1-B Food - What to eat and what not to eat

What to eat?

The answer lies in our paying attention to quality. There is no use in eating the wrong good and there is no use eating at the wrong time. That is the most important thing. It is not merely filling up the stomach. It is a question of something really useful to the system. And it is from that point of view that in nature cure we pay the greatest attention to this aspect.

When I ask you to eat less, eat moderately, and eat only two meals a day, I lay full stress on quality. Today, the quality is completely over looked. Whatever is available in the bazaar, is eaten. A person comes and tells me, ‘I frequently go on tour and no good food was available. So whatever was available I ate’. This should not be the case.

The food that is taken should be of the right quality. Otherwise it is of no use. I want to tell you one thing. If you observe the principles of moderate eating and if you eat only twice a day, you will live longer. You will live healthily. So, take to moderate eating. Be frugal in eating; you will never fall ill.

In Nature cure, we divide food into three categories. The first category of food which is called primary or positive foods consists of food items which are very easily digestible. The expenditure is very little, whereas the income is more. They contain plenty of enzymes, mineral salts, vitamins and others.

The second category of food which is called the secondary foods or negative foods are those items requiring more energy to digest, and after digestion, the return is much less than the first category. The first is cumulative preference shares. The second is only ordinary shares, for which the dividend may not be there.

The third category of foods are those requiring a lot of energy to get digested, and from which you get no return at all.

This is the general classification of foods. Now, what are the categories?

Primary or positive food, the first category;
Secondary or negative foods, the second category and
Devitalizing foods, the third category.

All the food products available in the market today come under one of these categories. The polished rice, the maida, the hydrogenated oil, all pulses and grams without the outer covering, all manufactured, refined, processed, bottled and tinned foods all come in the category of devitalizing foods.

The refined, processed, manufactured, tinned and bottled foods, in fact any kind of food coming to you through the industry, any kind of food in which there is some interference by the industry is processing, every one of them, is a devitalizing food. If you want to be healthy, do not clamour for more hospitals, do not demand more medical aid, but reform your diet. Take to unrefined natural foods. Do not take bottled, tinned, and processed foods.

Then, what should you eat? Eat natural foods as they are in nature. Fortunately, all vegetables are not tinned and processed. We have not yet reached that stage of artificiality in the country. We can still get so many good things here.

Natural foods are of two categories – the primary and the secondary. What are they? All vegetable and fruits are primary.

All cereals, pulses, grams and milk are secondary. That is all. You can take both. Primary means that of primary importance and secondary means that of secondary importance only. It is the primary, not the secondary, that is more needed. You should take less rice, chappathis, dal, grams and pulses. Take more vegetables. Vegetables and fruits are primary food, and you take these in greater quantity, and correspondingly reduce your intake of rice and chappathi. Would such a meal be very costly? No. Not at all. Because, you would not be eating four or five times a day. There is no need for coffee, tea, etc. It is the weak man who requires coffee. When you eat rightly two times, there is no need for coffee. There will be no tension at all. You will be supplying all that the body needs. In fact, money will be saved. So from the economic point of view this is a wonderful proposition.

How to use the vegetables and fruits is the next question. There are three types of vegetables, the leafy vegetables, the green vegetable and the root vegetable.

Leafy vegetable tops the list, because the leaf is the laboratory of the plant. It is the leaf that takes the sun’s energy and converts it into food. The greenness of the green leaves – what is known as chlorophyll – is very important. Our forefathers knew this great secret. The edible green non-poisonous leafy vegetable is known as ‘oushadhi’. Oushadhi is not rare herbs found in Kanyakumari or Kashmir. Every leafy vegetable is an oushadhi. Oushadhi means medicine. Whatever leafy vegetable you get in season, you pay attention to that first.

Then come the non-leafy green vegetables. There are even so many of these according to season, and you can take all of them. The word green does not actually mean green. The tomato, though not green, is actually a green vegetable. By and large, most of the green vegetables are green in colour and hence they are called green vegetables.

Among the root vegetables, there are two sub-categories: Starchy and non-starchy root vegetables. Among the root vegetables, the non-starchy root vegetables are equal to the green vegetables. Carrot and radish are root vegetables but they do not contain much starch. But the starch root vegetables like potato, sweet potato and yams are grains in vegetables form. They are not really vegetables. So use all vegetables. Only those vegetables which contain starch a little too much useful as other vegetables.

How to use these vegetables?

Many of these vegetables can be taken without cooking. There are many which can be taken as they are – the carrot, the cucumber, the tomato; whatever can be taken without cooking, please take them as they are. Because the process of cooking, is destructive of nutritive elements. The moment you put something on fire you lose something. How much you lose depends on how wrongly you cook. But in any kind of cooking some loss is there. Prepare a salad out of the raw vegetable, which can be taken in the raw form, and eat the salad every midday and every evening. Do not add salt. Do not season it. Take them as they are. You need salt, but not the common salt that you get from the shop. You need mineral salts, phosphorus, calcium, iodine and iron. The common salt you take is not utilized by the body. It is thrown out through the sweat and through the urine. It is not kept within. Because it is of no use to the body it is thrown out. The more salt you take the more you expel it. So, in the raw vegetable salad do not add any salt. Cut, slice, or grate two or three vegetables of the season. Please understand a few principles. First wash the vegetables and then cut. In many places, they cut the vegetables and then wash. When you first cut the vegetables and then wash it, the water comes in contact with the inner surface of the vegetables and the vitamins and mineral salts get washed away. So wash the whole vegetables and then cut them. Wash it in plain water. Use no chemicals [like lime, permanganate]. Wash very quickly, After cutting, slicing or grating, do not keep it exposed to the air. The longer you keep it exposed to the air, the greater is the loss of vitamins. They would be oxidized. So preparation of the salad should be done only when you are about to eat.

In many houses, vegetables to be cooked the next morning are cut the previous night. They have no time. Time is available for everything else. So, wash the whole vegetable and cut and use the whole vegetable with the skin except when the skin is unedible. May be in some of the vegetables the skin is thorny, hard or due to some reason, unedible. If so; remove the skin as little as possible [otherwise, the skin is very important. The skin is to the vegetable what the frontier is to the country. It is the frontier that is well – protected with armed forces. It is the skin, the portion just below the skin; that contains all the protective elements of the vegetable, namely, the vitamins and the mineral salts. The inner pitch does not contain much of these. So, use the vegetable with the skin. Use them whole. Prepare them the moment you are going to sit for your meal. When you have prepared the salad, make it a little tasty. Put a little tomato in it. Make it a little colourful. Put a little coriander leaves [Kothamalli leaves]. They contain a large amount of iron and vitamins A&C; and it adds flavour to the salad. Add some fresh coconut. Grade the coconut finely and add it to the salad. The raw salad will be colourful with the white coconut, the red tomato, the green coriander leaves and the colours of the other vegetables. So nice and so colourful. Do not add salt. Chew the salad very thoroughly. Eat it, Serve it to your children. The cellulose or the roughage in the raw vegetable will see that you are free from constipation.

Today, people are constipated. They eat only fried vegetables. They boil them and throw away the boiled water. They do not take raw vegetables at all. There is no roughage in he food we eat. That is why the bowels are constipated. If you want yourself to be free from constipation, take raw vegetables. Does raw vegetable produce wind? No. If you eat it only when you are hungry and if you chew it thoroughly and if you eat moderately, it will be digested. What is digested will not produce wind. It is the undigested food that produces wind. So, take raw vegetable. Whatever seasonal vegetables you get, take all. Do not use, much the potato, the sweet potato and the unripe banana. If, by any chance, there are no teeth to chew, put the vegetable in a mixer and drink the juice along with the roughage. Only the raw vegetables, or the uncooked food contain the enzymes. Anything cooked loses all the enzymes. As somebody put it a little harshly, ‘God created the food and the devil created the cook’. But that is the truth.

We have been living wrongly for years. If, suddenly we start living rightly today, can we get all right tomorrow? A little time is needed.

There are some vegetables the juices of which are extremely good and about which people generally do not know. One such vegetable is the ASH GOURD, what is called KOOSMANDAM in Sanskrit, KUMBALANGA in Malayalam. The juice of this vegetable is something beyond my word, I cannot explain it. I have seen this in practice. Take a small quantity of this vegetable, grate it finely and squeeze out the juice [not with the cloth, because cloth these days are washed with all sorts of powders] use your own hand or a filter. Drink the raw juice of this ash gourd. Two ounces for the child and 4 ounces for the adult is enough. Drink it early morning. Your acidity will be off. Your peptic ulcer will say good-bye to you. This will purify your blood stream. This is a great tonic. Any body can take it. Kindly do not add sugar or salt to it. Use the extract as it is. You may dilute it a little if you like. If the water is chlorinated, better dilute it with your own saliva which is unchlorinated. Do not drink it. Sip it slowly. It is a wonderful vegetable. Any inflammation anywhere in the body, the sour mouth, the acidic stomach, the peptic ulcer, will easily give way when you take the white ash gourd juice. Take a little in the morning and a little in the evening, in addition to your raw vegetables.

Next is the CARROT LEAFE JUICE, if you can get it. The carrot juice everybody is taking. You may take the whole carrot also. If carrot leave is available fresh you may take its juice also. It is very very good. Then there is another vegetable – the snake gourd [PADAVALANGA], which is available in a particular season. The tender variety of this vegetable can be cut into small pieces and added to the raw salad. This is very rich in vitamin A and C. You can extract the raw juice and drink it. Give it to your children. Another vegetable is the banana pith [VASHA PINDI]. Do not throw it away. Slice it and ‘add spice’ to your raw salad. Take it as it is or extract the juice and drink it. The banana pith can remove stones from the kidney or the bladder. I am not making extraordinary claim, I have not prepared them. God is giving it to us. I am only pointing out to you what they are for. The plantain pith is very good.

There are some leaves which are not commonly used as vegetables. For example, the BILWA LEAF or the BILWA PATRA [KOOVALAM] which is used for Shiva Puja. This leaf is extremely good. Take 3 or 4 the tender leaves, put them in your mouth and chew them. They are multivitamin tablets. It is good if you take it early in the morning. You can take a few leaves to the office and eat it there also. The TULSI LEAF is equally good.

Nature cure does not mean fruit diet. Those who can afford to buy, let them have fruits. Nature cure is not meant only for the rich. Nature cure is for all. Anybody can practice it. It is so simple. IF YOU TAKE THE SEASONAL VEGETABLES, THE BILWA LEAF, THE TULSI LEAF, OCCASIONALLY AND A LITTLE RAW SALAD IN THE DAY AND IN THE NIGHT, ALL YOUR TROUBLES WILL GO AWAY. It is so simple. Eat only when hungry. Eat rightly. Eat only twice a day. Eat moderately.

I have told you all about raw vegetables. Well, all vegetables cannot be taken raw. Some need cooking. Cooked vegetables and other cooked foods should be taken in small quantities only. The major part of the food should be raw. In fact even pulses and grams can be sprouted and taken raw and in that form, they are easy to take. They are tasty and they give you much more nutrition than the original pulses and grams. So, reform the food that way. Have a reformed diet.

I told you that there are three kinds of food, three categories of food; primary, secondary and devitalizing. Let us take more vegetables uncooked. Please remember, the uncooked food is sun-cooked food. We can in addition take a little raw vegetable juices early morning or late in the evening as food supplement to overcome the effects of past wrong living. This is especially needed in the case of pregnant ladies who have to look after the nutrition of the baby within.

We have got to know what to do with the vegetable which cannot be taken raw. There are certain vegetables which cannot be consumed raw. By all means cook them but do not cook them wrongly. Cooking necessarily means waste of nutrition, nutrients. So when it comes to the question of loss of the nutrients, why not lose the minimum? Why loss the maximum? So I mean cook sensibly. The frying which is normally done in the name of cooking is the most wasteful of all kinds of cooking. You lose the frying medium as well as the fired stuff. Everything is gone completely. The charred food which becomes a little coloured or dark brown is not very good. To tell you frankly charred food is carcinogenic, capable of producing cancer. Even non-smokers are getting cancer. Often people put the question if non-smokers are getting cancer how do you say hat the smoke produces cancer. There are so many, ever so many carcinogenic factors in the world; not one. Smoking is accepted as one of the dangers for human health. Later I will tell you how to give up smoking, how to give up alcohol and how to give up addiction. You can overcome these without any difficulty. But if you do not smoke so far so good. If you are taking masala dosa daily you know the fringes of the dosa, are all charred dark brown. When you take the bread and toast the slices they become charred in places. If you take such charred food it may be harmful to you. It may produce serious troubles.

There is a story that a kind in good old days took pity upon an old wood cutter a very old man and presented him a small grove of sandalwood trees thinking that he will lead a comfortable life. The story goes that the wood cutter began cutting the sandal wood trees and turned them into charcoal. Finally there was only one sandalwood tree left, by the time, the king met him again. We are buying first class vegetables containing enzymes, vitamins, mineral salts and all that sandal wood stands for. Sandalwood we are buying but we are turning them into charcoal – and rightly it is called curry in Tamil. The fried vegetable is called curry. The curry is also charcoal. Well we are buying first class vegetables and turning them into useless stuff and eating and naturally we do not get anything out of it. So whatever can be taken raw, take it raw. Whatever cannot be taken raw, do not fry it. Frying and then adding salt and condiments, spices may make it tasty in the mouth. Mind you, taste is a matter of habit. What is tasty to one, may not be tasty to another. Well it may be tasty to the person of perverted taste but it would not give anything inside. We must have certain control over the sense of taste. Otherwise taste can be perverted and taste is perverted in many cases. So we should enjoy the taste of the vegetables as nature has given it to them. The nature-given, nature-ordained taste must be enjoyed. Do not try to add plenty of condiments and spices. Condiments and spices are actually irritants. Every one of the condiments and every one of the spices is an irritant. It irritates the mucus membrane. No condiments and spices are an exception to this. Some irritates more and some irritates less. If you go on irritating the mucus membrane throughout the day, you know what will happen. Gastritis, inflammation of the intestines gastro enteritis and so many things occur. Constant irritations caused by fried food caused by heavily condimented, heavily spiced food is what actually leads to peptic ulcer and so many kinds of troubles. Kindly do not irritate. Constant irritation over any part of the body leads to inflammation. Constant inflammation will harden the skin and make it useless. So use condiments and spices as little as possible. Mind you, salt is also a condiment.

In the good old days, when the air conditioning was unknown the refrigerator was unknown, people used to prepare pickles, people used to preserve vegetables and other fruits with the help of condiments and spices. There might have been some use then. Today with so many modern contrivances for the preservation of the foods, we need not have any condiments and spices at all. Not that I am recommending the preservation of the food but then these [preserved with condiments and spices] actually have no food value, but they only irritate. Some people come and say, ‘In the nutritional chart, it is written there that the pepper, molaku [chillies] contain calcium. For the sake of calcium should you take this irritating stuff? Could you not have the calcium from some other non-irritating foods? Could you not have an employment with a better employer? You can have all the nutrition without condiments and spices. The condiments and spices have more irritating value than nutrition value. So cut down on condiments and spices as much as possible. Change your taste. The word satvic means non-irritating. If the food is non-irritating it will be digested much better because what irritates will disturb the secretion of the gastric juice [the digestive juices]. If the digestive juices do not come up further, you are not going to digest the food. If you go on constantly irritating the mucus membranes, your digestion will be poor. So kindly cut down your condiments and spices. Remember the person who eats too much of condiments gets the same kind of liver trouble which an alcoholic gets. The persons who take alcohol regularly gets some kind of liver trouble called Cirhosis. The same kind of trouble comes to the person who uses heavily condimented foods.

By all means make your food tasty. But let not the taste become the prominent criterion. Taste is only one of the aspects. You must taste the food, you must like the food, you must eat but you should digest it also. If you enjoy the food then alone you can digest it.

So cook your food rightly. Do not fry. You have got first class steam cookers now available; steam the vegetable, steam your rice; whatever you do you steam only. Steaming is the best. Steam it in a cooker. But if the cooker is made of aluminium, better do not put the rice straight in there. Put it in a stainless vessel. Put it in some other vessel. Do not put it straight in the aluminium vessel. Aluminium vessel not intended for cooking. When you cook rice, when you boil milk, in the aluminium vessel a little aluminium get mixed up in the food or milk and it creates gas. Aluminium is all right for flying; use it there. So use the cooker rightly.

By any chance if you cannot steam, boil it. Boil it with the least water that is needed. That means after the vegetable is cooked, after the food is cooked, let there be no water in it. Just put only enough water and when it is boiling please see that the boiling stuff does not get settled down in the vessel below and char the whole thing. Whether it is rice or vegetable, it may get settled in the vessel.

Cooked food should be taken immediately after cooking and not hours after cooking. The moment your food is cooked, let it be vegetable, let it be anything it is no more alive. Because you have heated it, from that moment decomposition starts. The longer you put it outside more is the decomposition. If you put it inside immediately digestion starts. But if you keep it out longer it cannot be digested. Suppose you put the cooked vegetable out side for 2 – 3 hours decomposition starts. The longer you keep it outside the greater the decomposition. If you take food 5 hours after cooking it is decomoposed food. Some people prepare rice, vegetable early morning at seven O’clock and take it along with them for tiffin and they take it at 1 O’clock. That is, 6 hours later. Even then, at the time of taking, it is decomposed. Now when it is decomposed at the time of eating, how will it give anything to you. So cooked food must be taken within half to one hour of cooking. The sooner the better. Many people cook the rice in the day and keep it over for the night. And sometimes the night food they give to the children next morning. These are all not very hygienic habits. Let us be very clear about it. Cooked food decomposes. In Tamil they say, ‘Usi pochu’. There is no use of taking that. If it is raw food, [if you get carrot in the morning and eat it in the evening so long as it is not cooked] it is all right. But when you take cooked food you must take it immediately. Many people return home at 8.30 pm. Kindly ask the family not to cook the food before 8 pm. It is not advisable that the food is prepared at 5pm and you should take the food at 9 pm. Cooked food must be taken immediately after cooking. It is very necessary.

While preparing chapatti please see that no ghee should be put on the iron plate. Do not make it into another kind of dosa when you put oil or ghee over the plate and place the chapati it actually tantamount to frying. What is called puri is still worse. So the puri, the parotta and all that may be tasty but they do not contain any nutrition. Fried starches cannot be digested in the mouth nor in the stomach. It will create only indigestion and heaviness. So prepare the simple chapati dry. To prepare chapti you need wheat flour. In the wheat flour there is the bran. Do not sieve and throw away the coarse surface. The coarse outer surface of atta, what is called the bran of atta contains many nutrients. The wheat bran contains vitamin E, a fertility vitamin, the absence of which may create disturbance in the reproductive system, menstrual disorders nd many other troubles may come up in women and in men. Vitamin E is a heart vitamin. It is the fertility vitamin. It is there in the bran of atta. So do not sieve it and throw away. Use fresh atta, preferably hand ground atta, because what is sold in the bazaar is the atta without the bran. It is of no use at ll. Get good wheat. Have it ground yourself. It is not difficult now-a-days as there are ball bearing chukys available. We can grind without difficulty. Use the whole wheat atta. Add some water. In rice you have got to add 2 times of water. But in atta you have got to add only a little water and prepare the dough. But do not put salt in it.

You can prepare special kind of chapatis. If you get good carrot in season, grind the carrot very finely and add the carrot to the atta. Add a little water and prepare the dough. Do not add salt. Prepare carrot roti. It is very very tasty. Similarly you can prepare coconut rotty, the cellulose roti. Grind the coconut very finely; add it to the atta, and very little water prepare the dough and prepare the coconut chappathy. It is very tasty. Similarly you can prepare plantain chapatis [glucose roti]. Well, throw away the skin. The inner part of the banana fruit is mixed with the atta. This contains enough moisture. You do not even need to add water. Mix up, and prepare glucose chapati. It is also very tasty. Now if such chapati are taken they are not only tasty but for people in poor health they will be more useful than ordinary chappathy. I will tell you how. Well, you have added something useful to the chapati. The individual who is eating chappathy unknowingly, is also taking some vegetable along with it. So he will stand to benefit more. These are known as composite chapati. You can prepare various kinds of chappathys; you can prepare the food yourself nutritiously, deliciously. But kindly do not spoil the nutrition. Now so much about cooking.

A few words about fruits. Fruits are of two types, sweet fruits and sour fruits, as there are men of two types; people of sour temperament and people of sweet temperament. The sour fruits and sweet fruits are there. Both are good. They are not penicillin, they are not streptomycin, they are not drugs. Local fruits are far better than imported fruits. Do not sit in Kerala and ask for Kashmiri apples. It is meaningless. The local fruits are far better. The seasonal fruits are good. It does not matter if they are sour. But in case you are having bad digestion, in case you are having some chronic disease, better do not take sour fruits till you recover. If your digestion is bad and if you are getting sour reactions, sour winds and if along with it you take anything sour or any sour fruits, it will only increase the complaint. So in case of people having bad digestion, in case of people having some chronic disease, [because very chronic disease has gas and indigestion in the background], better do not take sour fruits. Take the other fruits. Take only one kind of fruit at a time. Well you can take all fruits by rotation. Do not make the fruits as salad. With vegetables you can prepare salad. As far as fruits are concerned, take only one kind of fruit at a time. Take the fruits whole along with the skin as I pointed out to you yesterday. It is the portion below the skin that contains everything. If in any particular fruit if the skin is completely unedible, by all means remove it. But whatever it is edible do not throw it away. Then do not cut the fruit and keep it exposed to the air for a long time. Because, the longer the exposure, the greater the oxidation. So you will lose vitamin, you will lose the mineral salts. Well take them as quickly as possible after cutting. One very important thing is to take fruits only in an empty stomach. Do not take the fruit immediately after the meal and do not take fruits along with the meal. The reason being fruits are in a sense predigested foods whereas chappathys and other things are to be digested. If you mix up the two, one requiring easy digestion and the other requiring difficult digestion, the process of digestion will be upset. So take fruit in an empty stomach and allow some time for the fruit to be digested and then take the next meal. The habit of taking fruit immediately after the meal is not a very good habit. Well whether the fruits are sour or whether they are sweet they should not be combined with the meals. Now so much for the fruit eating.