Apr
28
Written by:
Jayanthi
Monday, April 28, 2008
Submitted by Sudarshan K
Madabushi
|
"Tamasic"
Food
Next, says the Bhagavath-Gita, there is Food that generates "tamas"
-- energy that is actually all "anti-energy".
"Tamasic" food is fit for the Man who conforms to the mould of the
Hedonist. He is the quintessential Degenerate. He is so full of sloth, lust and
ignorance. He wallows in the many follies he himself authors in life and of
which he ultimately becomes victim. Such a man's dinner plate, says the Gita,
is generally heaped with all manner of stale, putrid, fermented, intoxicating
and stimulating foods. "Tamas" in food degrades and destroys everything
fine and noble within the human body -- virility, good cheer, moral integrity
and intellectual vigour. (Chapter XVII.10)
|
Article Continuation…
● Introduction
● The Three
Commandments
● "Anna Shuddhi"
● “Sattvic Food”
● “Rajasic Food”
● “Tamasic Food”
● “Anna Shuddhi
and
“Atma Shuddhi”
|
The most common examples of "tamasic" Food is what the Gita calls
"yAta-yAmam" i.e. foodstuff that has been unnaturally preserved for
unduly long periods of time. Under this category would fall all manner of foods
kept "preserved" throughout a period of so-called
"shelf-life" through methods of innovative packaging, refrigeration,
cold-storage and micro-wave as well as by the use of chemical additives and
preservatives.
All "packaged", "ready-to-cook", "ready-to-eat",
"frozen-fresh", "instant-food",
"ready-to-microwave" foodstuffs that one might see while strolling
along the long shelves and aisles of any large super-market or department-store
anywhere in the world, might eminently qualify indeed to be called
"yAta-yAmam". They are all essentially "tamasic" Food in
nature. Consumption of liquor, wines, tobacco, soporifics and many of the
carbonated, tinned and canned foods of the world would also, going by the
standards of the Gita, be wholly 'tAmAsic' in nature. The advent of the
"packaging industry" and the mass-proliferation of its ingenious
products -- viz. tetrapacks, aluminium-foil, plastic-cartons etc. -- has done
much indeed to promote and purvey "tamasic" foodstuff in the modern
consumerist world. Thanks to modern packaging methods, even "sAttvic"
foods can now be turned into the "tamasic" kind.
The refrigerator and the microwave are both excellent kitchen conveniences of
the modern-day. As long as they are used to keep home-food or foodstuffs fresh
and unspoiled over limited periods of time, they have enormous utility. But
unfortunately, both appliances in recent times have come to be over-exploited.
Like industrial packaging, they too now have become tools of "abuse
through preservation".
Prolonged preservation, not temporary refreshment, has become the sole purpose
of these two appliances. One merely has to inspect a sample of home
refrigerators anywhere in the world today and the inventory will almost
certainly reveal half the food-items therein to be a week or more old, if not
months. In other words, do not be surprised to find a lot of
"yAta-yAmam" inside your refrigerator at home...
The purpose of the household refrigerator lies increasingly today only in
"preserving" rotten packaged, ready-to-cook food. And the microwave,
that wonder-tool of modern invention, the pride and envy of housewives all over
the world, too only serves in turning the condition of stale or rotten food
from a state of "tamas" into "piping hot" one of
"rajas".
Between the three of them -- modern packaging, the refrigerator and microwave
-- they seem to have succeeded very well indeed world-wide in perpetrating
precisely that sort of "abuse of Food" which the Upanishad warned
against through that famous commandment --"annam na nindhyAth!" ---
"Thou shalt not abuse Food".
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Copyright ©2008 Jennifer Jayanthi Kumar
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