intuitive wisdom in the way Ayurveda explains nutrition, illustrating the connection between someone’s everyday diet and later illnesses.

The Ayurvedic perspective of nutrition is all about balance. Ayurveda is less concerned with calories and macronutrients and more concerned with energy and maintaining equilibrium. When you are eating the right diet in the right amounts, you will be consuming the calories and nutrients you need effortlessly, without even needing to worry about them.

In this chapter, I review the five types of nutritional disorders according to Ayurveda. Most likely, you or someone close to you suffers from at least one. These disorders are much more common than you’d believe and are the leading causes of digestive issues and chronic disease. After explaining these disorders, I explain how to treat and prevent each through dietary and lifestyle practices you can begin implementing today. With proper nutrition, you can become your healthiest self, one bite at a time.

The Five Types of Nutritional Disorders

When you think of nutritional disorders, you might think of malnourishment on one end of the scale and obesity on the other. The many types of nutritional disorders that lie in between these two extremes frequently are overlooked.

Many of us suffer from nutritional disorders without having any idea. We believe we are healthy but little things we are doing like eating too much at dinner, buying snacks from the convenient store, and even having leftovers can lead to a nutritional disorder.

Ayurveda classifies five main types of nutritional disorders:

Let’s take a closer view of each.

Quantitative Dietary Deficiency

Quantitative dietary deficiencies are caused by not eating the right amount of food. This includes malnourishment, starvation, anorexia, and excess fasting. Quantitative dietary deficiencies are more common in the developing world, where food sources are scarce, but they are on the rise in developed countries with the progression of eating disorders, particularly in young women.

Qualitative Dietary Deficiency

Qualitative dietary deficiencies result from not eating enough nutritionally sound food. This is another type of malnourishment, yet it stems from not consuming enough nutrients even though you might be consuming enough calories. Qualitative dietary deficiency is much more common than you’d think. Eating too many processed, packaged, and precooked foods causes qualitative dietary deficiency. Improper food combining can lead to this type of deficiency as well. Most Americans have this deficiency and don’t even know it.

Quantitative and Qualitative Overnutrition

This is another deficiency a huge percentage of the population suffers from: eating too much food. In fact, two thirds of Americans are overweight. Overnutrition results in obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, lethargy, cold sweats, heart disease, and stroke. Emotional, binge, and mindless eating, as well as overeating all cause quantitative and qualitative overnutrition.

Toxins in Food

Unless you live on an organic farm and grow your own food, you most likely have some level of this disorder. Genetically modified foods, pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics in many of our food ingredients can lead to toxicity, attributing to digestive disorders and other illnesses. You can minimize this disorder by consuming an organic, diet free of genetically modified foods.

Foods Unstable for One’s Doshic Constitution

Before you read this book, you may have been eating the wrong foods for your Dosha every day and not even realized it. When you eat the wrong foods for your Doshic constitution, imbalances accumulate, from acne to arthritis. Your digestion is the cornerstone of your health, which is why you must eat the right foods for your Dosha.

Ayurvedic Alert

Nutritional disorders stem from undereating, overeating, consuming nutrient-void foods (packaged, processed, precooked), toxicity in foods (pesticides, GMOs, antibiotics, hormones), and eating the wrong ingredients for your Doshic constitution. You might be suffering from one or more of these and not necessarily know it.

Treating the Disorders

As you can see, these nutritional deficiencies are much more common than you might have imagined. But hope is not lost; they all are treatable and preventable.

According to Ayurveda, true health comes in your everyday actions. You don’t need to take an array of vitamins and supplements to be healthy. Health comes from your food. Your vegetables are your vitamin shots. Your spices are your medicine. Your fruits are your beauty pills. You don’t need to look for health anywhere else besides your plate.

Just as important as what you eat is how you eat. If you consume too much or too little food, you’ll experience a nutritional disorder. At the same time, if you eat for reasons other than hunger—such as anger, loneliness, sadness, or boredom—you’re setting yourself up for disaster.

Food is much more than something you mindlessly put in your mouth to survive; it is energy, ritual, medicine, community, and joy. By healing your relationship with food, you can heal your body.

Quantitative Deficiencies

It’s hard to believe anyone would intentionally not eat enough food to nourish and sustain their body, but that’s what happens with quantitative dietary deficiencies.

A Closer Look at Quantitative Deficiencies

Although you live in the Western world where food is abundant, more and more people are suffering from quantitative nutritional deficiencies, meaning they are malnourishing themselves by choice. Why is it when the grocery stores are full of food, people are purposely going hungry? Because they’ve been told by the media that women are more desirable the thinner they are.

The Western fashion industry has glorified Vata-imbalanced bodies, with visible collarbones, protruding hips, “thigh gaps,” and tiny figures. However, in many other parts of the world, it is actually more desirable for women to have some extra body fat because it signifies her fertility and health. In fact, in India, men are encouraged to marry Kapha women because they are best suited as wives—peaceful, motherly, fertile, and strong. (It is interesting to note how each society has its own unique version of beauty and observe how your own view has been influenced by your surroundings.)

Regardless of cultural trends, you must find the right weight for your unique body type. Each Dosha has its own physiology: Vatas are naturally leaner, Pittas are more muscular, and Kaphas are curvier. Even if everyone followed the same diet and exercise routine, they would not all weigh the same amount because they each have a unique Prakriti. Many Kapha types particularly undereat to achieve this more Vata-esque body, which leads to a quantitative deficiency.

A woman who has a quantitative disorder constantly feels cold and sometimes even grows body hair to keep her warm. She may suffer from digestive issues, especially bloating, gas, and constipation, due to a low digestive fire. She may have visible bones, aching and cracking joints, and back pain. Her skin will have lost its vibrancy, and her hair will begin to shed. She may stop menstruating all together, a disorder called secondary amenorrhea. Her sex drive will decrease, as will her fertility, because her body is not in a healthy-enough state to reproduce.

Quantitative deficiency results in a Vata Vikruti, meaning one’s Vata levels will increase out of balance.

Treating Quantitative Deficiencies

If this sounds like you or someone you know, following a Vata-pacifying diet and lifestyle is essential. Here are some tips to treat a quantitative dietary deficiency:

  • Add more cooked foods to your diet.
  • Eat more soups, curries, stews, and stir-fries.
  • Include grains in all meals.
  • Consume more root vegetables, particularly yams and squash.
  • Incorporate warming spices in your diet, particularly ginger and cumin.
  • Include more healthy fats in your diet, such as oils, nuts, and avocados.
  • Avoid raw and cold foods, including salads, smoothies, popcorn, and crackers.
  • Say no to iced drinks, such as iced water, coffee, or tea.
  • Keep your body warm, staying away from the cold and wind.
  • Be careful not to overwork your body, through overexercise or excess activity.

Continue following these suggestions until your weight has gone up and your body has regained balance.

Qualitative Deficiencies

Another type of malnourishment that’s even more common is qualitative deficiency. This occurs when you eat enough calories but they’re far from sufficiently nourishing.

A Closer Look at Qualitative Deficiencies

Empty calories are a big cause of qualitative deficiency. Consuming junk, processed food, and fat foods most certainly leads to this type of disorder. Many Americans consume frozen dinners, snacks from the vending machine, and premade foods. According to Ayurveda, this is all toxic. You must consume freshly cooked vegetables, grains, and legumes to receive the nutrients you need.

Ayurveda highly emphasizes the importance of fresh food. Never consume food that was made more than 24 hours ago, including your own leftovers. This is because the prana, or life force, of food depletes after it has been cooked. Therefore, if you consume food prepared more than a day ago, its nutritional content has diminished.

Reheating foods, especially in the microwave, further kills the food’s remaining prana, making it nutritionally void. Food that no longer has nutritional value is more difficult for your body to digest. When your food is not well digested, toxins begin accumulating in your body, making you susceptible to imbalances. The fresher your food, the more healing benefits it offers your body.

Wisdom of the Ages

Enjoy your meal immediately after preparing it. Food begins to lose key nutrients as soon as you chop and cook it, and after 24 hours, it’s nearly nutritionally void. Instead of eating yesterday’s leftovers or heating a frozen dinner, make a meal from scratch.

Improper food combining can lead to a qualitative dietary deficiency as well. Ayurveda recommends specific rules of eating to prevent improper digestion, yet many of these rules are commonly broken, including these:

  • Never eat starches (bread, rice, pasta) with animal proteins (chicken, beef, fish, etc.). This means a sandwich or chicken and rice is not correct food combining.
  • Always eat fruit on an empty stomach, on its own, before meals.
  • Never consume dairy products with fruit such as a milkshake or fruit parfait.

By breaking these food-combining rules, you set yourself up for digestive disasters, including heartburn, indigestion, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, and other issues that can further manifest as imbalances throughout your body.

Treating Qualitative Dietary Deficiencies

If you eat a lot of packaged, precooked, or processed foods, you likely suffer from a qualitative dietary deficiency. Most restaurants do not pay attention to food combining and add salt, unhealthy oils, and other ingredients to make their food tasty and affordable but not necessarily nutritious. Your health is not a priority as much as their profit.

Although it might seem difficult to not reheat yesterday’s leftovers, especially if you made too much, the trick is to just prepare what you will eat that day. Most of us overshop and overcook. By frequently buying small amounts of local foods and cooking only what you will eat, you prevent qualitative nutritional deficiencies, resulting in increased energy, enhanced digestion, more vibrant skin, and a healthy physique.

Here are some tips to prevent a qualitative dietary deficiency:

Quantitative and Qualitative Overnutrition

Quantitative and qualitative overnutrition is the reason so many people are overweight or obese. In fact, it’s the most common of them all.

A Closer Look at Quantitative and Qualitative Overnutrition

We’ve all been guilty of eating more than we’re supposed to at least once or twice. But for many of us, it’s once or twice a day. According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), 68.6 percent of adults are considered overweight or obese, meaning their body mass index (BMI) is above 25. That’s two thirds of the population. On top of that, one in three adults in the United States is considered obese, with a BMI above 30.

BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. It’s not a perfect indicator of your health because it doesn’t differentiate between muscle and fat, but it does give you an overall indicator of your health. If you don’t know your BMI, any number of online calculators can help you determine it.

To put these BMI measurements into more common terms, an average-build woman who is 5 feet, 5 inches tall would have to weigh 150 pounds to be considered overweight and 180 pounds to be considered obese. An average-build man 5 feet, 9 inches tall would have to weigh 170 pounds to be considered overweight and 203 pounds to be considered obese.

Food is energy. When you consume too much and don’t burn it off, that energy has nowhere to go and is stored as fat. Once it’s stored as fat, it’s much more difficult to use than when it’s still in food form, ready to be burned off. This is why exercise is vital for weight management. You can’t keep putting fuel in your body without putting mileage on it to burn that fuel.

Overeating often stems from your culture. You are constantly busy and eating on the go, not allowing yourselves time to sit down and enjoy your meals. This continual state of stress makes you use food as a crutch or source of entertainment. Your restaurant portions are more than double the size of what you need, and your schools, offices, and even hospitals are bombarded with cookies, candy, and donuts. Eating has become America’s favorite pastime, resulting in overnutrition.

Wisdom of the Ages

People often eat for emotional reasons, not necessarily because they’re hungry. Emotional eating is on the rise as people use food as a coping mechanism for stress, loneliness, boredom, or unhappiness. Or they use food as a reward after a tough day at work and think they “deserve” a good binge because of the struggles they faced that day. Food temporarily takes your mind off your stress, but the moment you finish eating, you feel even worse, perpetuating the cycle. The only way to combat overnutrition is through self-love. When you care about yourself, you are less likely to overeat. You treat your body with the utmost care and become more in touch with what it actually needs.

Treating Quantitative and Qualitative Overnutrition

Quantitative and qualitative overnutrition causes Kapha imbalances, contributing to weight gain, diabetes, obesity, laziness, lethargy, heaviness, cold sweats, and depression.

Here are some tips to reverse quantitative and qualitative overnutrition:

Toxins in Food

As you bite into a seemingly safe shiny apple or piece of moist and juicy chicken, you may be unaware of the pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, and other toxins the food contains. Ayurveda states that toxicity in our food is a leading cause of nutritional disorders. Although toxins came from bacteria 5,000 years ago, today they result from the antibiotics and pesticides used to treat them.

Some of the most common, and dangerous, toxins in our foods are pesticides, recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), genetically modified organisms (GMOs), artificial food coloring and dyes, sodium nitrite/nitrate, bisphenol A (BPA), sodium aluminum sulphate, and potassium aluminum sulphate.

Let’s look at the implications of the first three.

Pesticides

Pesticides are used to control and prevent pests such as insects, rodents, weeds, bacteria, mold, and fungi from damaging food. After it’s applied, pesticide residue remains on your food and has been linked to cancer, birth defects, asthma, hormone disruption, and neurotoxicity. The toxic insecticide produced by genetically modified corn, for example, has been found in the blood of pregnant women and their unborn fetuses.

Ayurveda recommends consuming organic foods to avoid chemical exposure to potentially dangerous pesticides.

Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone

rBGH is a synthetic, manmade hormone given to dairy cows to increase milk production. It’s illegal in the European Union, Canada, and other countries due to its potential health effects, but it’s been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration since 1993. Many medical health experts have declared rBGH unsafe, including Samuel Epstein, MD, in his book What’s in Your Milk?

Drinking milk from cows treated with rBGH increases blood levels of the growth hormone insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). The American Cancer Society reports early studies linking IGF-1 to tumor development, particularly in breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer.

Cows treated with rBGH are more likely to develop udder infections, called mastitis, leading to bacteria and pus in milk. This problem is what caused the European Union and other countries to ban rBGH. The United States deals with this issue by feeding cows antibiotics, which leads to more antibiotic-resistant bacteria and also may kill our own healthy gut bacteria when we consume the antibiotic-laden dairy products.

In Ayurvedic times, people drank milk from their neighborhood cow and ate plants from their garden, which happened to be organic, raw, non-GMO, and rBGH free. Today, we have to pay attention and seek out safe products to ensure our foods are toxin free.

Genetically Modified Organisms

GMOs are plants, animals, or other organisms whose genetic makeups have been modified using recombinant DNA methods, gene modification, or transgenic technology. Since GMOs were introduced in 1996, chronic illnesses, food allergies, and other disorders have been on the rise. The percentage of Americans with three or more chronic illnesses jumped from 7 percent to 13 percent in only 9 years after GMO foods were introduced. Autism, reproductive disorders, digestive problems, and other ailments have increased as well.

The American Academy of Environmental Medicine urges all doctors to prescribe non-GMO diets to patients, citing animal studies showing organ damage, gastrointestinal and immune system disorders, accelerated aging, and infertility. Although there have been fewer human studies on the risks of GMOs, they have proven GMOs leave material waste inside of our bodies, possibly attributing to long-term health issues.

As briefly mentioned earlier, doctors at the Sherbrooke University Hospital in Quebec found Bt toxin in genetically modified corn in the blood of pregnant women and their babies, as well as in women who weren’t pregnant. The toxin was identified in 93 percent of 30 pregnant women, 80 percent of umbilical blood in their babies, and 67 percent of 39 women who weren’t pregnant. The study has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed journal Reproductive Toxicology.

Due to these findings and their potential risks, at least 26 nations, including Switzerland, France, Australia, Austria, China, India, Germany, Russia, Japan, New Zealand, Greece, Mexico, Italy, Poland, and Mexico, have either total or partial bans on GMOs. About 60 other countries have significant restrictions on them. The United States, however, has no restriction on GMOs. In fact, they make up a vast majority of the produce on our shelves today.

How to Spot Non-GMO Food

If you live in one of the countries that has outlawed GMOs, you’re lucky because to find non-GMO food, all you have to do is go to the market. If you live in the United States, however, it will be a little trickier. But with a little awareness, you can spot and avoid GMO food.

The best way to avoid GMOs in your food is to buy organic. Look for the Non-GMO Project Verified stamp on produce and other foods (and learn more at nongmoproject.org). Also, avoid any food that contains corn, soy, canola, or sugar beet, which are the most common GMO foods, unless they’re specified non-GMO. Finally, purchase organic animal products to ensure they were not given GMO feed.

Wisdom of the Ages

Ayurveda recommends avoiding foods with toxins, including GMOs, rBGH, and pesticides. The best way to do that is to purchase organic foods. Organic foods also are more nutrient dense and better for your long-term health.

Foods Unstable for One’s Doshic Constitution

The last reason you might develop a nutritional disorder is due to consuming the wrong food for your Doshic constitution. Many of us have imbalances we are unaware of. If you aren’t consuming a diet for your unique needs, your body will spiral out of balance:

Vata: If you are a Vata type or have a Vata imbalance, consume Vata-pacifying foods like warm, cooked meals.

Pitta: If you are a Pitta type or have a Pitta imbalance, consume Pitta-pacifying foods with cooling, hydrating ingredients.

Kapha: If you are a Kapha type or have a Kapha imbalance, consume Kapha-pacifying foods like hot, spiced foods.

When you don’t consume the right foods for your Doshic constitution, your digestion suffers. Digestion is the cornerstone of health, and if you aren’t digesting your food properly, you’ll begin experiencing imbalances unique to your Dosha:

Vata: Imbalances include bloating, gas, constipation, anxiety, and insomnia.

Pitta: Imbalances include heartburn, acidity, acne, increased body temperature, and anger.

Kapha: Imbalances include weight gain, lethargy, water retention, congestion, and allergies.

Be sure you consume the right foods for your unique Doshic constitution to avoid these imbalances.

The Least You Need to Know

  • Ayurveda recognizes five types of nutritional disorders: quantitative dietary deficiency, qualitative dietary deficiency, quantitative and qualitative overnutrition, toxins in food, and foods unstable for one’s Doshic constitution.
  • Quantitative dietary deficiency is caused by not eating enough foods, and qualitative dietary deficiency is caused by not eating enough nutritional foods.
  • Quantitative and qualitative overnutrition results from eating too much food, leading to obesity and diabetes.
  • Toxins in our foods include GMOs, pesticides, and rBGH. Eating organic foods reduces exposure to these toxicities.
  • Eating the wrong foods for your Doshic constitution can lead to a nutritional disorder. Your unique imbalances depend on your Dosha.