There is nothing called bad food, good food or excellent food as per Ayurveda. It’s bad, good, excellent or worse depending on the person, season and the prakriti of an individual, which means the concept of good, bad, excellent, worse is highly customized. Still there are some relevant points which need to be discussed.
Question: When to eat?
Answer: To understand this we need understand the concept of agni. The sanskrit terms cannot be exactly correlated with the modern terminology, but for the sake of understanding I am translating some words. Agni means the digestive fire of an individual and it is subjective to fluctuations as the day progresses and according to the seasons. The variation in the agni is of three types, Mandagni( low digestive fire) , teekshnagni (Increased digestive fire ) and vishamagni( diminishing digestive fire). Low digestive fire is evident in the morning, increased digestive fire is evident in the afternoon and diminishing digestive fire is evident in the evening. When to take the food is based on the status of digestive fire.
The breakfast should be taken at the junction point when the low digestive fire starts increasing to high digestive fire, it will come around 10 am -11 am depending on the area where you are residing. This means early intake of food is not advisable. There is one more rule regarding the time, after the bowel is evaluated, after proper urination and after feeling of appetite one should take food, if these things won’t happen, just fast until this things happen. Just think about the habit of taking bed coffee? Is it good or bad habit, think yourself.
Regarding the evening food, it’s the time when the digestive fire is in a diminishing stage and in this time you are supposed to take light food and in small quantity just enough to sustain the life. Overall when we look at the timings we can see only two timings and this is what ayurveda food timings is all about.
Question: How much to eat?
Answer: How much to eat also depends on the status of the digestive fire (agni), which means breakfast can be little heavy, since the digestive fire (agni) is increasing and the evening food should be light since the digestive fire (agni) is diminishing The heavy foods are supposed to be taken half the capacity and light foods can be taken till you feel satisfied.
Question: How to eat?
Answer: There is an order for the foods to be taken. It’s said in the classics that a food which contains all the tastes should be taken. The first rasa (taste) should be taken is the sweet taste, followed by the food which is predominantly in sour and salty taste and to end up we should take up the food which is exactly opposite to the food we have taken initially.
There is a beautiful concept behind this thought. When we are about to take food the vaayu (air) and Agni (digestive fire) are in an increased state and our first intention is to reduce these two is the first intention. For that we should take the food stuffs which are exactly opposite to these two and the best among this is the banana and paayasa. Usually in the marriages they will provide paayasa and banana at the end, just think is this right order? What will happen if we don’t follow this? Occasionally we have belching, bloating, heart burn etc and the solution is the right order of consumption.
Next comes in the order is the sour and salty food. Sour and salty food contains agni (digestive fire) in itself which helps the digestion, the best example is the rasam which is an essential part in the south Indian food. Based on the region you can select the ideal food based on this concept.
To end up with we should take the foods which has the opposite qualities of what has taken initially and the best options are pickles and butter milk.
Question: What to eat?
Answer: To understand what to eat, we should understand the concept of virudhanna (incompatible food habits) and gara visha. Gara visha is the concept in which by practicing these type of virudha food habits, by products formed are not expelled by the body and remains in the body and have qualities of poison, which keeps on building as we continue the virudhaahara and creates diseases when favorable condition arises. In Charaka samhitha there are 18 virudhas mentioned and most importantly these things are very relevant in the present era also. Finding and elaborating each and every virudha practice is practically impossible, still we will discuss some important ones which are important.
If we look at the indications of the virudhanna in the classics infertility, skin diseases and so many diseases are mentioned in the classics which means this is not a simple thing also please note that in medical books many diseases causes are unidentified and they will use the term idiopathic, but in ayurveda there is a proper cause for all.
In classics desha (area) are classified into anoopa desha ( watery places), jaangala desha ( dry places) and sadharana desha ( normal places). If the people in the watery place use cold and oily items and people in jangala desha uses dry and pungent things, it is not favorable, since if it is continued for a long time ends up in the formation of gara visha. This will stay in the body and the body is not expelling it (this is the specialty of gara visha) and when favorable condition arises it creates the disease. Just think of asthma, allergies etc, it’s easy to suppress the symptom of these diseases but to cure this, physician needs to have a thorough the knowledge about this concept. Another very relevant thing is the consumption of liquor. In the countries which are very cold it’s not a big problem and may be an essentiality but in tropical countries like India, where already high temperature prevails, just imagine somebody taking liquor which again is hot in potency.
Another important thing is the consumption of the foods which we don’t like and that too for a long duration. If you are studying a professional course usually we are supposed to eat what we don’t like for a long duration in the hostels or hotels. As you all know digestion starts from the mouth itself and the first thing to act is the saliva, do u think after seeing the hostel food anybody forms saliva ? Same happens when a person get job in an outside country where food habits are entirely different and India being a land of diversity a north Indian getting job in south India and vice versa also faces similar consequences. This comes under satmya virudha.
Another one is veerya virudha, eating things together, out of which one is hot in potency and other is cold in potency.
It’s seen that kids taking ice creams during winter and spicy items during summer which can be identified as kaala virudha. Intake of non seasonal fruits and vegetables also comes under kaala virudha. It is supposed to be taken in that season only.
A person having less digestive power eats heavy foods on a daily basis, for example biriyani which is very difficult to digest and if this continues for a long time it can result in the accumulation of gara visha will leads to various disease based on the area where it is being localized. The same is with light foods, usually seen in the people with fasting , even if they feel severe appetite also, they won’t eat anything since they are on fasting , which means the fuel is not getting enough raw materials to digest and what happens if it destroys own body ?
Then comes what is called samskara virudha, the re cooked, over cooked, half cooked, use of re- used oil etc falls into this category. An excellent example which is quite relevant today is the fried rice. This comes under paka virudham and samskara virudham.
Koshta virudha means the taking of food which is not suitable to the Koshta (intestine). Koshta (intestine) is divided into three types, Mridu (soft), Madhya (normal) and kroora Koshta(dry). For example if a kroora Koshta person uses dry things, like bakery products it results in the formation of gara vishas.
Intake of cold, dry, light eatables or drinkables (Vathala food) after being exhausted and taking of heavy, cold, oily( kaphakara food) after sleep comes under avastha virudha.
Finally the question arises, is it possible to do all these things i have mentioned above? Even those who wrote the classics know that it’s not easy to follow all the rules related to food and for that purpose they wrote another important and very relevant chapter called ‘ Ritu charya’ to clear all those bad effects already happed.
Indians are very wise enough to modify the food habits without altering the concept of virudhahara, they had introduced the concept of masala to change heavy foods into light food and so many permutations and combinations were made, though it is not followed now a days. When we started to copy the western style of food habits and tastes, everything went out of hand. Now India is sharing the leading ranks in many of the lifestyle diseases.
