Celebratory holidays are a social ritual where we come together as a group to mark an event. Most of the time they involve food. Eating is an important part of celebrating not just anniversary events but of celebrating life! In the ancient vedic shastras, eating was considered a yayga – an supreme act of purification. Consuming food with awareness can be an emotionally healing experience: the awareness of what a great gift it is to have good food to consume that will sustain our body, mind, and hearts; the awarness of how our bodies are equipped with all that it takes to break down the food and make it into our own, transforming the nutrients into our tissues, etc (“you are what you eat”!) so that we can go about our business of being in the world and spreading joy for all.
However, sometimes social rituals can have an adverse effect, specially if the menue is not designed to suit our body’s needs properly.
- Do not delay your dinner time, the later in the evening the less agni to properly digest your meal and the more chances of making “ama” (toxins from undigested food) and the more chances of causing imbalances resulting in disease
- Turkey meat is an easy to digest protein, but be careful of the stuffing that can contain many kinds of dressings or ingredients that might be contradictory in nature, or not as fresh
- Thanksgiving dessert is not what you want to top of your meal with. Dessert is considered heavy in nature as it consists of more “somagenic” ingredients (fat, sugar, flour, fruits). Specially in the Pumpkin pie case, since pumpkins are considered “abishandhi” – clogging to the circulatory channels. This will result in a feeling of heaviness and will cause more ama.
- Finally, you may want to donate unconsumed food items instead of storing them and eating left-overs! As we know, SVA explains that 4 hours is the cut-off time for prepared meals. After 4 hours, the chemical make-up of cooked meals starts to decompose. Even if this is not yet visible to our eyes and our palates, the chemical dissolution has already started and it will not fare well if we ingest decomposing food.
