Understanding Ayurveda’s perception of Food
“Bro, if your Indian culture was so advanced, how come it didn’t talk about protein, carbohydrates & fats in our nutrition & diet?”
You obviously don’t know about the Dhatus in our Ayurveda, so here’s the tea.
Our ancient Ayurvedic texts, especially the Charaka and Sushruta Samhitas, give us a different way of looking at food - not in isolation in a lab, but in how it reacts once inside our body & how it changes our internal systems.
Once our Jatharagni, digestive fire, starts breaking down the food, there’s a chain reaction that fires up & we have a factory line of sapta-dhatus that take over metabolism in a sequence to absorb the nutrients that keep us alive.
1. First comes the Rasa. This includes the plasma, lymph, and fluids that carry & circulate nutrients across the body - since its main element is water, jala, having juicy & water-rich food, basically being hydrated, is of utmost importance.
2. Rasa’s byproduct is Rakta, the blood tissue. This gives us oxygen, maintains our temperature, and keeps our skin flushed & fresh. We’re told to have iron-rich leafy & green vegetables so that this tissue keeps forming properly.
3. Rakta then leads to Mamsa, the Muscle Tissue. This covers our body, protects our organs, and helps us move. Because the associated natural element is Earth, Prithvi, it needs heavy & dense foods like daal, legumes, beans, lentils, nuts, and root vegetables - basically the protein-rich ones.
4. When Mamsa is refined, it creates Meda, the Fat Tissue. This is needed in a healthy amount for lubrication, also keeping us warm & storing energy reserves when we run out of food. Healthy oils, nuts, and avocados are the best sources here.
5. Meda's byproduct is Asthi - the skeleton. This includes bones, teeth & cartilage, providing us the rigid structure to stand up. This is where calcium-rich dark leafy vegetables, almonds & sesame seeds help.
6. When nutrients manage to penetrate the outer shells of Asthi, we get Majja. This is the bone marrow, brain tissue, nervous system. Its job is to fill the hollow spaces. And soaked nuts are a good source to support this.
7. Finally, if all has gone well, we get the Shukra or Artava Dhatu. This is the reproductive tissue - and because it is the final distillation - its health helps us indicate the overall immunity, strength & a person’s vitality, known as Ojas.
This process is not against modern science - it just shows us that our culture had a more nuanced perspective of looking at things.
Rather than calling food sources protein, carbs, fiber or fat, we understood them as having different gunas - sattva, rajas, tamas - that interact with our Dhatus based on the elements, to create 3 Doshas or bio-energies - Vata, Kapha, Pitta - that work in harmony to maintain our various bodily systems.
The idea was that when you eat food mindfully with this process in mind, your body is capable of naturally extracting exactly what it needs to build everything from your blood to core immunity.
So while having a scientific temperament is non-negotiable, it shouldn’t come at the cost of ignoring what our ancient Indian knowledge systems have already cracked - in fact, they deserve more scientific research, which will only receive funding when we Indians support it.