The six facets of taste:

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Two important aspects of life are associated with the tongue-taste and speech. Our elders advice us to control both as one can lead to excess and illness and the other can land in trouble!.

Ayurveda says that nutrition depends on the tip of your tongue as the sense of taste is a natural guide for good health. The tastes of different food desired by the body are a barometer of the body’s innate wisdom regarding food and nutrition. Taste buds not only identify tastes for the brain, they provide the initial impetus to the digestive system. Your tongue will immediately react to temperature-hot and cold; to spice-chilli and sweet, sour and bitter and to stale and fresh food. Ayurveda identifies six tastes called shadruchi: Madhu-sweet, amla-sour, lavana-salty, thiktha-bitter, kattie-pungentt, and kashaya-astrigent. Each taste has an impact on our behavior and nature.

• ·         Sweet helps to build tissue, it calms nerves.
• ·         Sour helps to clean the system and plays a major role in the absorption of minerals.
• ·         Salt mainly improves the taste of food. It contributes greatly to maintaining the liquid content of the body, lubricates tissues and stimulates digestion.
• ·         Bitter food is great as a detoxifier.
• ·         Pungent food also stimulates digestion and helps with metabolism.
• ·         Astringent food absorbs water and dries up fats.

The brain sounds the warning when our body requires energy

Any one or combination of these types of food restores the balance. When all these six tastes are included in our daily diet, then a natural balance is created. The body automatically avoids the over consumption of a particular kind of food. A squeeze of lime juice or a dash of fenugreek, asafetida; a piece of beetroot or sweet potato; adding chopped coriander or curry leaves, a sprinkling of pepper or a dash of chilli powder will fulfill the criteria of six tastes without any hassle. 

Food Reheated:

Reheated Food:

why is it said that eating reheated cooked food and taking left over/ preserved food are not good for health?

Except oxygen and water, all other essential chemicals, such as carbohydrates, proteins, fats, minerals, vitamins, etc are taken in by us through die for our survival and growth.

The raw materials such as rice, pulses, fats etc are in such chemical architecture that we cannot assimilate. That is why, by cooking process, they are chemically converted into smaller molecules that can further be managed by our digestive system, from mouth to intestines, through a series of enzymatic processes (mostly hydrolysis).

Long chain carbohydrates are converted into oligosaccharides, long chain proteins in meat, egg, or pulses into shorter protein chains and oils into micellar globules during cooking.

If the cooked food is left out of a while, a host of microorganisms invade the food stuff and work on the molecules in their own physiological ways because the cooked food stuff is now in a bio-manageable molecular status.

These microorganisms leave their own chemical signature on the food stuffs over time. If such a type of food is reheated, not only are the useful remains are warmed or further hydrolyzed but the microorganisms themselves and the chemicals they have excreted are also heated and chemically processed.

These alien chemical and biological entities are likely to generate poisonous molecules upon reheating. Similarly, food stuffs, left for long, are also likely to be contaminated by the invisible microorganisms along with their excreta during their regime on this food. Thus, a leftover/preserved food is also a source of possible poisonous content.

It is, hence, said that eating reheated cooked food and taking left over/ preserved food are not good for health.

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