What we eat is what we are!

Hi all: A close friend of mine has contributed this article on food and the quality it imbibes into us, as we consume them.

I thank the person for bringing this new dimension on food. You may post your comments / thoughts / questions and I would get it answered by my friend.

Article:

Foods are classified into three categories - Saatvic, Rajasic and Tamasic by Ayurveda, the oldest medical science .Saatvic foods include easy-to-digest foods such as fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs, light dairy products, grains and legumes, whole foods that are not altered by processing. Foods that are processed, canned, transported long distances, frozen or packaged are harder to digest and create imbalances in the body. Organically and locally grown foods are best because they are fresh and free of harsh chemicals. Easy digestion is the fundamental requirement for good immunity in the body. In general vegetarian diet promotes more Saatvic eating although freshness, processing and certain ingredients do not promote Saatvic qualities. Milk, butter, ghee (clarified butter), fresh ripe fruits, most nuts, vegetables, grains, beans and legumes are Saatvic.

Rajasic foods are foods that make one act in mode of passion. They are hot, spicy and salty foods bitter, sour, pungent and dry.. These foods create sensuality, sexuality, greed, jealousy, anger, irritability, delusion, fantasies, egotism and irreligious feelings. Fried foods, pungent condiments, fresh meat, sweets, fermented foods, brinjal (egg plant), carrots, urad (black gram), onions, garlic, lemon, masur (red gram), tea, coffee, chocolate/any stimulant, betel leaves, tobacco are rajasic foods.

Tamasic foods are foods that make one act in mode of ignorance. They are food are over cooked, impure, more than three hours old, stale, dry, bad smelling, burnt, distasteful, processed, canned frozen etc. It increases pessimism, ignorance, lack of common sense, greed, laziness, depression, criminal tendencies and doubt. Meat, eggs, alcohol, mushrooms are tamasic foodstuffs. Meat tops the list of Tamasic foods. Physiologically, Carnivores have biological features that differ from herbivores. Their intestines are short and digestive acids very strong. The length of the human intestine is three to four times that of a typical carnivore, and digestive acids weaker. Meat therefore takes a long time to process, sometimes exceeding several days and making it more tamasic and accumulating toxins. Onions and garlic, and the other Alliums are classified as Rajasic and to some extent Tamasic, which means that they increase passion and to some degree ignorance.

Rajasic and tamasic foods are not to be used often because they are detrimental to general health, spiritual progress and are also avoided due to their adverse effects on the consciousness of the eater. Saatvic people are focused on the purpose, rajasic people are focused on the result and tamasic people just go through the motions. Even Saatvic foods needs to be eaten in the right quantity and at right intervals as specified by Ayurveda for the foods to be absorbed well and remain Saatvic. For eg over eating, snacking at odd times etc contribute to more Tamasic quality. A popular saying in tamil captures the ill effects of overeating by describing that even nectar can be poisonous to the living entity, when had in excess of quantity.

From a spiritual angle, Krishna describes in Bhagavat Gita that there are three modes of material nature. Every creature is born with an inclination to either saatva, rajas, or tamas. Every living entity has a certain percentage of these qualities. Those who are more Saatvic worship the forms of God, those who are more Rajasic worship power and wealth, those who are more tamasic worship spirits and ghosts. Saatvic foods are foods that make one act in the modes of goodness, promotes the right kind of intelligence – the ability to distinguish between right and wrong and helps stay calm stress free and make the right decisions in life.

Few Bright Sparks

I came to know of these great intellectuals from Marginal Revolution by Tyler Cowen

(as written by Tyler Cowen)

I have been reading / researching on contributions by Indian thinkers – from vedic period to current period. Once I make some progress, I will post it.

Until then, you may read about these great people!

1. Tjalling Koopmans.  He is a father of operations research and certainly worthy of a Nobel Prize, although perhaps in mathematics (if they had one).  His work on optimal routing theory remains central to transportation management and he also laid some foundations for quantum chemistry.  True, he doesn’t really appeal to my inner Austrian but he was an awesome intellectual figure and he also helped us win WWII.  We should all bow down and pay homage to Tjalling Koopmans.

2. Kenneth J. Arrow.  His reputation now far surpasses that of Samuelson’s and he was more philosophical to boot.  Where to start?   He understood his own impossibility theorem better than did the commentators plus he is the father of modern health care economics and that is maybe 1/10th of his total contribution!  People who know him also claim he is the greatest polymath they ever met.

3. Gerard Debreu.  He is the father of general equilibrium theory and also, as a philosopher of time, the real successor to Proust, as he once explained in an interview.  His extremely minimalistic approach to economics is better when it comes from the star than from the second-tier imitators but of course a real star he was.  I think of him as the father of economic science fiction and no I don’t mean that as a snub.

4. James Tobin.  About fifteen years ago I realized he was in fact one of the deepest Keynesian thinkers.  He also proposed the Tobit model and laid the foundations for modern portfolio theory.  He lives in an intellectual world different from my own but he is clearly deserving of his Nobel Prize several times over.

5. Franco Modigliani.  He is one of the guys who could have won more than one Nobel Prize.  That’s one for the Modigliani-Miller theorem (the implications of being able to chop up and carve up assets), one for the lifecycle hypothesis, and perhaps even another for his 1944 article on liquidity preference, which showed the concept was probably not enough to drive the Keynesian model except for the unusual case where liquidity preference was infinitely strong.  Sadly this piece remains neglected by modern purveyors of the liquidity trap idea.

6. Herbert Simon.  Bounded rationality and behavioral economics have already taken the profession by storm; his insights on computation, neurology, and artificial intelligence have not yet been incorporated into the mainstream in an effective manner, so his long-run influence will only increase.

7. Lawrence Klein.  I can’t say I am a fan of his macro modelling approach, but I’ll admit I haven’t spent much time with his work.

8. Trygve Haavelmo.  He pioneered how to attack identification problems in econometrics; among other things without him there would be no Steve Levitt and no Freakonomics.  He didn’t just get the Nobel Prize because he was a Scandinavian.

9. Harry Markowitz.  The father of modern portfolio theory, enough said.

Amazing, isn’t it?  I still think the profession as a whole overdoes theory (even today) and undervalues breadth and real world experience, but these are nonetheless thinkers to be revered.  Arrow and Simon are, by far, the two who have influenced me the most.  It’s also fair to say that GMU economics often extends in other directions, but except perhaps for Herbert Simon these are well-mined thinkers by the rest of the mainstream so not every economist need run in their direction.