One of the finest creations of GOD is HUMAN BEING. Intelligent, sensible, tolerant, creative, powerful, emotional and many more qualities to be added. But, when it comes to food, why do we tend to display our lowest level of qualities? Is food more powerful than us that we fall prey to its temptation? Well, then we cannot deny that we very conveniently make excuses for wrong food choices. Let’s start with the very basics. Why do we need to eat? Now we are surely very intelligent to give the right answer. The answer is “TO NOURISH OUR BODY”. But it’s not as simple as it looks. The problem is that none of us were taught this or exposed to such an environment. Food has always been treated as a tool of enjoyment. Celebration: An elaborate menu, Bad mood: good food elevates the mood, Crying child: favorite food to pacify her, A reward: Throw a party. This is what we have been seeing since our childhood. And Humans are super intelligent. We grasped this very fast and now it has been inculcated into our behavior. Food should make us happy; it should be appealing, it should satisfy our senses and in short, food has become the only tool to keep ourselves happy. The proof to this statement is that we avoid eating anything which does not satisfy our taste. So, half of our healthy foods go into the dislike category as they don’t make us happy. The whole perspective of food and the way we deal with it is wrong. Until and unless our perspective changes we will not be able to change our behavior towards food. In Ayurveda EATING has been mentioned as a ritual and no ritual is done for enjoyment. A ritual increases the spiritual intellect of a person and keeps him physically and mentally healthy. That is what food does to us. So, learn to treat this as a daily ritual. They key here is to inculcate discipline in our food habits for the whole family. Depending upon the purpose of the action lays the result. So, when you treat food as a source of enjoyment, you enjoyment crosses all boundaries and you land up eating all unhealthy food and many a times even overeat. Both Modern Science and Ayurveda have approved the fact that even over nourishment is toxic to the body. It supports the growth of unwanted cells in the body leading to inflammation and even cancer. The moment you focus on the nourishment of your body and look at your food with that perspective, you will never take up wrong choices or overeat. If you “Eat to live”, then life would be worth living as you will experience optimum health and if you “Live to Eat”, then life would become self limiting as an array of health issues would be your regular visitors. The choice is always with us.
When food choices are WRONG, medicine is of NO USE. When food choices are CORRECT, medicine is of NO NEED.
Author,
Ms. Preeti Revale
Clinical Nutritionist and Lifestyle Management Expert.
