Articles on the Ayurvedic Approach to Diet and Digestion

Everyone's digestion is unique. Although ayurvedic healers generally recommend cooking foods to enhance ease of digestion, if you find that your digestion is strong enough to handle a diet that contains lots of raw foods, and you have no signs of ama, then incorporating raw foods into your diet is not a problem.

Here are some suggestions for eating raw foods under the umbrella of ayurvedic dietary guidelines:

If your concept of including mung in your diet means topping off a salad with a few bean sprouts, think again. Mung beans, and their split, hulled version, mung dhal, can be used to create main dishes, salads, soups, spreads, savories, beverages and desserts. Mung beans combine well with a host of grains and flours, vegetables and greens, tart fruit, other sprouts, spices and herbs, and even rice, soy or nut milks.

"You are what you eat." Right, but only 50% right, according to the ancient healing tradition of ayurveda. The combination of what you eat and what your body does with what you eat is what actually shapes health and well-being. According to ayurveda, you are unique, and your dietary needs are unique too, determined by your body constitution, age, the season, your environment and your needs for balance at any given time. But there are some diet and digestion principles that are universally applicable. Here we present five that you can begin any time…the quick-and-simple way to incorporate the ayurvedic way of eating into your daily diet. Once you start seeing results, you can delve more deeply into doshas--ayurvedic body types--and tailor a diet and digestion routine that's best for you.

Ayurvedic healers consider digestion a key indicator and determinant of good health. If your digestive agnis (fires) are functioning effectively, the food you eat should get completely digested, absorbed and assimilated by your body, with the wastes regularly flushed out. An efficient digest-absorb-assimilate cycle leads to enhanced ojas. Ojas is the biochemical essence formed at the end of the chain of transformation that takes place with the raw materials we take in. Building ojas is crucial to an enhanced quality of life: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

Don't practice deprivation, whether it's fasting or skipping meals or denying your cravings--it's the quickest way to start a vicious cycle of weight gain. Instead, eat three meals a day--a small breakfast and dinner and a more hearty lunch, and add a healthy mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack if you feel hungry. Ayurveda does recommend portion control though--the quantity of food you consume at a meal should be no more than what you can hold in your two cupped palms, and you should get up from the table before you feel satiated and completely full.

According to ayurveda, every individual has unique needs for balance. Since diet is one of the most important ayurvedic tools for achieving balance, ayurvedic healers generally
design individualized diets for people they see, based on various factors such as age and gender, the doshic tendencies that need to be balanced at a given time, the strength of the body tissues and the digestive fires, and the level of ama (toxins) in the body. The place where a person lives and the season are also factors that affect dietary dos and don'ts.

Notwithstanding the individualized approach to choosing foods for balance, there are some universally applicable principles that are important to follow if you are living an
ayurvedic lifestyle.

In ayurveda, diet and digestion are accorded equal importance in maintaining good health. Just as choosing improper foods for your constitution can lead to imbalances, following improper routines and habits can wreak havoc on your digestion, turning even carefully chosen and prepared foods into ama or toxins in your system rather than ojas, the biochemical essence that supports all aspects of life, health, bliss and longevity.

Here are some universally applicable principles of eating that ayurvedic healers recommend to keep your digestion working efficiently:

The Six Tastes of Ayurveda

In ayurveda, foods are classified into six tastes (rasas)--sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent and astringent. Many foods have more than one taste--Amla, the Indian Gooseberry, for example, contains five of these six tastes: all except salty, and turmeric contains three--bitter, pungent and astringent. Ayurvedic healers recommend that you include all of these six tastes at each main meal you eat. Each taste has a balancing ability, and including some of each provides complete nutrition, minimizes cravings and balances the appetite and digestion. The general North American diet tends to have too much of the sweet, sour and salty tastes, and not enough of the bitter, pungent and astringent tastes.

The Ayurvedic Wellness Guide

The Ayurvedic Approach to Diet