In terms of food, Ayurvedic practitioners concentrate on their "dosha," which is split into three types of energies: Vata, Pitta and Kapha. The tri-dosha are the basis for the kind of foods or diet we should be following.
Nutritionally, in the Ayurvedic tradition, you should always attempt to put six food categories into each major meal: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent and astringent.
Ayurveda recognizes five nutritional deficiencies:
- Quantitative dietary deficiency: this could mean insufficient food, and even starvation.
- Qualitative dietary deficiency: wrong food combinations resulting in malnutrition, toxic condition and lack of essential nutrients.
- Qualitative and quantitative over-nutrition: emotional overeating which can result in obesity, high cholesterol hypertension or heart attacks.
- Toxins in food: some foods and food combinations lead to toxemia and to certain digestive disorders.
- Foods unsuitable to one's constitution that may cause disease.
There's a lot more to Ayurveda than I can tell you so here's a quick guide to some eating practices you can take with you:
- during hot weather, it is good to eat foods with high moisture content
- during autumn, meat (high protein foods) and dry fruit are good
- summer fruits: berries, grapes, oranges, peaches, pears, plums, watermelon and pineapple
- summer greens: cucumbers, mustard greens, radish, spinach, squash, turnips, watercress, zucchini, sprouts.
- summer spices: cardamom, cloves and cinnamon
- when its winter, avoid ice cream, yogurt, cheese or cold drinks
- great winter foods include: onions, carrots, potatoes, spinach, sweet peas, tomatoes, oats, dates, figs and turnips
- winter fruits: bananas and mangoes
- winter spices: ginger, turmeric and black peppercorns
The time of day also matters in Ayurvedic diet: cereals should be taken in the morning, fruits and juices are appropriate in the afternoon while boiled veggies, beans and soups should be ingested in the evening. For dinner, avoid nuts, rice, root vegetables and fried foods.
As the Ayurvedic regime includes plenty of vegetables, you might want to check out some exotic greens and recipes (such as Chickpeas & Eggplant or Papaya Salad )in my previous postings.
Here are some bad combos: banana and yogurt, melons and milk, milk and mango, corn with dates and lemon with tomato or milk. Meanwhile, melons should be eaten alone.
Since its summer, fruit juices are highly recommended as well as yogurt drinks (lassi) and a mixture of lemon juice with water and raw sugar would boost your digestion.
Remember, I am giving you a general idea of the principles here. It's not hard and fast. For instance, not all fruits are forbidden in the morning -- bananas, grapes, guavas, pears, coconut and raisins have the green light.
(SOURCE: Vegetarian-restaurants.net : Eating Ayurveda)
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