Food REALLY matters
Rasa6.com demystifies vegetarian food and inspires you to cook fresh healthy meals daily.
I grew up a fan of junk food. Back in India you get it as tasty and as junk as it gets. Foods fried in stale overused cheap quality oil, cheap quality of veggies and other raw material used. The extra spices are added for the extra zing which used to almost burn my mouth and tummy! They do taste good though! While biting into those delicious goodies you have a promise of uninterrupted 5 mins of bliss! A taste explosion. I would sacrifice anything to feel like that for those 5 mins! Anyone else relates to this?
Well the only problem was after eating that oily delicious samosa, I would feel crappy for the most part of the day. But who cares, what would I not give for those 5 mins of bliss. When you are young, you rely heavily on all the gifts of youth - endless amounts of energy and a good digestion. One of the curses of our youthful state is sometimes a lack of sensitivity and awareness to your body or mind.
In my case though I did feel the after-effects of eating junk foods, but yet I continued and soon started seeing the negative effect on not only how I felt but also what I did with my life.
Thats when I first started to take notice of those things I used to pop into my mouth, without even thinking at times ! I noticed that my health was deteriorating and there was direct correlation to what I was eating. I was forced to make a choice. Would I like to attend to the quality of my day or go for the 5 mins of junk-bliss-explosion. I was forced to make the former choice, and yet I would slip on my resolution and regret later!
30 yrs later, after many health challenges I have realized that food has a lot more than meets the eye. If you look at the diets floating around on book shelves and the internet, I think some others may have come to this same conclusion.
Infact I would go as far as to say that Food is God, as the ancient Vedic texts have said for time immemorial. The body that it goes into is also God. If we were to just take a moment to think about it like that, just imagine what would it be like to eat food? It would be a very spiritual experience!
Since I started meditating 13 years ago, I became more sensitive to the food I am eating and how it was making me feel. The driving force for me to eat a particular kind of food has always been “taste”. I realized that there are 2 kinds of tastes that I was attracted to. One kind was that gave me a kick and made me want to overeat, because I wanted to feel that kick again. Example Pizza, Other Cheesy goodies, Samosas, Cakes, restaurant food, Sodas. It left me feeling drowsy, lazy or hyperactive. In Ayurveda these are called Tamasic foods. I used to think I could eat these category of delicious foods for a long time but I was surprised by the fact that I would soon get tired of eating it for more than 3 days at a stretch. The second kind of taste was a settled, wholesome, grounding taste. You dont feel like overeating. It is a taste that gives you a settled energy and makes you feel light even after eating. This second kind of taste inspires you do good things with the rest of your day. These are Sattvik foods.
I once decided to do an experiment to understand how food could affect me. I had already seen the negative side of food, now I wanted to see the positive effect. I spent 5 days, eating freshly cooked vegetarian balanced meals. I would eat those meals on the dining table, not in front of a TV or reading a book. I would eat my food mindfully and stop eating as soon as I got a signal from my tummy that it is full. The result was outstanding. I felt so good the entire week!
Because of the way the food I was eating made me feel, I noticed I was more creative in all the tasks I had to complete. More focused too. It helped me get everything done quickly. Because I felt good, I could easily find time in my day to actually cook the fresh food in a short time and also make it tasty. After this little experiment, I sternly ordered myself to make this choice everyday! The choice everyday is very clear to me now. Do I want to eat to do good or do I want to eat to feel good for 5 mins and then do nothing worthwhile for the rest of my day. Every day of my life actually makes my life! The choice was pretty straightforward wasn't it?
Ever since I started putting attention on cooking fresh meals, I noticed that my hands were getting a good workout with all the kneading and chopping. I was getting more connected to the food I am going to eat. I started enjoying the play of spices in the food. I became more intuitive with the cooking. This intuitive ability also started playing out in other things I was doing.
When the spices you are cooking are just right and in harmony, they make you feel so good. The day I start my day with cooking, I get into the rhythm of working quickly and everything else during the day gets done with the same smoothness and efficiency. The best part of my day was when I ate the food I have cooked. I had a smile of satisfaction on my face and heightened awareness. This is the best way to digest and assimilate the food you have eaten! My mind was happy knowing that with the food I was eating I was actually giving a warm thankful hug to my body for all the hard-work it does for me all day.
I see abundance of food all around me in top-notch grocery stores, restaurants to satisfy every palate. Yet when you actually eat that food or even look at the horrifying labels, which boast of overly processed, chemical laden foods for that extra taste, perfect color of the food and low calories for your slim figure, you start wondering if maybe we are doing something wrong somewhere? In this abundance there is scarcity of food that you can actually call food. Our food is losing its soul to blind corporate profits of the food industry and the pharma companies and we wonder why we fall sick? Why is it normal today to be visiting the doctor and taking all sorts of supplements and medication from age 30 or even early! How is it that we dont ask ourselves, this cant be normal there must be something wrong!
How about we go back to the drawing board and get back to the basics. That’s what we did! This is our inspiration for starting Rasa6.com. To inspire you to cook healthy vegetarian meals that take care of your body and soul ! You are worth it! Really!
( Art of Living Foundation invites you to the euphoric World Culture Festival from March 11 to 13 in New Delhi, India to celebrate 35 years of loving, caring, sharing and uniting the world into one global family through the legacy of yoga and meditation.)