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principles>Diet Home>Food Guide  

Now you have learnt about diet ,it's importance and types let's apply the knowledge in planning your food style. Notwithstanding the individualized approach to choosing foods for balance, there are some universally applicable principles that are important to follow if you are living an ayurvedic lifestyle:

1. Include the six tastes at every main meal

In ayurveda, foods are classified into six tastes--sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent and astringent. Ayurvedic healers recommend that you include all of these six tastes at each main meal you eat. Each taste has a balancing ability, and including some of each minimizes cravings and balances the appetite and digestion. The general North American diet tends to have too much of the sweet, sour and salty, and not enough of the bitter, pungent and astringent tastes.

2.Food should eaten at proper time intervals.Take the next meal when the previous meal is properly digested .The main meal should be taken between 11 to 1 in the afternoon.

3. Choose foods by balancing physical attributes.

In ayurveda, foods are also categorized as heavy or light, dry or unctuous/liquid and warm or cool (temperature), and different qualities balance different doshas. A balanced main meal should contain some foods of each physical type. Within this overall principle, you can vary the proportions of each type based on your constitution and needs for balance, the season of the year and the place you live.

To keep Vata dosha in balance, choose more heavy, unctuous or liquid, and warm foods, and fewer dry, light or cool foods. To help balance Pitta, focus more on cool, dry and heavy foods, and to balance Kapha, try more of light, dry and warm foods.

If you live in cooler climes, you'll want to gravitate towards warm comfort foods, and vice versa. Similarly, in winter, when Vata dosha tends to increase in most people's constitutions, almost everyone can benefit from including warm soups and nourishing dals, fresh paneer cheese and 
whole milk in the diet. In the summer, plan on eating more cool, soothing foods to help keep Pitta dosha in balance.

4. Choose foods that are sattvic.

A third ayurvedic classification of foods is by the effect they have on the non-physical aspects of the physiology--mind, heart, senses and spirit. Sattvic foods have an uplifting yet stabilizing influence, rajasic foods stimulate and can aggravate some aspects of the mind, heart or senses, and tamasic foods breed lethargy and are considered a deterrent to spiritual growth.

Everyone, whether actively seeking spiritual growth or not, can benefit by including some sattvic foods at every meal because they help promote mental clarity, emotional serenity and sensual balance and aid in the coordinated functioning of the body, mind, heart, senses and spirit. Almonds, rice, honey, fresh sweet fruits, mung beans and easy-to-digest, fresh seasonal vegetables and leafy greens are examples of sattvic foods. 
To get the full sattwa from sattvic foods, prepare and eat them whole and fresh.

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