Confused about the right foods for your wellbeing? Unfortunately, you are asking the wrong question
Ancient Indian knowledge prescribes that Eating Right is a key component of the path to achieving one's wellbeing. But Eating Right is not just about what food you eat (or don't eat). It is more about the key principles you need to follow in eating
According to Indic wisdom, the five foundational principles in eating right are:
- Freshness
- Seasonality
- Compatibility
- Therapeutic
- Fasting
Lets delve quickly into each:
The principle of freshness suggests that our eating should embrace freshness. The ingredients we have should be fresh, the cooking should be fresh (ie. the least amount of cooking as possible) & the food should be freshly consumed
Another key principle in eating right is Seasonality. What we eat & how we eat need to be adapted to the seasons in the place we live. After all, it is food that deeply connects us to the soil of the land we are on. Ensuring that our eating mirrors the passing of seasons will enable our body & mind to be aligned fully to our external environment, causing the least dissonance
Compatibility is another key principle. Certain types of cooking are compatible with certain ingredients; others are not. Similarly, each food ingredient combines well with certain other ingredients & less well with others. Equally, certain dishes do not combine well with certain other dishes in a given meal. Therefore, we should aim to be make our eating as compatible as possible
Eating right can be powerful medicine if we suffer from any illnesses or imbalances. So, try to be aware of any such conditions we might have and make sure that our eating helps us in addressing these
Lastly - and probably, most importantly - Eating Right is about having a definite protocol of not eating! Indic knowledge provides us many time-tested protocols of fasting (a personal favourite of mine is the Ekadasi fasting protocol)
So, before you embark on the latest fad diet, ask your self a simple question. Have I got my foundational principles in place for Eating Right? If the answer is No, focus on that before you obsess about the next new diet
