Food is one aspect that most of us keep thinking, re thinking and re understanding it. We also go for nutritionist for getting suggestions or guidelines for us to better understand. On what to eat, when to eat and how much to eat? One fine day we arrive to a conclusion that carb is not good, bread items are not good. Gluten is not good for our health. We are the same generation who is ready to buy the concept that wine is good for heart. Beer is good for skin and hair. If you are feeling low in energy, or not good at emotional stable then you should consume something to divert our mind with alcohol consumption. Not even realizing that these are all marketing gimmicks on the people who follow these terminologies. We are buying facts with our convenience. For understanding food we need to understand or remember few basic things. Let us go step by step and understand what we are doing. In the end you will realize that you knew all this but now your mind has a clear picture on what to do and what not to do by yourself.

Please note, this blog is about understanding food and do not expect a diet plan to be shared in it. Preaching is easier than practicing! I practice healthy living body, mind and soul and promote the same by means of preparing content. Let us understand in simple ways. What is the food that we give to a new born child? Do we give spiced, seasoned, oily greasy food to a new born child? The answer is No! We give them easy to digest food, very simple food with not much of flavoring and adding tastes. At the same time their rate of heartbeat is high and growing process is faster. As they reach to teenage we keep introducing different foods with different tastes and try to increase their intake of nutrition. If they do not eat healthy food we get worried. At the same time if they have good amount of mobility and physical activity. The body of a child as it grows, it has good nutrition absorption capacity. Now let’s just jump to old age. As people grow old what is the type of food that we give them? Again simple food easy to digest. If they have teeth to chew normal food or else all mashed food. Even if they crave to eat good flavored and proper fancy food still they have to eat simple easy to digest food. They my have gas problem. Passing motion might be a problem. Blood pressure and diabetes or any other common age related problems. So, along with food some regular medication or supplements which is product of pharma. What do we understand from these observations?

I would recommend you to read my blog on PancKarma. It talks more of Ayurvedic prospective of human body. Ayurveda is basically a plant or herbs based process that brings back your balance for Waat, Kapha and Pitta dosha and keeps your prakriti good. I have described everything in greater details in that blog. According to Ayurveda you are not fat or thin, there is no high blood pressure or low blood pressure. It is only balancing 3 dosha of your body. Till you read that blog I will give you a small understanding on how it is or what these 3 doshas are. Dosh, literally means fault or imbalance. Every maanas (human being ) is resultant of 4 elements air, water, fire and earth. Most of the schools of thoughts accept and believes in this but there is one more element called ‘space’. These 5 elements are present in every thing that exists in this entire cosmos. Whether it is living or non living. Only difference will be the composition of those 05 elements will be different for different materials. Some has more fire element in them. Some have wind and so on. The Composition of our body Parkriti (literal meaning nature) is determined well in advance at the time of mating of sperm and ovary. How healthy a mother was at the time of formation of here ovary, it will determine the health contributed from mother’s side while how healthy the father was at the time of his sperm formation will contribute the father’s side. This includes mental health as well! When the ovary and sperm fuses to form life there is always a unique constellation combination. There are two very important constellation combinations to study in any individuals life. One at the time of fusion process of ovary and sperm and the other one is at the time of birth of the child. It talks in detail, how a person will be? How its nature will be? What will be its growth or success parameters and so on? More prominently between Earth, Sun and Moon and other planets and their respective positions with each other. Your body composition will be determined here.

To understand these 3 doshas I can quote you simple example. There are few people who feel cold throughout the year all seasons. Just with a mild breeze also they feel it is cold. These people can be identified as waat (imbalance in air) dosh. There are few people who cough thorough the year all the seasons. These are basically Kapha dosh. While there are few people who feels puckish when they getup in the morning or they get yellowish vomit in the mornings or their body itches a lot. More specifically palm and below their feet. These people can be said to have pitta dosha. Doshas can occur in combination as well. We say a person is with good prakriti when we balance of 05 elements is achieved by eliminating doshas. There are certain foods that can be avoided or there are certain foods that can be added to diet. This helps in balancing of ones doshas in the body. These doshas can exist in different combinations. Few must be dominating while others might be little less. Doshas vary from season to season. Person to person and even age wise. It might change with your food and other routine habits with age. It might change with different seasons as well. Along with this dosha there is something called Gunas. Gunas can be nature or habit of a particular thing or a person. Basically there are three types of Gunas. These are also known as TriGunas. Satva, Rajas and Tamas. I will give you small understanding on these three gunas before we move ahead. When there is nature prevailing purity and knowledge within you Saatvik Guna is active within you. When there is actions or passion driving within you Rajasik Guna is prevailing within you. When there is ignorance and inertia active within you Tamasik Guna is prevailing within you. It always will lead you to healthy and successful life you need to eliminate imbalance or domination of Rajasik and Tamasik Gunas within yourself and become more or Satvik person. There are foods defined as per these three Gunas. You health, nature, behavior and prosperity will all be dependent on you consuming more of Satvik food and living a Satvik lifestyle. I will be posting a list of Saatvik, Rajasik and Tamasik food list and their quick recipes on my Instagram 03kanchan and YouTube channel Yoga with Kanchan Vikram. At the same time I will be posting a detailed blog on TriGunas with appropriate foods. Along with what happens when you eat particular type of food and so on.

Before you run behind different diet plans, fasting plans you need to fix your these basic daily routines or Dina Charya

1. Niyamit aahar – Vihaar – Regular diet and roaming or conducting traverse to different locations.
2. Cheshta – literally means attempt.
3. Vyayam – Exercise.
4. Shauch – passing solid, liquid waste and also sweating.
5. Snaan – Cleaning 9 openings of body or taking bath.
6. Shayan – Resting place or Sleeping room or Bedroom or power nap where we can do Shayan – It is sleep or rest. Now sleeping is physical state while resting is mental state so accordingly you can consider it.
7. Jaagran – Jaagran is basically staying awake in darker phase of a day or night. It can be a ritualistic term as well.
8. Scientifically you should follow Dina Charya – Daily Routines, Ratri Charya – Night Routines and Ritu Charya – Seasonal Routines.
9. To have a healthy life, free of ailments and free of negative energies one must try to fix above Charyas or Doshas or become more Satvik. We all know medicines have side effects. Instead of experimenting wrong unknown laboratory products try to simplify your life routines rather than having complicated shortcuts. Now that you have basic understanding on how our body operates or functions. You can start fixing those aspects. 90% or your ailments will be fixed.

In Ayurveda there are millions and millions of plants or herbs being studied in depth for their medicinal properties. . They are mixed and combined in different forms to give medicinal or healing effects. The best part is, there are no side effects as everything is organically created. Also these plant based medicines are never tested on any animals. The worst part is people consider trying all the medicinal practices under the sun for their ailments and come to Ayurveda as a last option. Out of those millions of plants, only few varieties of plants that can be counted on finger tips, are plants which can have low combination effects. Many times these medicines (Non-ayurvedic) crate lots of side effects. In such a situation you approach to Ayurveda with vey low energy. While expect big miracles. Ayurveda is considered as old fashioned holistic healing. Ayurveda is more than five thousand years old and has time tested practices. Ayurveda is not a new in fashion or a latest diet plan to be experimented. In Ayurveda your dosha (imbalances) are analysed and you are given a balancing, plant based (extracts) medicines and other remedies. If you are finding Ayurveda interesting. I would recommend you to read my PanchKarma blog. PanchKarma is way of holistic healing in Ayurveda. It is like routine cleansing or maintenance of the body. It is also done to critically ill people. In this you are given pure organic vegetarian food. Which is the most simplest and easy to digest at the same time. Also you are made to completely relax mentally. There are certain routines or therapies given to the individual. Under which your body perfectly heals itself. I did PancKarma as a routine detox. Along with me there were other people. 90 percent of people those were non Indians. Few of them had brain functioning related ailments, some had cancer treatment going on, few of them were heart patients, few were diabetics and so on. It is natural detoxification process where you can take few of the procedures as a normal routine detoxifying or cleansing therapies. Note, you need to do these therapies or procedures only in the well known old places and under practicing doctors only. If you wish to know where I did my detox procedures. Post an email id below and I will email you all the details.

I know you must be thinking I am here to read about understanding my food but I am reading more about Ayurveda because that is where all the problems related to health will be resolved. So, far we have seen baby food and old age food. Considering them both we know that we can always manage with simple easy to digest food. Remember tongue is not for entertaining taste buds. It is a sensory organ that can detect what food is going inside our body. 90% of your ailments will come down if you just do these steps. Getup early in the morning and start your routine. For this you will have to sleep early or on time. Add meditation thrice a day. Start for 10 minutes each meditation session morning, afternoon and before going to sleep. Slowly increase any one session to 30 minutes. Slowly increase any two sessions 30 minutes each. By now your body will be changing dramatically. You will see signs of anti-aging. Along with this make your food habits follow timings. Slowly you will yourself switch to eating healthier options. If you start managing your health and add healthy lifestyle in the age group of 20-30 years you will have amazing foundation built up inside your body. If you are picking it up between age group 31-35 years you will realize few things that you should have done this a bit early but good that you have not missed the train. If you are starting it between 36-40 years of age you will find it really difficult to correct your sleeping timings and food habits. Here there will be strong realization that you want to do, but somehow it is not happening or you are struggling hard to achieve this. Key is add meditation to your routine and I am sure you will find life balance what you are looking for or longing for. If you are attempting to repair or fix your food habit and sleeping habit in the age group of 41-50 you will have tendency to give up things more easily and early. I am not writing to demotivate this age group but just to understand what is your body undergoing and to how your mind will throw resistance towards changes. You need to think about adding power yoga on more regular basis to bring back that lost track of your train. If you just fix your food habit and sleep timings and do power yoga everyday without break just for 20 minutes within three months your health will start showing positive health effects.

For a lay man we all know that whatever food we eat is mixed with acids created by our own body. So, if we eat food that is more acidic in nature, it will just add into more acidity to our body, right? Your body still fights against all the imbalances as it is programmed with inner engineering to counter balance the negative effects. Same ways for digestion of food there is need of heat in the sense of temperature. It is called digestion fire. So, imagine every time you combine hot food with cold drinks. The mechanism that is responsible to generate heat in stomach for digestion process gets confused. Due to its inner engineering our body still tries to create the fire for digestion but prolonged disturbing the natural process might have adverse effects for sure. We all are aware that the absorption of vital nutrients, from the food that we eat, is processed in our intestine and is combined in such a way that our intestines absorb the vital nutrients from the combined food. So, if the food is not chewed well, the absorption won’t be that efficient, even if we eat good food rich in vital nutrients. It is always advised to sit on the floor to eat food. No television or other distraction should be entertained while eating food. You have to enjoy your food. Try to do this steps to yourself understand what food suits your body. This is how you can reset your body. Many times we are in rush either on a phone call or reading something or doing some activity without giving attention to the food that we are eating. Suppose, you were talking on a phone with some important business client that has to deal with big amount of money or has to do something important in your career or education and you are angry on other person. While you are angry you come and sit and eat your food. Due to the angry state of your mind, the food that you eat is not getting properly digested. Indigestion, acidity and so on. I always suggest a 10 minutes of calm down phase as you sit to have your food. Just sit relax try to calm down your energies. Stop all the activities before having food. Let your body and mind calm down and be at peace and then you keep yourself relaxed and have your food. Avoid watching television or any screen. The most important is focus on food that you are eating, see it, touch it, smell it, chew it well (one bite 32 times), allow yourself to proper munching eat slowly. Each bite that you take should be chewed 32times. Well mixed with saliva. While mixing with this saliva it detects all the ingredients in the food. In terms of nutrients. It sends message to your brain to prepare chemicals for digesting the food. 10 minutes of calm down, 20 minutes of eating time, and 15 minutes of rest time. You will see positive effects of this habit on your health immediate within a weeks of regular practice. These are not individual practices, it goes with full family system that lives under one roof.

Spread two palms flat. Anything that stays on those two palms. That is the portion of meal you should eat.

Timing

There is nothing like you need 08 hours time to sleep. We will see this sleep factor ahead. Why, how what? Once you wake-up early, according to Ayurveda your stomach should get emptied between 04:00 a.m. to 06:00 a.m. Then you can do practice yoga. Power yoga (minimum 40 minutes) and Physical asanas (40 minutes). Once you are done. Breakfast should be done by 08:00 a.m. only after taking shower. Anything you eat should be warm, nothing cold. This is the ignition of fire inside your stomach that will start after long hours of fasting so it is called breakfast. May people get diabetes or ulcers not because thy had too much of sweet. It is improper timings of eating food. Or keeping stomach empty for long time, especially in morning or have late night food

According to Ayurveda, once cooked, food should be consumed within 03 hours. There is no reheating or storing option. Any food that is consumed after 03 hours is converted to Tamsik ahar. In simple words it is poisonous.

Timings of eating food is very crucial aspect. Generally people skip breakfast or have something cold or make it late and call it brunch. More than running behind a diet plan to put your body under good shape is just going to complicate your system. Eat food within 03 hours it is cooked. No reheating, no stale food. Fix your time of eating food. Your brain fixes exact time of your food eating without even watching a watch. Once you fix exact same time your stomach will have acids ready for digestion process. If stomach do not eat food for long time then it circulates this acid ahead. So, it is very important to follow the food timing. The logic of excess carb that are consumed if not used can get converted into fats. Fats are needed for our body. If these converted fats are not used to generate energy then it remains for longer time. it gets accumulated and becomes stubborn fat. This is evident as an obese person finds it too difficult to reduce the fats stored in body. With high intensity workout and crash diet plans fat can be burnt easily. But with a small brake in this so called fitness routine. The lost weight gains easily again. The weight gain time is short. If this is happens then you should know that you did really bad experiment with yourself. Do not do this again with yourself. Simple example, as you start growing unhealthy amount of weight that you gain make you feel lazy to get up, there is lack of interest, you become more lethargic and so on. Vice versa is true. As you eat heavy food in night, next day is difficult for you to wakeup and your entire day or week goes disturbed. Same ways, if you eat simple light warm food which is easy for your body to breakdown and digest, you sleep well and you get up fresh with full of energy and full of positivity. Before we move ahead in understanding food we must understand that having healthy food habits is not limited to an individual in a household. It is a practice that needs to be followed by entire family within the household.

No, it is a marketing gimmick to tell you that your mind or body needs alcohol consumption to be happy. Being happy is a state of mind and choice. You do not need external products that proves the cost you spent for celebration or brand. It is you your body, mind and soul achieved something better and hence you feel happy within. Actually it is being happy state of mind! You are fed this information that in order to celebrate there needs to be presence off alcohol.

Absolutely no! If your state of mind is not stable, all you need to do is stay in a safe place at home with people who care for you around. ( Make sure place you stay has fresh open air, bright day light) Take good rest, eat proper nutritional meal, engage yourself in activities that can divert your mind. Try to do some creative activity and take a brake from certain things that takes you in the loop of thoughts. Running away of escaping from the situation is not a solution. Do something good for society selflessly. Try to understand that you are always fortunate to have surrounded by good people, good learnings. You have to give back to the society and make a difference by your presence, positively.

Water

There is always myth behind how much water needs to be sipped in entire day. There are many calculations that says ‘x’ amount of water is necessary for body. If you do little bit of brisk walking or running you feel thirsty, right? So, basically when the internal systems are made to work. It activates processes inside with the help of oxygen. Once you breathe fast so air element is in place. Also, your brain throws immediate sense of dryness so you feel thirsty and you drink water and now the water element is in place. Water is not by count of glasses but it is by the thirst. Do certain activities that will keep your internal cycles running actively so you will naturally hydrate yourself. Means you will drink water when you feel thirsty and not go by the count of liters or glasses. Drink water when you feel thirsty! If you are sitting in one place and working for long time. You need to take a basic walk around, little stretch occasionally. If you see a cat or a dog sitting for long time when they get up they stretch their entire body in front and back from tip of toe to tail. Same ways if you were sitting in one place ensure you give a proper stretch to your spine.

Let us take a look on Thali system in India

Thali appears to be restaurant specialty and stuff like that. But, it is not a specialty of restaurant, it is specialty to do with place. Different places in India have their own specialty of thali. The concept goes beyond in time. According to Ayurveda there should be 06 raas in food. Or 06 tastes in food. Those are Sweet, Sour, Salty, Spicy, Bitter and Astringent like. Now lets take a quick run on what these tastes are. Sweet everyone knows It should be purest form than the processed form. Sour means like tamarind or lemon. Salty we all know. Spice is like green chilly taste or jalapeno. Bitter is like bitter gourd or pure cocoa like taste and Astringent taste is if you have tasted goose berries or alum. All the time we were doing it wrong. Food is not by count of proteins, or calories count. It should have all these 06 tastes mentioned. Thali means plate. Every region as you move in India you will get different thali. Its basics remains same. It starts from left hand side of the thali as you are eating the thali so on Top left corner in clockwise arrangement, it starts with, salt, lemon, salad, chutney/s, pakora or fried items, then one watery (with gravy) vegetable, one dry vegetable, lentil soup /daal till then we have reached at top right corner it will be always sweet. As we enter inner circle it comes two scoops of rice one has daal with ghee over it and other one will have curd/yogurt on it. Then there will be chapati/bread. The thali changes as per season, festival and region. Everyone will make different type s of roti according to millet that is grown in their region. Along with this there will be freshly blended butter milk, or Amaras if it is mango season, jaal jeera (Jeera water) along with water to drink. Today the tradition is modified to unlimited thali. Earlier it will be this thali which will be slowly eaten and enjoyed. You can see refence images for the different variety of thalis. The food is never divided into course of meal in this. You have to do it together. As per Ayurveda you always start eating food by eating sweet dish, while eat rest of them and finish with eating curd rice or dahi bhaat. There will be small detailed blog on Pangat system in India. When we have festival or functions food is served to people by making them sit in a line. I love this system as of now. For me buffet has been always uncomfortable affair. First on our functions we wear beautiful dresses. In buffet there is either tables are booked by groups or if you get the chair some old person will appear from no where and then there is not other option than being humble and offer your chair to that old person. I like everyone sitting in line and eating. Please do read about amazing pangat system and its rules, how beautiful it is. I really wish if it comes back again.

Coming back to our food. try to avoid, tin packed food, packaged food, ready to cook food, tetra pack food. Any thing that has more shelf life will be not a better choice. Instead add more of salad items to your diet. Seasonal local fresh fruits addition will be good. Fresh vegetables will be the good addition to your diet. Your digestive system will feel very light. Best cooking method is direct roasting on flame, second is grill, third boiled food then is sauté with little oil. I have a simple interpretation to understand difference between eating vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. More complex food needs more energy of your brain to understand and breakdown the complex food items to simple food items and then digesting it. So, if you want to eat non vegetarian options eat them in day time as we require huge amount of solar energy to digest them. We do exactly opposite. Since, everyone is available in the evening at home we make evening as feast time or party time so that we all eat together and we eat non-vegetarian item in the evening.

Answer is when you have best energy in body. That is anytime between sunrise to sunset. We tend to do exactly opposite. We party when we are on the lowest of our energy. After 07:00pm is closing time for all the activities in body and mind. This is the time we prepare and push ourselves to do things we shall not be doing. One of the lifestyle related problem.

The moment we eat more in the night we find it heavy and difficult to getup next morning and start our day. Mostly any personal fitness trainer at gym recommends increase in intake of proteins. You can always make a choice of plant based proteins source over products from animal source (non vegetarian). Plant base vegetarian source are easy to be digested and assimilated in system over non vegetarian source. Your brain needs to put more energy to brake down complex systems than to brake simple systems. Traditionally it is said to eat one bite less than the actual hunger in the night. Walk light footed 100 steps in open air post dinner before going to sleep. No brisk walking or like exercise.

Sleep

Sleep is key to your health. I am sure most of my readers must be having a habit of sleeping late and waking up late. This will contribute to 50% of ailments. Trust me the number of medicines you take is just going to depreciate quality of your life add health issues rather than cutting it down. You may temporary fix it but the anti depressants are going to have adverse effect on your body. If you have landed to this blog before just starting something like that you are saved from going into wrong direction. You will not even realize what is happening with you if you start with those medicines. Unless for a serious accidental treatment it can be fine but not for normal people. Make a choice of healthy life over medicines. If you open the medicines usage guide book inside the packet. Even they are not sure of side effects. they clearly use the term it “May” cause so and so problems. Products they pay so much time, money and energy to make even they are not sure on what might happen if…

There is always a myth how much amount of sleep is needed to a person. Some say 08 hours sleep is basic required, some say 03 hours is sufficient. There is nothing clock based sleep needed. If you observe old people. They have tendency to sleep late and get up early they keep feeling that it is some kind of problem that they are undergoing. Many a times family gets disturbed due to this habit of old people living at home. There will be soon blogs on how to design your own house. It comes under lifestyle in Yoga with Kanchan Vikram. Let me tell you one thing. A person who is active and has lots to do next day, generally has sub consciously overloaded their mind with to do activities for next day. In this phase even if you sleep for 08 hours you may get up lazy, tired and so on. Once you start meditation session before sleeping you will see changes in yourself. Note, this is closing meditation. Basically you allow you mind to remove physical distractions, then there is lots of noise inside mind about past and future. The moment you learn to float your body and mind in present you can have a sound sleep like a small child. The small child, enjoys full day, eats simple food, physically exhausts itself. No matter what sounds are played around it. They sleep peacefully. The moment you have realized that sleep is subject to state of mind and nothing physical, it will start healing all the ailments. Even computer, before shutting down will ask you that there are some programs still running, you may loose the unsaved work, do you still want to CONTINUE shutting down? While the older people who are not loaded with such kind of next day activities, get a sound sleep and it finishes within a small interval. The amount of sleep will differ from person to person. Here sometimes it is misinterpreted as a health issue. The only issue here is the skill to work in darkness, holding objects is not great and there is huge amount of lack of confidence in conducting day to day activities. Everyone sooner or later will be going to be in this phase. Best thing to avoid old age issues are cherish a hobby while you are young, that can keep you busy and engaged. Learn how to be happy with yourself. Many people in their old age feel they go to pee very often in the night. This is mainly not because of any malfunction in the body. But it is disturbed sleep. Give a person a task that next morning you have to get up at this time and do this work. See how the person reacts to that. IF there are kids in your household, please ensure they start meditating from childhood. It is very essential in today world of uncertainties.

Some vitamins are very sensitive to heat. Like vitamin A. Tomato and coriander is key source of vitamin A in day to day food items used. Mostly we add these ingredients in the later stage of cooking. If the food is cooked early morning and we reheat and eat it in the afternoon so most of the vital nutrients sensitive to heat are lost.

How to prepare A2 cow ghee?

Here is the quick recipe for preparation of cow ghee. Daily from your cow milk remove the cream and store it in a steel vessel in the refrigerator. After a week or 10 days you will get sufficient quantity of cream accumulated. Add curd or yogurt culture and keep it overnight. Next day day if the curd is set then now it is time to blend. Add cold water and blend it with blender. Mostly our blender rotates in only one direction but we need to do blending in traditional ways clockwise and anti clockwise only then we are able to extract butter with medicinal value. While blending butter will be separated and buttermilk will be separated.

The bi-product butter milk is very healthy to drink along with meal. Once your butter is separated, take it in a pan and wash it with normal water. Then start boiling it in pan. Slowly the ghee will start separating. The smell is very strong. Once the ghee is released. You can strain it with the steel sieve in a metal vessel with lid. The material that you get in sieve is highly nutritious do not throw that. Put it in the flour for kneading dough. If you do not like the smell you can put it in your garden soil. The strainer sieve if becomes dirty hold it over the direct flame and let it burn off. All the dirt is then separated and you can just wash it once cooled.

Tips on how to use ghee. Do not reheat the ghee when you need to use. With the dry spoon transfer it to steel bowl or glass bowl and just keep it on warm surface to melt it. Ghee that we get from cow milk is always less in quantity and thin compared to any other milk. You can use this ghee for cooking, for face massage, joints massage, hair massage even you can use it for baby body massage as well. Anything in excess is bad. So when you are consuming ghee and ghee made products you need to be careful about quantity. One spoon for tampering is good enough, but do not take two three spoons full of ghee on everything that you eat. Even if you eat excess ghee, you should do regular exercise. So, that the ghee is not accumulated in body but is melted and circulation systems of body remains active. Food cooked in ghee always tastes heaven, may it be sweet dish or for frying or taken on top of the salad. It eases the digestive movements and provide vital nutrients and also eases the vital nutrients absorption from associated other foods as well.

Oils

Next is oils. So many oil varieties are available. There are so many questions on our mind. Should we use refined oil or unprocessed oil? There is lots of confusion on this aspect. Again first important is quantity of consumption. As I mentioned for ghee. You should limit the consumption between essential quantity and not exceed the consumption quantity. It is same even for kids. Many parents make excessive use of ghee and oil in the food products of small growing children. Till the child grows eighteen years old everything appears to be consumed but later it starts accumulating. Depending upon the activities.

How to select oil?

• Source and Origin

1. Seeds: Sesame, Mustard, Sunflower, Peanut
2. Fruits : Coconut, Olive, Avocado
3. Others: Rice Bran

Consider which is easy to source to get oils. Seeds give 40-50% of oil. Fruits have more amount of water content and less amount of oil content so extraction process is more strong. Where as materials like rice bran needs more efforts to extract the oil in compared to other sources that we saw. Considering this Seed based oil should be first choice to select. Most importantly you need to consider the seeds grown in your locality or region. If the oil extraction process is easy, it will be easy for our system to digest and use. Same ways if oil extraction process is very hard like in case of rice barn oil, it will be also difficult to digest and for processes inside our body system.

• Next we consider is taste. Whichever aroma is OK for you, select that oil for cooking.
• Next you consider the purpose of use of oil. If you are cooking, or on salad or frying purpose. Consider smoke point and select the right oil for right purpose. For Indian cooking peanut, sunflower or sesame oil with higher smoke point is better for cooking. While olive oil with less smoke point can be avoided. For tampering olive oil might get easily burnt till we are waiting other ingredients to be cooked in it. According to Ayurveda sesame oil is best for both external and internal purposes. Considering fatty acids using sesame or peanut oil is better for use. Note in colder regions of India, sesame oil is used for cooking and body massage. From old age to infants. It is good to give strength in joints and reduces body pain. Oiling body externally with sesame oil is done in morning and night before going to sleep in winter season while only in morning for exercise and exposing to early morning sunrays. Along with this the lamps that we put in our prayer places only use sesame oil or cow ghee. It help air purification and kills bacteria and viruses in air along with burning negative energies. Correct time to put lamps in house is sun transitions.

Now just a quick understanding why not Olive oil and Rice Bran oil? This is growing very famous now a days. Extraction process is strong and it is not grown locally (Considering India). Not an ideal for cooking. Sunflower and Safflower oil is also being more used now a days but it gives more of pitta rise in body can lead to skin related problem.

• How to select between use of refined oil or unrefined oil? Refined oil undergoes high pressure and temperature changes along with addition of solvents. The oil refining are all industrial processes. Which basically changes its molecular structure of fatty acids. Which in-turn depreciates its nutritional value as well. Wood press oil is the best oil that can be used.
• Filtered and non filtered oil should be selected? Single filter is good, but multi filter will remove essential sediments from the oils. Avoid multi filtered oil. Can mixing different oils be nutritious or beneficial? Since They have different smoke points one oil might get burnt, which will damage fatty acids and consuming those will be dangerous. Strictly avoid mixing two oils for cooking purpose. Once used oil (mostly for frying) after cooling down should never be reused again such oils are dangerous for consumption. Burnt oils must be strictly avoided. Finally we can conclude that buy locally grown, traditional, taste that suits you.
• Best option is peanut oil.

Biggest malpractice of today’s world is reusing oils for frying. This practice goes from households to biggest of big health authority approved restaurants and hotels. It is because lack of knowledge. Once you use oil for frying it can be only dumped into compost pit. Many households/restaurants/hotels just add more oil to level and reuse the oil. The addition and re-boiling or re-heating for frying is poison to your heart health.

If you wish to have healthy life make fresh food that is locally grown and fresh. Try to avoid refined, processed, tin food, artificial flavored, artificial sweeter, cold in temperature, carbonated, soda based, baking soda based, GMO, long shelf life, tetra packs, frozen food, formed by any inorganic industrial processes.

You may wonder in entire discussion there is not comment over non vegetarian food. Let us first see what is non-vegetarian food. Eggs, poultry, sea food and all he animal products are considered as non – vegetarian. Vegan is considered as food formed or accumulated without of animal effort. It can be honey, milk and so on. It is very simple that plant based food is easy for our system to break and animal based product is a complex, which our system takes extra effort to break it into simple products. Personally I consider in this way, what is going inside my body should be firstly happy and healthy. From plant based food, removing spoilt part is very easy. Whereas the animal products which we eat, should be eaten full and not just some part of it. For example chicken in the poultry is being injected for growing faster and bigger. Once it stops laying eggs, it is only then sent for process of cutting, packing and so on. Before that how was the mental state of the chicken? Was she kept in inhuman crowded, filthy place and so on. The effect of that will be same on the person who consumes it. It is also same with vegetarian food. There is large amount of pesticides used in farms. Researches have shown that pesticides are not essential for any plants. Whereas, organic foods is more made a fancy food and is too expensive. What is basically organic food? Many people just do not know what is organic food. Organic food is the one that is grown with the organic manure. For example all the collected food industry waste can be decomposed in a pit for 40 days with the help of earthworms under the soil. After 40 days, these earthworms completely decompose all the organic matter and leave behind highly nutritious organic manure. Plants grown on this recycled soil will be of best quality grown fruits or vegetables and called as organic food products. Even the animals that are fed with the fodder from natural products and no industrial prepared food are considered as organic foods.

One small note on Seafood or crustaceans in specific. These foods convert red in color when cooked. These are high source of proteins. Sometimes eating plane crustaceans should be strictly avoided. Combine it with good salad portion. Also, if you are eating any type of seafood, do not eat any milk product after that. Any sweet dish that has milk should be strictly avoided.

Few important aspects which I might have covered or might have missed to mention earlier.

Maintain meal times. Breakfast should be finished by 08:00am (post exercise and shower only) We get energy from sun to digest food. Your portion should be accordingly. Do not do munching in between. If you feel hungry between take a small snack of nuts, dry fruits or seasonal fruits. Avoid giving sweets, chips carbonated cold drinks or other things to your children in the snack time. If you make this snack large or filling or sweet items. It will kill your hunger. Eating meals after meals gives digestion related problems. As the food that has been consumed before dose not get digested fully and by the time your stomach have not yet finished earlier digestion process and some other food comes into your system. It confuses the system and is not prepared with next digestive sequence. In turn when you keep your stomach empty without snack munching in between. Then your hunger is activated. Eat only when you are hungry. Meals of week needs to be discussed among the family where kids and older people need to participate and form a plan for full week. When you eat while your hunger fire is activated, absorption of vital nutrients happen best. Snack kills digestive fire. As per Ayurveda it is mentioned to wash your feet, hand, rinse mouth eyes and only then eat food. Your food should be snigdha bhojan. There are millions of cells in our body. Each cell requires 42% of oil in its formation and processes. Do not eat anything dry and rough. It should be soft or snigdha. Once you have washed yourself before eating food. Sit and do your food prayer.

वदनी कवळ घेता नम घ्या श्रीहरीचे | सहज हवन होते नाम घेता फुकाचे |
जीवन करि जीवित्व अन्न हे पूर्ण ब्रम्ह | उदारभरण नोहे जाणिजे यज्ञ कर्म ||

Vadani kaval gheta naam ghya shree hariche |
Sahaj havan hote naam gheta phukache |
Jivan kari jivitva anna he purna bramha |
Udar bharan nohe janije yadnya karma ||

You can do whichever prayer you know for food or whichever prayer you are practicing regularly. Then you have to see your food, touch it, smell it, taste it, chew 32 times one bite and then gulp it. As mentioned earlier there are kshad raas or 06 raas those are key and important to be there in your daily diet or meal. So, far we were all doing it wrong if we were calculating number of glass of water or amount of calories or proteins we consumed. Then most important part is eat slowly if you eat very fast. Take roughly 20 to 25 minutes of time to finish your meal. People those who wish to reduce weight and eat faster must strictly change this habit. You cannot sit for hours munching your food till your series finishes two three episodes. Many people eat and then shower or take bath which is absolutely wrong. Process is finish your bath and only then eat any food. If sometime it happens that you ate your food and have not showered, then give a brake or gap of 03 hours in between.

For an instance try to remember the night where you had simple vegetarian food and how was it for you to get up next morning and passing motion. Comparatively if you had non – vegetarian food getting up next morning was bit difficult and passing motion was also different. Making better choices is in your hand. If you want to eat non – vegetarian food, eat it during day time of first half of the day. Here is the healthier sequence of cooking food, direct roasting in fire, then grill, then steam, then saute, then stir fry, last will be frying. It can be considered same for vegetarian and non- vegetarian food as same cooking sequence. It also fall in same sequence to taste. For an Indian taste bud I will recommend to gradually drop down the usage of salt, and hot spices. More than chilly, use black pepper for cooking.

I hope this blog helped you understand the food differently. If you have any suggestions, thoughts, experiences to share. I will be happy to hear them. There are more health, wellness and lifestyle related blogs which might be related to this blog or any other health concerns. Make sure you go though all the topics. Following the food as per blog appears next to impossible but you can for sure start making small changes today which will give you better results and keep your energy up always.