A thought for Food & food for Thought - Part 6 of 7

[Guest guest]

(continuing from Part 5)

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Dear friends,

 

Next, says the Bhagavath-Gita, there is Food that

generates "tamas" -- energy which 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)

 

The most common examples of "tamasic" Food is what the

Gita calls "yAta-yAmam" i.e. foodstuff that has been

unnaturally preserved for unnaturally 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 unspoilt 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 rotten, stale "tamasic" food into "piping hot"

"rajasic" condition.

 

Between the three of them -- modern packaging, the

refrigerator and microwave -- they seem to have

somehow succeeded world-wide in perpetrating precisely

that sort of "abuse of Food" which the Upanishad

warned against through that famous commandment

--"annam na nindhyAth!" -- "Thous shalt not abuse

Food".

 

*********

(to be concluded)

 

Rgds,

 

dAsan,

Sudarshan

 

 

 

 

 

 

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