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food shall be your medicine - Hippocrates
"The
food one eats, the mind one has", the food one eats,
in fact affects the way one feels, heals, behaves, reacts
or uses ones intellect. Human sufferings in the form of emotional
stress, anxiety, depression and maniac states have their cause
of origin in consumption of caffeine-containing foodstuffs
like coffee, colas and eating food which are good for the
taste buds but for us as a whole.
Health
conscious people should be food conscious. For leading a healthy
and energetic life proper food is essential. It is not about
filling stomach with whatever one can lay hands on, but is
about eating the food that can contribute to making us holistic.
Ideally, when one eats, ask your body "do I need this"
and learn to listen to the answer. Your body continuously
keeps giving you message about making it a garbage bin, but
we conveniently ignore it till the body starts retaliating
as symptoms.
People
in general realize intellectually that the food they eat is
a means of maintaining health and vitality, eaten in harmony
(!) with the human conditions and the nature. Preferences
for food are established in childhood, for, children tend
to eat in the tradition of their parents. Nutritional value
of food is an intellectual consideration, eating whole and
unprocessed foods combined with the principles of cooking
and eating constitutes holistic nutrition. Religion, economical
and ecological placement constitute the other factors like
an individual's temperament, body constitution and need for
Satwik diet of pure, fresh food consisting mainly of fruits,
vegetables, grain, nuts and pulses and more importantly abstaining
from Tamasik diet of animal flesh and byproducts, stored,
canned, treated and frozen foods. Nutritionists, today, request
all to eat food in its natural form with minimal processing
and preservation.
Ancient
scriptures have dealt in detail a lot about the kind of food
one needs to eat to remain healthy and lead a holistic life,
which can be found in Hata Yoga Pradipika, Siva Samhita,
Bhagwat Gita, Yoga Kundalini Upanishads, Darshnopanishad.
One thing echoed in all these are 'Health shuns him who eats
too much and who does not at all'. Both these extremes are
symptomatic of identifying the body with sensations. Bhagwat
Gita also emphasizes on relinquishing of sensual indulgence
in food, and hence condemns those who eat just for the same
of eating. Salient features of the dietary guidelines given
in the scriptures are, discarding of flesh food/hard food/sinful
and sensually stimulating food like all junk foods using refined
flour, preservatives, cola cult foods, canned-refind-milled-frozen-coloured-artifically
flavoured-processed foods etc.
One
has to shed lethargy and sluggishness in life for which one
must regulate the diet in the manner that it holds control
over the senses, especially sexuality, anger, frustration
etc. If one avoids disturbing harmony with exciting food,
then these overhyped desires can be curbed moderately and
is turned into a spiritual endeavour. Over-eating at one times
makes excessive demand on the physical organs and puts the
harmony of body process into stress. Too much food is not
only unusable put also toxifies the body and creates dis-ease.
Man is a natural herbivore. As has been given in biblical
account of man's diet: God told the first human race, "I
give you all plants that bear seeds everywhere on earth and
every tree bearing fruit which yields seeds they shall be
yours for food". Somewhere we all have forgotten to be
humans and have turned just Junk Eating Machines.
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