When it comes to food, it’s all the more interesting and mouth watering! Isn’t it?!! But the interesting fact is that the gut health is what decides your overall health, be it physical, mental, moral and spiritual.
Let us now understand as we read through, the importance of food and factors which need to be understood about food.
We have to understand that we are what we eat, how we eat and when we eat. Therefore we have three questions to answer.
Nature always offers a very beautiful and yummy menu based on seasons. So, we should always try to consume seasonal foods to aid our body which is wonderfully engineered to adapt to different seasons and function accordingly. If we are not following this rule of nature, then the body will have to put in extra effort to utilize such foods for maintaining the physical, physiological and psychological harmony.
For example, melons are meant to be eaten in summer but are now available and consumed in all the seasons. Because of this, few people may experience cold, impaired digestion etc.
Certain crops are grown in certain geographical area. This depends on the climatic conditions and the nature of the soil. Such crops contain necessary nutrients required for life sustenance in that respective geographical area.
But, these days the food industry has influenced us so much that we tend to eat variety of foods that are not native. The metabolism of such foods in our body will create an imbalance between our body and the nature. This long term disharmony leads to diseases and disorders.
For example, Wheat and Dal is the staple food of the northern India and Rice has been the staple food in most of the southern India. For the north Indian climate, consuming wheat becomes necessary. But consuming the same in excess in southern India will put in a lot of load for the body to digest and metabolize it.
As the saying goes, “Be a Roman in Rome” We should let our body function in harmony with the nature by consuming the native foods.
Listen to your body. Your body will decide what food it needs based on the nature of its constitution. . The nature of constitution of our mind and body is comfortable with certain food and at the same time do not accept certain foods. We should never generalize the benefits and ill effects of any food but should always stay in tune with the body and mind to provide the food by which they can function optimally.
For example, few people will feel better with citrus fruits for allergies but few might end up having an allergic reaction when citrus fruits are consumed. Therefore we should not make a general statement that citrus fruits are good for allergies or that citrus fruits are bad for allergies either.
Many of us eat our breakfast because it is 8 o’clock in the morning and dinner because it is 9 o’clock in the night. Worse than this is that we skip our meals many a times, eat at irregular timing because we are preoccupied with a lot of other priorities.
We have become so busy with the outer materialistic world that we have forgotten to listen to our body and understand it. We have forgotten to recognize the feeling of hunger and satiety. We do not eat the right kind of food when our body seeks it. We neglect our hunger. At times, we eat even after we have reached satiety. We eat even when our body is rejecting food. We treat our body like a dustbin that can be thrown anything and everything leaving it with immense load of organizing, digesting, assimilating the food and excreting the unwanted end products.
Always provide your body the necessary food that it requires when it is hungry and do not dump it with food when the satiety has been reached. Do not listen only to your tongue.
Never compensate your hunger with fluids and never console your thirst with solids. Follow your body instincts.
When we eat, our attention is least on what we are eating and how much we are eating. Because of our diverted attention, we either too much or we eat too little. At times, because we are eating our meals watching different TV Programs which influence our emotions, we might eat food in a mood that we temporarily acquire from watching TV programs. Also because we are not aware of what we are eating, we do not enjoy the food that we eat.
We are what we eat and it is very important that we are aware of the food that we are eating and enjoy every mouthful of it. Then there is satisfaction of eating. Food that is eaten mindfully becomes health. It becomes the vitality.
It is very important to understand this quote about food.
Our digestive system is beautifully designed in such a way that the process of digestion begins in our mouth and continues to happen in the gut.
So chew the food well to make it into a liquid consistency before swallowing and when we take juices or fluids of different variety, make it a point to mix the fluid well with the saliva before drinking it.
It is may be weird that as per modern nutrition we might not have discussed about balanced diet and about calories. But food is not just about calories or about how much of carbohydrates, proteins, fats and vitamins but much more subtle than that.
And now that we have understood about our food disciplines, lets us try and discipline our food habits.
Let me conclude with a quote;
Dr. Deepashree S, BNYS, MSCCFT, Consultant, Anandamaya Wellness Center