Balanced nutrition in ayurveda

BALANCED NUTRITION IN AYURVEDA

 

Nutrition in Ayurveda

In the tradition of Ayurveda, it is indicated that a balanced diet cannot be reduced only to the specification of restrictions on fat, carbohydrate and protein intake, nor to some formal limitations on calories, vitamins and minerals.

Knowledge of all these nutrients is necessary, but in reality this is only a predominantly intellectual experience, and contact with the reality and existence of these natural substances does not occur, for the vast majority of people, through direct experience. Each of us can realise that we cannot determine for ourselves the proportion of vitamin C in orange juice simply by referring to it, let alone realise that it is practically impossible for us to detect realistically the difference between vitamin C and vitamin A from an intellectual analysis of oranges.

Western nutrition

In general, Western nutrition is based on data provided by laboratory analysis. Ayurvedic nutrition comes from and is based directly on the realities of nature. For example, when the taste buds come into contact with food, an enormous amount of useful information is provided to the vital principles existing in the being (doshas). By analysing this information alone, the science of the ancient Ayurvedic system allows us to compose and then follow a healthy and balanced diet in a natural way, guided more and more by carefully perceived and intelligently processed sensory data, without turning the act of eating into a complicated intellectual chore, as modern nutrition often pushes us to do.

When the food we use speaks in its own sensory way to the vital principles (doshas) in our being, it communicates particularly many significant aspects, because the different attributes or, in other words, the different qualitative manifestations, e.g. those determined by the Ayurvedic qualities of hard and light, dry and wet-lucid, hot and cold, are each present in it, in different proportions and in various relations of mutual interaction.

What the age-old tradition of Ayurveda teaches us is that the primary information about a food is primarily contained in the specific taste (rasa) that food has.

The six basic tastes

The Ayurvedic tradition highlights the existence of six basic tastes, namely sweet, salty, sour, spicy, bitter and astringent. These tastes are usually easily recognised. Almost all spicy foods are spicy. The astringent taste is the specific taste of tree bark and is often described in a plastic way as "the taste that makes your mouth water". Sour taste is the specific taste of vinegar. The bitter taste is the taste of many depurative plants, such as dandelion or wormwood.

In reality, each food has a specific taste (rasa) which can be expressed as a combination in certain proportions of the six basic tastes listed above. Simple foods such as honey or vinegar have only one basic taste in the composition of their specific taste, in the examples cited, sweet or sour respectively. However, most foods have at least two elemental tastes in the composition of their specific taste. Lemons are sour, but also sweet and bitter, carrots are sweet, but also slightly bitter and astringent, cheese is sweet and sour in varying proportions.

The elemental tastes that make up the complex, specific and unique taste of each food are a veritable information code about the nutritional value of that food. Such detailed and perfectly natural knowledge is accessible to those who thoroughly study the age-old science of life, Ayurveda, thus providing them with a valuable tool for maintaining balance and health through balanced nutrition.