In this Q & A episode I answer your questions about food including veganism, meat eating, Ayurveda with kids and what I eat in a day. I also explain the difference between Yogic and Ayurvedic diets.

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Welcome to the Simple Ayurveda podcast. I’m Angela Perger, and this is a place where we discuss how ancient wisdom can be applied to your everyday life, so that you can be your happiest, healthiest self.  

Thank you for tuning in to Episode 10. Today is a Q&A Session where I answer your questions about food. Before I get started I really want to just give gratitude to all of you and say thank you so much for listening. For being here. And for being a part of this conversation and participating through your likes, your shares, your comments, and any reviews that you’ve left. It means so much to me to get this message out there. And it’s not about me, personally, it’s just that Ayurveda and Yoga have shifted and helped to heal me so much that there’s no way I could not talk about them. And this is what I’m talking about when I hang out with my friends, what my husband has to listen to when we’re driving in the car, I’m just so lit up by these ancient practices and how beneficial they are for everyone. And the reason that I created Simple Ayurveda is just to make it so that everyone can understand what this ancient science is and how you can apply it in your life today. Easily. With something small. So thank you so much for helping me to support and share this message. I love you so much for that.

This is the second Q&A session episode, the first is Episode 4 where I answered questions about coffee alternatives, respectful parenting and minimalism & motherhood. And so now today these questions are centered around food. 

Beth writes, “I’d love to know more about how to approach Ayurveda through a plant based diet and also if/how to incorporate things like sauerkraut, kombucha, etc. Most Ayurveda food sits to well for me but I struggle to be able to tolerate cow’s milk, even non-homogenized.”

The first thing that I want to say about Ayurveda and food is that Ayurveda is the middle path. And some practitioners might say that you have to eat animal products in order to follow an Ayurvedic diet or lifestyle, but I personally don’t believe that is the case because it is an overall philosophy or way of looking at life, and there are many different paths along this road. When it comes to the roots of vegetarianism, or veganism, and Ayurveda and Yoga, this is where having an understanding of what the purpose of Yoga and the purpose of Ayurveda is can be helpful. So I mentioned this in the very first episode, what is Ayurveda, that Ayurveda focuses on the mind, body, soul and senses. And it’s a wellness system, it’s to make your body and mind, or the purpose is to help you feel your best in your body and mind. Yoga is Ayurveda’s sister science. The purpose of Yoga is moksha, or liberation. So freedom from the cycles of karma that we all have. So the practices of what to eat or how to live our life are a little bit different. Traditionally, Yoga was meant for the yogis, sort of like the monk, like they live a separate life, they do not have families, they do not engage in sex, any sort of sexual practices, and their entire life is devoted to connection with the divine and liberation. And so what they eat and how they live their life is completely spiritual. So the yoga diet is vegan because their practicing ahimsa, non-harming in the deepest ways possible in every aspect of their life. However, the yogis did not have regular real life jobs like what we have today. They were not running households, they were not chasing after toddlers, so now looking at the Ayurvedic viewpoint of what to eat, Ayurveda is looking at mind and body health, and in the texts traditionally that was to follow a vegetarian diet with dairy products because the cow was sacred and offered milk which was raw, and ghee and fresh cheese. So a lot of cookbooks that you’ll see that have Ayurvedic recipes are including those dairy products. When it comes to fermented food like sauerkraut and kombucha, my understanding is that they are not recommended in traditional Ayurveda. However I know that many modern day nutritionists do recommend those products. I personally don’t consume them because my teacher teaches that they came out of necessity, like fresh food wasn’t available so they had to ferment it to have something to eat in the colder season, so once in awhile I will drink a kombucha but that’s for the fun of it, it’s not because I believe that it’s doing anything beneficial for me, I think it’s better than a soda or something like that. So for me it just fills that need once in a while for a sweet fizzy drink. They  are also pitta aggravating because they are primarily sour in taste, and I look at them like if they make you feel good and the effects are working for you then great, but for me simple food tends to be better and has been healing for me. When I started to eat very simple fresh vegetables and things like that then that’s when I experienced healing from ulcerative colitis, and I tell that whole story in Episode 3, My Health Journey. 

So I’m gonna go to the next question about food because it jumps right into this, Jessica asks, “What are your thoughts on eating meat, grass-fed, pasture raised, wild-caught only when following Ayurveda. I put my hashimoto’s into remission after just one year after following the AIP, Auto Immune Paleo diet and I still cannot eat too many grains or legumes. For these reasons I’m hesitant to give up all meat, but the small amounts I do eat are always grass-fed, pasture-raised or wild-caught, never factory farmed. What do you and your family do when it comes to eating meat?”

Thank you so much Jessica for this question, I do eat meat occasionally. And I think that you can practice Ayurveda and eat meat. So again, Ayurveda is the middle path, it’s just this overall philosophy and the idea is to eat the freshest, most vibrant life-giving foods that you can give. And they might be different for each person. Personally when I followed a paleo type diet I found myself eating way too much meat and my liver didn’t like that. But, if this is working for you and you’re healthy and you’re thriving then please do it, and you can start incorporating Ayurveda by following other aspects of the philosophy. By eating on a regular set schedule, breakfast, lunch and dinner, if you do snack by reducing snacks and by looking at the gurvadi gunas, so the 20 qualities that I talked about in Episode 9, like attracts like and opposites create balance. Noticing if you have vata-type elevated symptoms and then eating a root vegetable. Or noticing if you have kapha energy and eating something lighter like sauteed greens. So you can always incorporate Ayurveda philosophy into what you’re eating. I took a workshop with a teacher and he suggested this plan of: Living/Dumb/Dead, as a way of looking at food and this has been really beneficial for me. So living foods are vegetables and fruit and things that give us life and vitality. Dumb foods are processed foods that at one point were living. So for me this is like the organic corn tortilla chip, or the granola bar that came in a package but has the beautiful story on the back about the people that started the company. So their not they worst things for us but they’re not gonna give us prana. And then dead food would be like a dorito, or some other food that there’s just no nutritional value, there’s nothing in it for us, and it actually physically harms us. And if you can get most of your foods from that living category and occasionally splurge on that second category or organic processed junk food, then great. And that’s what I try to follow. Now when it comes to that last part of the question what do you and your family do when it comes to eating meat, when I first started practicing Yoga and really following Yoga philosophy, I jumped into it and I got excited about the vegan part, about the ahimsa, and I read a lot of books, I took some cooking classes, and more and more started connecting to that idea that I didn’t want to eat meat. And of course, I nagged my husband, I made vegetarian food, and I like to joke that I brainwashed him into becoming vegetarian although he’s always eaten seafood, he’s pescatarian, so now he will not eat meat. When I went through my GAPS phase of cooking a lot of bone broth at home, he always hated the smell, so now I do occasionally eat meat but I avoid cooking it at home or when he’s home. I’ve offered it to my son who is 5 but he’s never liked it, and I’ve never shared any sort of view on whether he should be vegetarian or not I’ve just made vegetables at home and occasionally make fish, and he himself told me that he wants to be a vegetarian. My daughter will eat meat when offered but she doesn’t ask for it, she’s two. 

This brings me to the next question, Jessica wrote, “can you please share what you typically eat in a day following an Ayurvedic diet. How do you incorporate your kids?” 

I think it’s very very simple in my house. So you don’t have to do this. If you love cooking and you have cookbooks all around and you like going on the internet for different recipes, then you can totally do that. I’m just sharing what works for me right now as a mom of a five year old and a two year old and that’s keeping things really simple. So for breakfast most mornings we have oatmeal. For a very long time we were eating rolled oats, overnight oats, where I just put the rolled oats in a container with some almond milk or oat milk and cinnamon or nutmeg, leave them in the fridge overnight and then pull them out in the morning and warm them up for a few minutes. However, I have a five year old who decided recently that he doesn’t like that type of oatmeal anymore, so I switched to steel cut oats, which in Ayurveda would be recommended even a little bit more because they’re less processed, and my life has actually gotten simpler because all I do is throw, for the 4 people in our family, 2 adults and 2 kids, I throw one cup of steel cut oats into the pan that I’m gonna cook them in in the morning, and then I add 3 cups water and leave it overnight, and when I wake up I just turn on the flame, add some spices, and voila! Breakfast is ready. I like cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom. Cardamom is tridoshic meaning it balances all of the doshas, however my husband and son complain when it’s in their so I have to pull out mine, and add it before, I don’t add it to the pot for the whole family. I make ghee once a month or every other month and I’ll make a batch of ghee with dates in it, so I like to add the ghee and dates to the oatmeal. That’s very tasty and it courishing ojas which is, if you’re a momma you need ojas, we lose it when we have kids, and it is our vitality and boosts our immune system. Other mornings we make eggs and veggies and the kids have toast with theirs and I try to reduce eating that. One reason is because the yeast in bread is said to disturb the digestive tract. Another reason is that toast is heating the bread and pulling the moisture out and it’s literally making the bread dry which, if you’ve been following along in the last episode, dry contributes to more vata symptoms. So if you’re trying to calm vata and create more regularity in your life, then toast is not gonna help with that, sadly. I also make pancakes once a week. Right now I’m using a mix but I would love to find a very simple recipe with oat flour and just nourishing ingredients. And I’ve experimented but I haven’t quite got that right. So if you have one please share with me. For lunch and dinner most days I make the Ayurvedic rice bowl that I post about on my blog, and basically I make rice, a legume, and two vegetables. One that is nourishing or augmenting, and one that is detoxifying or lighter. I follow the method that Hale Pule posts and I’ll share that link in the podcast show notes for Episode 10, and basically following this method of basmati rice or some other grain, a legume, and then a sweet potato or carrot, a beet, something like that that nourishes the body, and then a detoxifying vegetable like a cruciferous cauliflower or broccoli or leafy green, it really just ensures that you’re getting all 6 tastes that Ayurveda recommends without having to sit down and think about where those 6 tastes are coming from. And this method of eating has been extremely healing for me, and that’s why I make this most days for lunch and dinner. So it’s the 60/40 method, I always soak the rice and beans. I make the rice and beans fresh most days, I try to avoid leftovers and if I do it’s within 24 hours. So Ayurveda doesn’t like leftovers but of course in modern life it’s hard to prepare fresh foods for all of your meals. So if I make it for dinner then I’ll eat it the next day for lunch. So that’s my compromise and yours could be different. And this is where if it comes down to eating something that’s completely not healthy or nourishing, of course choosing canned beans would be the better choice. I get in the habit of soaking the rice and beans the night before and often times I don’t really plan what I’m going to do with it. I just buy enough augmenting vegetables and enough detoxifying vegetables and I just have those in the fridge and then I have my dried goods so the night before i’ll just grab the rice soak it in one bowl, grab the beans soak it in the other. And there have been a few times where I’ve had to toss the rice and beans the next day because we ended up doing something different like going out to dinner. But I look at it like the overall picture I’d rather have them and most days I do eat them. My kids eat this food, I try to make it more attractive for them. They definitely like everything separate, so I would love to make more one pot meals, but they tend to complain and not want, or my son who is 5 will complain. My daughter who is 2 will eat them and she likes soup.  Some other things that I eat that are not Ayurvedic are something like tacos, they’re not traditionally Ayurvedic but I just look back to those gurvadi gunas, those 20 qualities, and for example I will sometimes try to avoid the salsa or adding hot sauce because that’s more heat and since I have a pitta disturbance I’m trying to cool things off. So you can look at your regular food that you’re eating anyway, as long as it’s fresh and preferably organic and homemade, and just start to look at the quality of the food and whether it’s gonna sort of hype you up, or whether it’s gonna calm you down. To get really specific about what I eat in a day, for breakfast most days I have steel cut oats. Sometimes we have eggs with veggies including avocado and once a week we have pancakes. for lunch I often eat beans and rice with 2 vegetables, one that’s nourishing or augmenting and once that’s extractive or detoxifying. I eat leftovers within 24 hours. For dinner I’ll make that same thing, rice and beans with veggies and different various condiments and topping like pesto or cilantro sauce, usually a lemon or a lime, drizzled with olive oil. My kids like everything separate but they do eat the vegetables. And the rice and beans I like to make soups for dinner because they’re less heavy especially to allow the body to digest before going to bed. When I go out, I like to get tacos or I’ll get seafood and vegetables or I’ll get a bunch of veggie sides. Occasionally I’ll make salmon at home. And when I do eat meat I try not to eat it with carbs, so it would look something like sauteed cabbage with sweet potatoes and chicken, and that’s just for better digestion. Ayurveda has some pretty strict guidelines when it comes to proper food combining for optimal digestion. And this is something that I’ll touch on more in a future podcast episode, but just as an intro Ayurveda does not recommend combining fruit with any other food. So for myself, I won’t eat a side of fruit with eggs anymore, or something like that. It’s been a little harder to incorporate that with my kids, because in the past before I switched to eating mostly Ayurvedic, I allowed them to have fruit as a snack whenever they wanted, so instead of eating packaged food my son always had access to have a banana off the counter. So now that I’m trying to get him to eat fruit separately, it’s been a little harder to reign that in but this a place where I give some grace and it’s a work in progress. 

And that leads me to the last question for today from Kaya, I am interested in how Ayurvedic concepts apply to kids and the difference between using the science as an adult versus a child. Kids are going through the kapha stage of life which means they need food that supports growing and building so they need more augmenting food, food that nourishing. Rather than detoxifying foods. And from my understanding, our purpose as adults is to help them to create that relationship with food that’s healthy and loving and nourishing. So I really try not to force them to eat too many things, but at the same time our house doesn’t have any junk food in it. The only thing that my kids out of a package is they get one granola bar a day at most. So they don’t have access to stuff so that the fruit bowl is their junk food right now. So when it comes to food combining I mentioned this before it’s best to have fruit separate from other foods. So for me I’ve tried packing their lunch, I don’t include fruit in it anymore, instead I save fruit for an after school snack. And some days they’re too hungry and they want more than that but I try my best to separate it. If you’re a parent or work with children then you already know that they thrive best then there is routine. So just like we as adults thrive when we have the routine, the vata is contained, when we know what to expect and our agni works best when we eat at the same time every day, it’s the same for kids. And I try my best to get them on a routine. They eat breakfast, lunch, on school days they have an afternoon snack, sometimes on the weekends they don’t ask for it so I don’t offer it, and they eat dinner and that’s it. I”m one of the only moms I know that doesn’t have a bag of food with them wherever they go and I don’t bring snacks for them most places, because they’re in the routine of eating at meal times, now if you have children and they’re not used to this, the way that I got them down to this was I used to pack cheerios or puffs or whatever our culture tells us that little kids need, and I realized I didn’t like his behavior after he ate those foods. So I started subbing out, I would bring blueberries instead of cheerios. That way there was still the snack and I just started reducing the amount until the one day I just didn’t have snacks in my bag at all and he stopped asking. This is going to vary from person to person and I’m not sure what Ayurveda would say about this but I do know that for adults it’s best to reduce snacking so that your body can digest the food before you put the next meal in, and I imagine it’s the same for kids. So if you can reduce the amount of food that they’re eating between meals, it’s just going to help the digestive system work more optimally. Some other ways that I’ve tried to incorporate Ayurvedic principles in with the kids is having a set bedtime is also helpful, abhyanga is self massage and I haven’t really touched on that yet in the podcast, but I use oils on my kids after the bath and give them the self massage. I offer them tongue scrapers but they sort of just chewed on them so they’re not ready yet. And most importantly I just keep offering fresh, vibrant, homemade food. And sometimes they turn their nose up at it, but more often than not they taste it and they eat it. So that’s all that I have for today thank you so much for sending in your questions, for listening, I really appreciate every single person that’s contributed to making this podcast happen and the conversation that we have here going.

Thank you for listening, I would love to connect more. You can find me on simpleayurveda.com, on Facebook Simple Ayurveda the Community, on Instagram @simple_ayurveda and on pinterest too @simpleayurveda. Have a beautiful day, namaste.