The Raw & the Cooked
Winter in California …
It is chilly here in Northern California, our bodies have re-calibrated themselves to short days, cooler temperatures, & (if it were a ‘normal’ weather year) more moisture in the air. Naturally we desire warmer, more sustaining, dryer, & sometimes spicier foods to counter the qualities that are dominant in the environment.
Think of a quintessential winter dinner: My choice would be a pile of caramel-y cubes of roasted veg: beets, sweet potato, winter squash. Generously glazed with ghee, redolent with rosemary and smokey salt. Roast meat aromatic with garlic. Silky soothing pumpkin soup. A pinch of bright arugula adding a punchy bite. Fresh grainy bread. A perfectly ayurvedic meal.
This is a perfect time to talk about cooked foods & Ayurveda’s insistence on cooked food as the basis of human diet.
Raw food has been all the rage for a few years now. Followers of Ayurveda (& Traditional Chinese Medicine among others) have been biding our time. We know that thousands of years of experience has verified that cooked foods are best for modern humans. Time and experience will prove to everyone else that raw diets are not sustaining long term. We are not surprised to see clients who eat a lot of raw foods showing signs of weak agni (digestive fire) in the short term and weak tissues, lack-luster physical processes and a tendency for parasites in the long term.
Ayurveda offers us a guideline for eating in a way that will support a long healthy life. There are many things to take into account, but the first and most important is make sure that your food is ushna (warm temperature) when you eat it.
Why eat food hot? Firstly because it sparks the agni (digestive fire) by its similar qualities. Agni transforms the food we eat through a process often likened to cooking. This process makes chemical nutrients into biologically available nutrients & heat is required to do this.
I once heard that for every degree under body temperature food takes an additional 10 minutes to digest. Cold foods have to sit in the stomach until they are warned up to body temperature, and in this time they ferment and rot in our digestive tract. Gas and bloating will result from food spending extra time in the gut.
When agni is fiery & balanced we can digest just about anything. Hunter gatherers were constantly in motion and rarely over-fed. Their internal fire was always strong and they could manage more raw foods. But sedentary modern lives mean that we all have digestive systems that need a little help.
Interestingly this is one of the original challenges of Ayurveda. Ayurveda developed in a time when humans were beginning to leave the hunter gatherer or nomadic herding lifestyle of the savannas & forests to settle in cities. The huge shift to less healthy ‘civilized’ lifestyles necessitated new guidelines to preserve health. Ayurveda developed rules for living and eating for newly urban society. The insistence on cooked food would have been a useful way to keep ‘civilized’ humans healthier.
Secondly, hot food assists the pachan (digestive) process. Cooking begins the process that agni completes in the body. This is obvious in some foods, but true of all: imagine eating a handful of raw rice & black beans. Even if you soaked them they would be unpalatable & take a long time to digest. Most of the nutrients would be wasted in a human body as we are not designed to break down these substances (leave that to those who chew their cud).
photo from Upsplash: Aditi Guatam
But cooked beans & grain form a valuable food source; one which successfully supports the nutritional needs of most of humanity. The samscara (action which changes the qualities of a thing) of cooking adds agni (fire) to the food. Agni makes food lighter & in some cases dryer. Cooked food is therefore easier to digest. Cooking beans & rice in liquid adds fire & water element, softening the food & making it easier to break down. Roasting veg or meat in a hot oven adds lightness, heat, & dryness; perfect for balancing cool rainy weather or excess dampness or heaviness in the body. Different cooking techniques are different sanskaras & give food different qualities.
Thirdly, hot food channels Vata in the right direction (thereby calming it). Vata is a fantastic force that animates the body & makes everything happen. Vata moves in specific directions related to each of its jobs in the body. When Vata looses it’s proper direction everything & anything can go wrong. A few examples of Vata losing it’s direction: constipation, hiccups, asthma. Hot food ensures that Vata does not lose it’s way.
Lastly: Hot food reduces Kapha. Kapha is the physical stuff of the body supplying solidity & mass. It is what composes both healthy & excessive tissues. It can be responsible for blocking Vata when it is in excess. Think of a stuffy head: Kapha-mucous blocks Vata-breath leading to breathlessness or sneezing. Or constipation blocking the flow of vata’s movement & causing bloating & pain. Heat melts kapha & sends it on its way. So hot food will assist in the process of waste products passing through the digestive system & not hanging around causing problems. For this reason we always start the day with a cup of hot water.
None of this is to say that you should never eat raw foods nor that raw foods don’t have specific uses & benefits. Obviously there are few things better than a handful of freshly picked blueberries. My Mom’s process of healing herself from cancer involved a year of largely raw foods. She needed raw foods to scrape out all sorts of chemical & heat accumulation & other toxic buildup. My personal sense is that when you have been eating a lot of heavy meaty foods for a long time it feels really good to eat raw for a while. But remember that the last time humans ate a diet of mainly raw foods we were living very differently than we do today. Living outside & exercising constantly allowed our ancestors to digest pretty much anything. But as soon as they got the hang of fire they insisted on cooking their food.