If you were setting out to eat a “balanced diet” based on the USDA’s food pyramid, you would easily know how much to eat of what, based on your age, level of activity, and gender. But according to Ayurvedic belief, your dietary needs are so unique that such a standardized guide would not work.
Also, in Ayurveda choosing what to eat depends on more factors than just what suits your dosha type. You have to think of such complex and ever-changing factors as season, location, blend of tastes, and an ingredient’s own qualities. While this makes a lot of sense, it can also make the Ayurvedic way of nutrition seem more difficult to follow.
The good news is that there are dozens of basic nutrition rules that everyone can follow, and in this chapter I will give you a quick list of these rules. Here you will find both general and specific guidelines on the fine art of choosing, preparing, and consuming your food.
Before you start reading these guidelines, I’d like to remind you that Ayurvedic nutrition is not so much about sticking to lists and quantities as it is about making intuitive and intelligent food choices.
Here are the guidelines that will make it easier for you to eat Ayurvedically:
As I mentioned earlier, according to Ayurveda meat is a tamasic food — one that carries the negative emotions of terror, panic, and helplessness that an animal experiences while being slaughtered. The Ayurvedic belief is that such tamasic foods can give rise to feelings of dullness, depression, and aggression. However, a great many people grow up eating meat and cannot think of giving it up. If you’re one of them, try eating meat-based meals mostly at lunch, when your agni is strong enough to digest them well. Simultaneously, start making friends with the flavor-intensive world of vegetables. In Ayurveda, a vegetarian diet is considered pure, light, and ojas enhancing — ojas being the essential energy of the immune system.
Ayurvedic sages said “Aaharah Praanah,” which means “food is life.” Give food the respect it deserves. Choose your ingredients with care and cook them with pleasure. Sit down to your meal, even if it is only an apple. Bring positive thoughts to the dining table and eat in the company of people who make you happy. Instead of watching television or reading a book with your meal, take in the sight, smell, texture, and flavor of your food.
It’s not that we don’t appreciate the value of leisurely dining. For your wedding anniversary, you don’t grab a burger; you reserve a corner table at a romantic restaurant. Memories of such special occasions linger a long time; you remember the texture of every morsel, the restful ambiance, the warmth of candlelight and conversation. Such food is satisfying and nourishing in numerous ways. The Ayurvedic sages would approve if you converted your dining room into a place where every meal is a celebration.
Eat warm, freshly cooked food as often as you can. Fresh foods are rich in prana, or life force. That is why produce from a farmers’ market tastes far superior to store-bought fruits and vegetables. Here is the best way to cook your vegetables:
• Heat ghee (clarified butter) to a moderate temperature, then add spices to it. This quick procedure releases the volatile oils of the spices into the ghee, drawing out their therapeutic qualities.
• Once the spices begin to sizzle in the ghee, add freshly chopped vegetables. The spices will thus be fully assimilated with your veggies, lending them flavor, aroma, color, and healing goodness.
• Simmer the vegetables on a low flame until they are just done, not mushy. To prevent burning, add a few spoonfuls of water.
As an alternative to using this method, you can also stir-fry, boil, grill, or steam your foods for maximum nutrition benefits.
Even at work, you can enjoy a hot meal if you invest in a stainless-steel thermos to hold warm foods. In the morning, you could pour some fresh-cooked vegetables and legumes into the container and carry this meal to work along with fresh whole-grain bread. Another good cooking tool is a slow cooker, which you can set up in your office kitchenette. Using this cooker, you can start a hearty soup as soon as you get to work, and enjoy it hot and delicious by lunchtime.
Ayurvedic healers have always advocated eating foods that are closely linked to the earth and alive with nature’s own intelligence. Obviously, leftovers don’t qualify for this category. Not only does leftover food gradually lose its prana, but it is also difficult to digest. Foods like chutneys can be cooked and stored in the refrigerator for weeks, but ideally even these should be made fresh in small amounts each time.
Agni, or digestive fire, is strongest at noon and weaker at breakfast and dinner. Eat according to the strength of your agni, and your digestion will function smoothly. Don’t overstuff yourself at dinner, even if that is the only meal you can eat in peace. With a little planning, you can make lunch your major meal of the day, which is what Ayurvedic wisdom recommends that you do.
For the same reason that fermented and microwaved foods are not recommended in Ayurveda, there are some other food types to stay away from. Processed, refined, and radiated foods lack any life or nutritive value. All they do is load you with calories and rob you of vitality. Why not throw them out of your kitchen and your life? Imagine your pantry shelves bursting, instead, with the goodness of such whole grains as split mung beans, whole-wheat flour, basmati rice, barley, quinoa, and amaranth. Imagine your senses being infused with the aroma and color of fresh herbs and spices like ginger, cumin, black pepper, fenugreek, coriander, and turmeric — to say nothing of their healing qualities. Visualize your refrigerator full of the freshest seasonal and organic vegetables and fruits. Of course, it is important to be realistic; you cannot achieve this transformation in one cataclysmic sweep. This process might require rethinking your budget and getting used to some new flavors. That is okay. Go slowly, but do make steady, healthful changes in the way you eat.
The Ayurvedic cooking medium of choice is ghee (clarified butter). Rich in antioxidants, ghee fights the harmful effects of free radicals. It is known to be an effective carrier of lipid-soluble nutrients; herbs and spices coated in ghee are readily absorbed by the body, thus making a healthy meal even more nutritious. What’s more, ghee is so flavorful and aromatic that a little goes a long way. In fact, the benefits of ghee are so great that Ayurveda gives it the status of a rasayana, or preeminent healing food. You can easily make ghee at home using the recipe in chapter 9.
Now that you’re stocked up and ready, let’s start with salad. Salad as you know it — fresh, crunchy, raw vegetables — forms a very small part of Ayurvedic cuisine. Surprising, isn’t it, when you think how much value Ayurveda places on fresh produce? But vaidyas prefer cooked food because raw vegetables require a lot of digestive fire, or agni. Therefore, Ayurvedic salads are lightly cooked. Pick your ingredients from among beans, grains, vegetables, nuts, rice, and noodles. For maximum benefit, eat them daily with lunch, when your digestive power is at its peak. Play with colors, textures, and flavors for natural balance and variety.
Warm, fresh, organic vegetables should constitute a substantial portion of your meal. Try to get at least two different vegetables at each meal, choosing those that complement each other in color, texture, and flavor. For example, carrots (which balance both vata and kapha) and broccoli (which balances pitta) make a good pair. Similarly, pitta-pleasing cauliflower and vata-friendly green beans go together well. If possible, eat one dark leafy-green vegetable such as collard, spinach, or kale every day. This will give you minerals that other vegetables do not. Furthermore, fresh moist greens release juices that hydrate the body down to its most minute channels, cleansing and refreshing you as a whole. For best results, choose your veggies based on the doshas you are trying to balance (see the “Dosha-Wise Food Guide” in the appendix).
All beans, peas, and lentils are classified as legumes. They rank high in Ayurvedic nutrition because they’re a great vegetarian source of protein. Legumes contribute an astringent taste and they strengthen body tissue, including muscle. If you’re new to legumes, it will take some time to get used to digesting their protein, so introduce them gradually into your diet. Using spices such as asafetida, cumin seeds, fresh ginger, and black pepper will help you digest legumes more easily and reduce side effects such as bloating or gas. The lightest legume is mung dal, split and skinned, which you can purchase in an Asian grocery store. This quick-cooking lentil balances all three doshas.
Here’s a quick quiz: which of these grains does an Ayurvedic healer prefer — brown rice or white rice? Though brown rice has its hull and bran intact, Ayurvedic healers prefer white rice because it is easier to digest. Among white rice varieties, vaidyas say basmati is king. Long-grained and delicate, basmati rice nourishes body tissue and balances your vital energies. However, even basmati rice is not recommended daily; on its own it is a bit heavy. Those with a dominant kapha dosha should especially avoid eating rice frequently because its heavy, sweet qualities can aggravate that dosha. It is a good idea to alternate rice with other beneficial grains, such as quinoa, wheat, amaranth, and millet. Parboiled, instant, and precooked rices are definite no-nos in Ayurvedic cuisine, which considers them devoid of vital life force.
You might think that Ayurveda, with its emphasis on regular mealtimes, frowns upon snacks. Not so. Snack all you like; just make sure you don’t munch on tidbits until your last meal is digested. Fried snacks are devoid of prana, and hence not recommended. Recommended Ayurvedic snacks include almonds, raisins, whole-grain bagels or sandwiches, and fresh, sweet, juicy fruit such as pears or plums.
Imagine that you’ve been looking forward to a great family evening by the fireplace in deep winter. Once a merry fire gets going and the conversation begins to flow, would you suddenly douse the logs with cold water? Of course not. But without knowing it, this is exactly what you might have been doing to the digestive fire inside you. When you start a meal with iced water or chilled soda, you are literally dousing your agni. No wonder, then, that in spite of a fresh hot meal you often feel heavy and uncomfortable. When you start with a cold drink and then eat a piping hot meal, you throw your stomach’s digestive mechanism out of gear, inviting cramps and bloating. Solution: take all your drinks at room temperature. This simple change in the way you drink beverages will make a dramatic difference in the way you digest your meals.
Kick-start your digestion with an instant yogurt drink called lassi before or during your lunch (you’ll find the recipe in chapter 9). Fresh and light, this delicious liquid is rich in digestion-friendly lactobacilli. Because it is a diluted form of yogurt, lassi benefits even pitta dosha, which is generally averse to sour foods, including yogurt. Here are some more heat-busting ideas:
• Make juice from water-rich fruits and vegetables like watermelon, cucumber, and lettuce for extra relief.
• Drink fresh coconut milk for relief from the heat.
• Make delectable cooling chutneys from herbs such as mint, cilantro, and watercress. For more thorough hydration, steep these cooling herbs in boiling water each morning, then bring them to room temperature and drink that water through the day.
• Favor cooling spices such as cardamom, coriander, and fennel in daily summer cooking.
• Use rose water or rose-petal conserve as a cooling food supplement, or add it to summer drinks.
The cold months are dominated by the vata dosha, so choose foods that are moist, warm, rich, and sweet. Make ripe, sweet fruits a part of your daily diet. Hot cream of wheat or rice cereals are a good choice for breakfast. A cup of herb tea is particularly soothing on cold afternoons. Slow-simmered soups using vegetables and grains make a hearty meal on their own. Hot stews like vegetarian Hungarian goulash, warm pasta, or mixed-vegetable pies topped with crumbled bread and cottage cheese are a perfect Ayurvedic choice for a winter lunch.
Drink at least seven to eight glasses of pure spring water during the day. Water performs the all-important function of sweeping away toxic ama from the body’s tissues and cells, thus ensuring that your vital energies flow smoothly. For variety, add a sprig of fresh mint or a teaspoon of pure rose water to your glass occasionally. Water kept in the cellar or a cool room is about the right temperature for digestion on a hot day. If you cannot do without refrigerated water, do the next best thing: set it out for ten to fifteen minutes to reduce the chill. This might sound contradictory, but when you avoid ice-cold drinks, you’ll find yourself coping much better with hot weather. My colleague, Vaidya Ramakant Mishra, belongs to a family of Raj vaidyas — physicians to India’s erstwhile kings. He adds an interesting twist to drinking water: infuse the water with spice. Here are his dosha-wise recipes for preparing Spice Water:
Boil two quarts of water for five minutes. Take it off the heat and add three mint leaves, ½ teaspoon fennel seed, and ¼ teaspoon marshmallow root. Place the water in a thermos. Sip it throughout the day at a warm, but not hot, temperature.
Boil two quarts of water for two minutes. Take it off the heat and add ¼ teaspoon fennel seed, two rosebuds, and one clove. Store it hot in a thermos, but before drinking it pour it into a cup and let it cool to room temperature.
Boil two quarts of water for five minutes. Take it off the heat and add three basil leaves, two thin slices of fresh ginger, ¼ teaspoon of cumin, and ½ teaspoon of fennel. Place the water and spices in a thermos, and sip the water at a hot or warm temperature throughout the day.
According to Ayurveda, fruit is one of the purest foods we can eat. Fruits enhance vitality and radiance, which come from good digestion and which Ayurveda calls ojas. For variety, try dishing up fresh-fruit chutneys: berries, stone fruits, apples, peaches, apricots, and dried fruits (in India this refers to almonds, walnuts, and cashews) — pick and blend any of these you like (not including melons, which are generally not made into chutneys because they are less stable than acidic fruits and hence difficult to keep beyond the day without preservatives). You can simply blend fresh fruit with spices, or you can cook them lightly. Either way, a chutney will stimulate agni and help digestion. Like relish, you need just a teaspoon or two of chutney to enhance a meal.
Ayurvedic healers consider milk an ojas-enhancing food, provided it is organic and free of bovine growth hormone. However, a vaidya would be appalled to see you take milk out of the refrigerator, pour it straight into a glass, and gulp it down. Cold milk is considered heavy and hard to digest. The best way to drink milk, according to Ayurvedic wisdom, is to boil it and then allow it to cool to room temperature. This reduces its mucus-causing properties. Adding a pinch or two of nutmeg or cardamom to warm milk at bedtime is an excellent means of promoting restful sleep. A note of caution: milk does not combine well with every food. Be careful not to drink milk with such sour foods as yogurt, cheese, melons, or protein-rich legumes. Together they can disrupt the intensity of your agni, disturb your acid balance, and wreak havoc on your digestive system.
Yogurt is far easier to digest than milk, and it contributes valuable nutrients to a vegetarian diet. In Ayurveda, it is not recommended that you eat store-bought yogurt, which can be sour, devoid of active bacteria, and “heavy,” or difficult to digest. For maximum benefit from yogurt, therefore, make your own at home.
Making yogurt is simple:
• In the evening, stir in two tablespoons of yogurt into one quart of organic whole milk (boiled and cooled to body temperature, or about 100 degrees).
• Place this mixture in a ceramic bowl or glass jar, cover it with a lid, and put it in a warm, draft-free place (the oven is a good place; keep the heat off, but switch on the light).
• Let it sit overnight. By morning, you should have fresh homemade yogurt.
The vegetarian diet benefits greatly from nuts, which supply fiber, minerals, and vitamins. Most of the calories in nuts come from fat, but it is mainly unsaturated fat, which performs some essential functions in the body. Almonds are considered the most energizing of nuts, and walnuts are seen as natural stress-busters. Nuts are moist and heavy in nature, therefore the vata dosha is pacified by eating nuts. Pitta should take nuts in moderation, while kapha should avoid them as much as possible. Make sure the nuts you buy are fresh and in season (nuts are freshest in fall and winter) because rancid or old nuts can actually be toxic. To keep them fresh, store them in a cool, dark place for up to two months; refrigeration helps, too. You can also freeze whole, unsalted nuts for up to a year.
The general guidelines I’ve just given you can work for everyone. Let me also talk about some specific situations.
Take care to eat an early dinner. You might find it difficult to avoid heavy meals during this time, so eat as early as you can to help the body digest the food better. If you get hungry later in the evening, comfort yourself with a light, warm soup. Another tip: suck on fresh ginger slices spiked with lemon and salt to improve digestion.
The body’s digestive fires weaken during illness, so if you have a cold, flu, or fever it makes sense to eat light. At this time, you need foods that the body can assimilate with ease. Ayurvedic healers say that split yellow mung dal is a golden food for the sick. Nutritious and light, it cooks quickly and speeds healing. You can also make khichari — a one-dish meal that combines rice, mung dal, vegetables, turmeric, and salt cooked in ghee. The method: heat ghee; add the spices; toss in the dal, rice, and vegetables; cook in water. If you have two cups of rice/dal/vegetables, use six cups of water.
Women are advised to eat light meals at these times. You should also be especially careful to avoid caffeinated drinks, alcohol, and foods high in salt, sugar, or additives.
Fasting is often advised for people who have a kapha imbalance; it helps them detoxify. Once in a while, fasting benefits everyone by cleansing the system. But be gentle with yourself; don’t starve. Puree some vegetables, blend some fresh juice, or stir up a soup. Give your stomach light doses of nutrition, and your fast will serve the purpose you want it to.
You have no doubt noticed that, general or specific, Ayurvedic nutrition is about following your intuition and using good, common sense. It is also about getting a feel for your agni — knowing how to stoke it, pacify it, and keep it happy.
I’m sure you cannot wait to put together a healthful Ayurvedic meal. And I cannot wait to tell you how to do that!