Eating is one of life’s most essential and enjoyable activities. It’s essential because we cannot sustain our bodies, and we can’t even survive if we don’t eat regularly and adequately. It’s enjoyable because there are many natural edible items that are tasty, such as sweet fruits. Food can also be cooked in ways that make it good, even great, and that’s how various cuisines have evolved across the world according to cultures. Each culture has its own delicacies.

Though eating is essential and can be enjoyable, how do we approach food so that the experience of eating is also healthy and wholesome? If we eat food in too much quantity, with too much frequency, or food that is too rich in quality—filled with too much sugar, too much oil, or other substances that are stimulating to the tongue but exhausting and contaminating for the body—then the very food meant to sustain our life can become the cause of disorders and diseases, which can decrease the quantity of our life. We hardly ever see old people who are obese, and even if overeating doesn’t cut our lifespan short, it can definitely decrease or deplete the quality of our life, whereby we suffer from various health issues, many of which are caused by unregulated eating.

Since such unregulated eating happens because we eat food that is tasty even when it’s not healthy, we may start thinking that we should not seek any pleasure in food. Indeed, we may consider taste to be the enemy of health. But sentencing ourselves to a lifelong diet that is tasteless—or worse, tastes terrible—just for the sake of preserving our health and living a long time seems like unbearable austerity. We might live long, but would such a life be worth living if, every time we have to eat, we feel a sense of distaste when we look at what’s on our plate?

If we consider our relationship with food in terms of a pendulum, one extreme to which many people succumb is to eat tasty food even if it’s unhealthy, thereby making life physically miserable. The other extreme is to eat healthy food even if it has no taste or tastes terrible, sentencing ourselves to mental misery. Is there a central point of balance, where we can avoid both physical misery and mental misery while eating? Yes, there is.

We can consider three factors for achieving this balance, which is what the Bhagavad Gita (6.16-7) recommends when it states that when we are regulated in our bodily activities, such as eating, then our yoga practice can free us from distress.

The first factor for having a more balanced and healthy relationship with food is that we don’t let taste be the sole determiner of our food choices, and don’t let it even be the primary determiner. We consider health and overall well-being, in terms of sustaining and strengthening the body, as the primary criterion for eating, and we consider taste as a secondary criterion, whereby we find the intersection of the Venn diagram of food that is both healthy and tasty. We then eat that food in whatever quantity is conducive for health. We also need to be ready to eat food that doesn’t taste good if that is what’s best for our health and is necessary for a balanced, complete diet. So, the first point is about priority: health is the first priority, while taste is not exiled from the priority list but isn’t given the first position.

The second point is about pleasure, wherein we ensure that food doesn’t become the sole or even the primary source of pleasure in our life. We need to have other meaningful and fulfilling engagements, be it in terms of our vocation or profession or in terms of our interests and hobbies, which give us joy and contentment. When we’re thus enriched with meaningful activities, we won’t be desperately looking for a source of pleasure, and we won’t be frantic or uncontrolled in our eating. Even when we eat tasty foods, we won’t eat them in such quantities as to make them unhealthy for us.

The third point is prayer. If we cultivate a devotional prayer life through diligent and deep prayers on a daily basis, then we will bring that mood of prayer and gratitude to our mealtime. We will see our food as a blessing given to us by God, a God who cares for us and whose love for us is manifest in his granting us, through nature, foods that are nutritious and often delicious. When we relish tasty food, we won’t be so fixated on the food that we become infatuated or intoxicated by it and start craving disproportionately for it and gulping it down in unhealthy ways. Instead, relishing the taste of the food will remind us of the God who has provided that food so kindly, and we will connect with that benevolent divinity by letting ourselves fully experience, with gratitude, the taste and flavors of the food we are eating. We will remember that we want our whole life to be connected with God, and we won’t let our connection with God through the experience of tasting food become an excuse for excessive consumption to an extent that we end up with a consciousness dulled and distracted from connecting with God through other activities. Indeed, when we have a prayerful consciousness, we may even be able to experience the taste of foods that don’t taste so good to us, and the focus on remembering God and experiencing his grace may keep our consciousness raised enough so that tasting even unpalatable foods becomes an interesting sensory experience, even if it’s not a particularly enjoyable one.

The whole of our life—or, in terms of the entirety of our diet, our relationship with food—can become a pathway, one pathway among many pathways, for us to connect with our Lord.

Summary:

  • Eating is an essential human activity that can often be enjoyable. But when indulged in unregulatedly, it can diminish both the quantity and quality of life.
  • When eating, we need to avoid the two extremes: of eating food only for its taste, leading to physical distress, and of eating food that is healthy but tasteless or even distasteful, leading to mental misery.
  • To find balance between these extremes, we can consider three factors while eating: priority (health as the first priority, with taste as secondary), pleasure (finding other fulfilling activities to prevent food from becoming our primary pleasure), and prayer (maintaining gratitude and connection with God, even in mealtime).

Think it over:

  • Can you think of anyone who has sentenced themselves to physical misery due to obsession with taste while eating, and what can you learn from their example?
  • Can you think of anyone who has sentenced themselves to mental misery by giving up all taste considerations for the sake of health, and what can you learn from their example?
  • What are the three parameters that you can use to make your relationship with food healthier, and how can you apply those parameters in your life?

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06.17 He who is regulated in his habits of eating, sleeping, recreation and work can mitigate all material pains by practicing the yoga system.