Diwali, you and the food you eat

There might be a variety of food spread during Diwali celebrations, but the thing that gets our attention is sweets. What’s noteworthy is the fact that as per Ayurveda you should actually begin your meal with sweets. Many of you might find this odd as the word dessert itself means ‘to clean the table’. But yet Ayurveda says to start your meal with it, let’s see why.

The sweet taste acts really quickly on our taste buds and saliva. Starting your meal with the sweet item that we are habituated to eat at the end actually enables the flow of digestive juices. At the same time if you wait for the sweet at the end of your meal you are actually slowing down your digestion process. Well, during Diwali the idea of gobbling up all those mouth-watering sweets before the meal may not go well with you, so why not have them together, neither before nor after! Did you know even this has Ayurvedic benefits? Yes, having both the things together helps you to absorb vitamins and nutrients better.

Many Ayurvedic doctors or specialists even say that eating dessert at the end means that all the empty calories and the sugar suppresses the digestive fire, causing fermentation and indigestion all thanks to the acids produced. As per the Ayurvedic order of tastes, you should start your meal with sweet, moving on to something sour and salty in the middle, followed by pungent, bitter and astringent food. The sweet helps to balance Vayu that is wind in the stomach, while the sour and salty taste in the middle of the meal helps to stimulate the digestive fire. The pungent, bitter, and astringent taste at the end of the meal helps to subdue the Kapha Dosha (earth).

Well during Diwali, we certainly cannot stay away from sweets and if we follow Ayurveda, we certainly should not, as it is imperative for tissue development. Having said that, you should also remember overdoing of anything is not good, but the intake of sweets in moderate rate is like medicine for the body.