Author: Randeep Singh / go to all articles on Yoga Concepts
Human mind is prone to habits;
it loves picking up and constantly
staying under the control of habits.
Is it because it finds safety in
repeating something,
which has already been tested
by first hand experience,
or even if experienced through second
hand. Forming diet habits which can promote
healthy eating comes under the same reference.
The mind which hates reasoning or pondering over something in a logical manner is a tamasic mind, that’s why it treads along the already set processes without questioning their efficiency.
Similarly, most of our concepts on what is right and what is wrong are bequeathed to us from our ancestors to our elders and finally on to us. The concept of healthy eating habits, for us is normally shaped on similar lines, by believing the word of what we wrongly take as authority on the subject.
When Patanjali talks about the inherent flaws in considering the word of authority as one of the ways of acquiring right knowledge he is somewhere scratching our minds to think, reason and break free from the clutches of habit. So let the nature be the authority for developing healthy eating habits for us. Let us use our mind to observe and reason how the concept of diet works for other elements of nature, as we ourselves are one of its elements.
Healthy Eating Habit – Eat it Raw
Have we ever thought that in spite of all the spike in food processing technology the number and kind of diseases on the rise is like never before. With each item of so called food, man today is putting a certain proportion, form of poison inside his body.
The food in the modern world seems to add bulk to the body at the cost of vitality: which is evident in the drop in the energy levels of modern men the moment they touch their 40s. In this article I am going to question and analyze just one aspect of a healthy eating habit; cooked food.
The first morsel of food a new born today receives is either highly processed or cooked; mind you, this is the first experience of food you are giving to the nascent digestive system which will condition its mode of functioning for days it will remain alive. Does human body can only thrive on cooked food, or do it have other options too?
All the other animals in nature, physiologically man is an animal too, thrive on the food the way nature has offered it to them; raw. Other animals don’t’ eat cooked food. Cows, goats and the whole lot of herbivores survive on grass the way it grows in nature.
The lions, tigers and all the other carnivore eat fresh, not cooked meat. Their bodies are well tuned and conditioned to their respective natural diets. Birds eat worms or raw wheat and corn seeds. wild boars thrive of a variety of under tubers and roots that grow below the ground. The monkeys, nearest to man in evolution, enjoy all kinds of fruits.
Than why does only man live on cooked food? Why does he consider the cooked meals as a healthy eating habit ? Just because his ancestors had been believing in the same consideration.
Humans if so desire, are very much capable of adjusting their diet to the food which is not transformed by cooking. Human body has originally been designed to live on raw salads and fruits, it’s we who have chosen to cook the food before we eat it, any guesses why?
Because over generations our system has adapted itself to cooked food, whether it is healthy or not is a different question. More dangerously our palate has got completely conditioned to the cooked food; raw food, to us appears to be unpalatable , and indigestible now.
Our system is more comfortable digesting the cooked version of the food otherwise provided to us raw by the nature.
An apple, carrot, onions or capsicums plucked directly from the plant have life in them. The life force or the prana shakti as we call it. Even after being plucked from the tree, the life inside a green tomato continues, as it turns red and as seeds develop within it after some days.
This is because the biological processes which are being sustained by the life present in it keeps going on. Thus any ” Raw” fruit is brimming with life as even after getting separated from its plant it keeps growing and become more tastier. Potatoes ones exhumed from the ground retain the ability to reproduce up to months together.
Has anyone seen a cooked potato sprouting up into a shoot; cooking kills the life present within that potato. Then why do we call the meal prepared from cooked natural food as a balanced diet. Any healthy diet cannot be lifeless. The life force pervading the entire universe has to be present within it. This fresh life force is meant to be replacing the life already spent within us after it is ingested as food. Thus cooked food isn’t a potent source of replenishing the life force within humans.
Healthy Eating – Cooking Destroys the Prana
Thus by eating the fruits, vegetables and other grains in the raw form, or least processed form we are actually eating life from them. Thus one of the strictures of the healthy eating habits would be that the food has to be eaten raw as much as possible.
Forms of raw food as available from nature are naturally rich in vital minerals , vitamins, essentials for a healthy body along with other nutrients from plants. Eating the food raw can be seen being advocated by any of the healthy eating tips articles which are being written today.
This is because ones this food items as presented by nature are cooked the life force in the form of vitamins is killed within them. Vitamin A and Vitamin C are more prone to destruction by heat than any other of the vital minerals. Essentially, all types of vitamins get destroyed to some extent on exposure to heat while cooking.
Yes! one can live longer on cooked food as well, and that has been happening since the primitive man had invented fire; but there is a marked difference between a life which is long and a life full of vitality.
The purpose of developing healthy eating habits is not longer life but a body which functions perfectly, as per the intent it was created for, and with vitality for as long as it exists.
On the other hand vitamins are also responsible for preventing a lot of ailments, vitamin deficiencies have been known to cause related diseases in man. It becomes on the more crucial to ingest the natural food in its natural form itself.
If one feeds the newly born calf, of a cow boiled milk the growth of the calf gets restricted. This can finally lead to extreme weakness where in the calf would not be even able to get up on its own and will finally die of malnutrition.
All this because boiling has killed the life present in raw milk. Reciprocally try feeding boiled grass to the cow and see how its body trundles on the path of emancipation and eventual death in a course of few years.
Cooked food, with life force destroyed, on the other hand gets destroyed immediately if kept unused, where as raw tomatoes can survive for days on their own as they still have life left in them. This example again proves that eating” raw food” is a healthy eating habit.
A clear connection between the degree of temperature and the existence of the life force in its organic ( food ) form has already been discerned by the scientists. The boiling point temperatures kills the life force within the organic food while the freezing point temperatures can preserve it for long.
The food gets destroyed faster in hot climates than in colder ones. The potential of fire in killing life can also be experienced in case one accidentally singes one’s finger or any body part, the intensity of the pain so experienced is proportional to the life killed in that finger or body part.
Connect with Nature
Disease in body is nothing but its reaction to the unhealthy ways of living by man. A body which follows all the norms nature in day today living can never fall sick. Healthy eating habits , like raw food, or healthy eating habits which includes taking good care of one’s teeth are the ways of living the natural way.
Even though every natural element also dies and finally decomposes on its own, releasing the elements it was composed of back into the nature. Boiling, or cooking prematurely kills this natural food which has already started to decay by the time one has started eating it.
Eating lifeless food reduces the lifespan of the organism. Thus eating cooked food is like eating the dyeing matter. The body which is not being served the fresh life force regularly weakens, decays and finally dies much early.
Now, one cannot suddenly one day just switch to raw food, because the body systems are not habituated to extract the life force infused in these natural food items. Research says that one must extend this transition, if one intents to, slowly over a period of seven years.
That’s when the body will accept this transformation without exhibiting any negative repercussions of doing so. Instead of trying to assimilate raw potatoes and raw flesh in our diets let us devote more time to find what food, or natural diet, as available on this planet, is most healthy for man.
The genetically closest animal to man on earth is the chimpanzee, the orangutan or the gorilla. Rather in Malay the word “utan” stands for the man of the woods. From among all the animals that inhabit earth these three have the closest structural similarities with man, their natural food or healthy eating habits can, must also be similar. Their so called healthy eating habits have to have some connection.
These apes completely survive on fruit, man can also survive only on fruit. This means that the form of life force which is agreeable to our body is only available in fruits juices. it has been found that fruits which spread pleasant smell like apples, bananas, lemons, raspberries and oranges are meant for human diet naturally.
Thus these fruits must for a essential part of a healthy eating. Moreover the flavor and taste nature has infused these fruits with is more in tune with the taste buds provided to man; one need not add any extra flavoring agents; like spices in order to savor their taste.
There flavors have also been found to trigger the endocrine system of man in the right way. A healthy diet infused with fruits is capable of keeping the man healthy and full of energy. Fruit juices also keeps the body internally cleansed. Anyone with healthy eating habits as discussed would have a blood so pure that it will not have the toxins on which any kind of bacteria can survive, secondly it keeps the natural defenses of the body against the external invaders strong all the while.
Cooked food can add flesh and fat to the body, not the life prolonging vital energy. A body which has sustained itself on cooked food can be strong with muscles added, but such a body would be unable to renew itself with vital force or life energy so essential for longer living.
That is the reason that strong looking men degenerate and die much early than the leaner looking men. In this respect building the body in a gym (adding muscle and fat) is very different from doing yoga (which renders the body lean) and developing healthy eating habits the natural way. Gorillas live only on fruit and a single gorilla can defeat 20 men in the show of strength contest; thus a protein rich diet is not a healthy diet as is thought in general.
The vitality of the wild animals remains unstained by poisons like caffeine or nicotine. Wild animals do not live in houses made of artificial materials but their body stays in contact with the natural forces of the earth day and night.
Animal do not wear clothes, which is a cultural compulsion for man, as barriers between their body and the forces of nature present around them, they bathe in free flowing or natural water bodies and remain constantly exposed to the Sun.
No wonders that a lot of animals live much longer than man. The vitality quotient is the same across different ages in the animal groups: the energy levels of an older elephant will be close to the one which is much younger in age.
One cannot make out the age of the individuals of a herd of wild boars as all of them appear to be scampering around with the same vitality. Thus why can’t man, which is supposed to have the best body in nature have a longer and life full of vitality by switching over to the healthy eating habits.
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