This is the information I craved when first learning about Ayurveda. This episode is about what to choose when you’re dining out at an All American or Mexican restaurant, why pancakes are a better choice than toast and which alcoholic beverage is least damaging for your dosha.

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The very first idea that came to me while dreaming up Simple Ayurveda was a guide to dining in restaurants. I didn’t know what it would look like, but the answer of how to eat Ayurvedically while dining out was something that I could not find anywhere. I wrote a simple guide in the form of an e-book. I am gifting it in exchange for an honest five star review of the podcast.

Here's how to do it:

Leave a 5-star review on iTunes with a comment. Take a picture/screenshot BEFORE you submit. Email the review to angela@simpleayurveda.com.

I will respond with the e-book.

The guide includes what to order for: All American, Breakfast, Mexican, Seafood Shack, Thai & Sushi as well as simple tips for figuring out what's best anywhere.

If you do not use iTunes please leave a review on Facebook or email me a short video I can share.

Thank you for all of your support in sharing Ayurveda!

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 11, What to Eat When Dining Out when you’re following an Ayurvedic lifestyle. Please excuse my voice today, I’m recording this at the end of November just after Thanksgiving weekend here in the United States and I’m getting over a cold. And the last time I was sick was exactly one year ago, I remember it distinctly because it was the Saturday after Thanksgiving when I took my son to see a local production of The Nutcracker, it was our Mommy and son date so I asked him where he would like to go to dinner and he chose Wawa. Wawa is a gas station basically that sells hot food too, and everyone here in New Jersey absolutely loves Wawa. so I went and ordered a rice and bean hot bowl, and the next day I was so sick and it lasted for two weeks. So I don’t know if I had food poisoning or I’m very sensitive to that type of food because of the colitis, but I was in bed with the baby and my son was 4 at the time. And that might have been the last straw that pushed me to sign up for Ayurvedic Health Counselor training, to get to the root cause of my gastrointestinal issues. 

So yea, let’s jump in to dining out now. So I don’t eat at Wawa or anyplace else like that. I’m very strict with myself on where I go, unfortunately my husband still loves Wawa and he does take the kids there occasionally and they’ll get a bagel or something like that. But Ayurveda teaches that everything we do matters. So the energy of the chef goes into the food. Which is why if I have the choose, I always choose to eat at my favorite local, organic restaurants because I know that so much love goes into that food for the most part, and I want to support places that serve organic and toxic-free food. But that being said, I’m human and this podcast is all about Ayurveda in real life, so of course I do go out to eat occasionally in places where there might be questionable energy in the kitchen. So when I do make that choice, I want you to do the same as me and to just let go of all shame and guilt and worry associated with anything that you might be eating because all of those negative emotions are far worse for you than whatever food you’re actually eating. So in Ayurveda typically we want all six tastes in the meal so that we can feel satisfied. So the six tastes are sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent and astringent. And I’ll go into those in detail more in a future podcast. But just know that usually those six tastes are covered when eating a traditional Ayurvedic meal like a rice bowl where you’re getting a few different vegetables and then a condiment, and the rice and the beans or the protein of some sort. And all of those flavors are usually cooked together and easily digestible and the spices help you to digest. So that’s a traditional Ayurvedic meal. I sort of toss that out the window when I’m going out to eat, in a place that doesn’t really follow Ayurvedic practices because I think that simple is better when eating out at restaurants. So, the less ingredients the more you have knowledge and control of what’s actually in your food.

And I separate what I eat into two categories. They are Ayurveda all-in, and Ayurveda lite. I look at Ayurveda all-in as the times when I’m trying to heal my body and I’m following traditional Ayurveda as closely as possible, so that’s when I’m really eating clean. And then Ayurveda lite is the rest of the time, so it’s the birthday party, it’s the night out with friends, it’s using Ayurveda principles to choose what I’m going to indulge in and allowing for more wiggle room but still enjoying life and doing the least amount of damage. 

Some general food guidelines for dining out that everyone can consider are that yeast causes imbalance to the digestive tract, fried food taxes the system so it overloads the agni, the digestive fire, raw food can be difficult to digest, white potatoes don’t have any nutrients, and in Ayurveda meat in recommended for a severe vata imbalance like if you’re emaciated or if you’re a warrior going into battle. And fruit is best eaten separately because it digests faster than all other food and so it will ferment while the other food is digesting. 

Another thing to take into consideration is the gurvadi gunas, the qualities of the food, and really that ties in with the doshas. So just as a reminder there are three doshas, there’s vata, pitta and kapha, and then we all were born with a certain ratio of all three of those doshas and that’s our prakriti. So that’s the way we were born, that’s in our DNA and it’s the unique combination of those doshas within us, and when we’re in alignment with our true self, then we’re healthy and we could just follow seasonal guidelines. Otherwise, we have doshic imbalance that’s our vikriti, that’s what’s happening now, and that really could be based on so many things. So that could be based on your age, like the stage of life that your in. So childhood through the early teenage years is the kapha stage of life, and then the middle of puberty until menopause is the pitta stage of life, when things are fiery, we’re getting things done, and then later menopause on is the vata stage of life. So when you’re considering what to eat based on dosha, really you’re looking at your vikriti, what’s happening now. And that could be based on the season, the weather outside, which could be the day like a rainy day, or a cold day or a hot day. It could be based on what the weather has been like the last month like if it’s been hot every day for the last month and pitta has been going strong even if you’re not a pitta person, you might consider that. It could be based on you know, like I said the stage of your life so if you are 70 years old and you’ve been in the vata stage for 20 years and you’re noticing that you just always have this general vata imbalance of things feeling a little dry then that’s definitely going to be what you take into consideration when you’re choosing what to eat. And then there’s health issues. So for example someone like me who has had a long standing pitta imbalance through colitis, I’m always going to sort of have those pitta guidelines in the back of my head. And there might be a time like this past week when I had a cold which was very kapha like, like I had the mucus, then I started to eat more warming things that I generally don’t eat because I needed to balance the cold for this week. So just as an example I’ve been drinking tea that’s made from honey, cinnamon and powdered ginger, and that’s been helping a lot. And I normally wouldn’t drink that tea on a daily basis but I’m going to use it sort of to balance out the kapha imbalance that’s only here for this week, it’s not my natural tendency for an imbalance. So all of these things could be taken into consideration and like I said if you are generally healthy then you can just go by seasonal guidelines. 

The most basic principle of Ayurveda is like attracts like and opposites create balance and this is what I focused on in Episode 9 of the podcast. So as a reminder, vata dosha has the qualities of dry, light, cold, mobile, subtle, and rough. And therefore if you are experiencing elevated vata, so you’re skin is dry, you feel lightheaded, you get cold easily, then you’re going to avoid foods that bring out those qualities. Pitta dosha has the qualities of oily, sharp, hot, liquid, light, acidic. So the opposite would balance those. And then kapha dosha has the qualities of moist, heavy, cold, dull, soft and static. So you would avoid moist, heavy foods like creamy soups for example and you would choose something brothy instead. 

So the first restaurant style that I’m gonna talk about is All-American. And when I think of All-American I think of this place down the street from my house called the burger bar that everyone lives. It’s easy to take the kids, it’s loud in there, and they actually source some of their vegetables from local farms and they do offer an organic, grass-fed burger. So I don’t mind supporting them and I like the atmosphere for when I’m in the mood for that sort of thing. So all-in when I’m following Ayurveda as closely as possible, I would order baked sweet potato and steamed veggies, maybe a veggie burger without the bun. If you’re going Ayurveda light, so you’re out with friends and you’re trying to have fun you could go with fish or veggies, or if they do that the organic grass-fed burger something like that with vegetables, and it would be ideal that you do no grains with that. So in Ayurveda it is recommended that you eat grains with vegetables or if you’re going to eat meat, eat meat with vegetables. But not meat and grains together. And then some other Ayurveda light dishes you could get soup, you could choose the soup based on what’s happening now in your body. So if you are elevated vata and you need something to combat that lightness then choose the heavier, creamier soup. If you have a kapha imbalance you’re going to go for a light, brothy soup. Also kaphas could order salad and I would say that sweet potato fries, to me, sort of fit in to Ayurvedic indulgence, right. So the sweet potato is better than the white potato. Fried food isn’t great for agni but once in awhile that’s my choice for indulgence. 

If you’re gonna drink alcohol, vatas could choose white wine, something sweeter like reisling, the sweet taste is balancing for vata dosha, and sadly avoid bubbles because carbonation is air and vata is elevated air and wind. So yea, champagne would contribute to more vata. The ayurvedic texts recommend that pitta dosha could have a beer to cool off, one beer, so beer would be a cooling choice. Or a dry chardonnay that’s astringent. And then kapha dosha could have a glass of red wine that’s dry and heating. So remembering that kapha qualities are moist and heavy and cold, so something warming and something that’s going to dry out that excess moisture. And then this is my own personal drink hack for a moscow mule light, I would ask for half club soda with a splash of ginger beer, half ginger beer, vodka and lime. So less sugar, there’s the carbonation there so if your elevated vata then don’t get that. But I just want to talk about this because it’s ways that you could still participate in regular life if you’re not on a cleanse or something like that and you could start to, you could still be able to go to the place that your family wants to go to, or that your friends pick, you know if it’s your choice then you get to pick and you could choose someplace organic and local. But if someone else is choosing you can still make it work for you and your Ayurvedic lifestyle. 

So next I’m going to talk about Mexican which is my absolute favorite, I love Mexican food, and for me ethnic foods like Mexican or Japanese or Indian are so much easier to follow than American when I’m trying to eat Ayurvedically. So all-in would just be rice, beans and sauteed veggies. And I’ve even had trouble with this because sometimes certain Mexican places the veggies are just so spicy or oily, so really depending where you go you know rice, beans and sauteed veggies. For Ayurveda lite you could do tacos, a rice bowl, fajitas are great because everything is a little bit separate there and you can pick and choose what you want to eat. And Ayurveda would suggest avoiding meat and dairy together because it overloads agni, I know that could be tough if you’re trying to eat what’s on the regular menu in a Mexican place. In general, vata and pitta could enjoy some guacamole because avocados are grounding and heavier about you can start to see that as you notice these qualities, the gurvadi gunas, you’ll notice what does an avocado look like and what does an avocado feel like? It’s heavy, it’s creamy, it’s kind of moist, and you can see how that would elevate kapha. So if you have a lot of kapha dosha in you at the moment or in general than you want to minimize avocado or guacamole, and then kapha could enjoy a moderate amount of spicy condiments, if your digestion can handle it. So you can see where pitta would get aggravated very quickly over hot sauce and salsa and in fact hot, spicy food is one of the top aggravators of pitta dosha because the qualities are already sharp, hot, acidic and just piling on more of that is going to elevate the pitta more and more. So for me I just try and keep it simple when I go to a Mexican restaurant, but I do like tacos. The tortilla chips are dry obviously so you wanna go light on those if you have elevated vata. And then my drink hack for a Mexican restaurant is my own concoction of a margarita light, so blanco tequila, club soda, lime and agave syrup. 

If you go out to breakfast, all-in would be a fruit plate, so if you’re not that hungry just fruit by itself, no yogurt no granola just fruit because fruit digests the fastest and it should be eaten separately from other food. Or oatmeal would be great, steel cut oats would be the top choice. Ayurveda lite I would choose choose eggs and vegetables or pancakes over toast and the reason that I personally think that pancakes over toast would be a better choice is because yeast, which is in the bread which they make the toast from, imbalances the digestive tract. Also the toast comes from a package, right. It’s a processed food, and the pancake is fresher. So of course there’s going to be varying degrees of quality in the pancake but I just overall think it’s a better choice. My intention for you in this podcast is to start to notice how you feel in the moment and let that guide your food choices, and just knowing that in general, simpler is better, easier to digest. 

I’ve created an Ebook, the SImple Ayurveda Guide to Dining Out and in that I go into the All-American, the Mexican and the breakfast that I talked about in this podcast, and I also go into sushi and thai, my other favorite foods. And I created this and I wanted to give this to you completely for free just in exchange for the energy of writing a review of this podcast. So how you do it is go on to itunes, write the review on your phone, take a picture, screenshot it before you hit submit, and then email it to me at angela@simpleayurveda.com and I will respond with the Ebook for free. And if you’re not listening on itunes you can email me and we can work out some kind of energy exchange. So again, that’s a free Ebook that I wrote, it’s the Simple Ayurveda Guide to Dining Out and it ahs Mexican, Breakfast, All-American, Thai, Sushi and just the drink guide too, all my hacks. So yea, you can leave a 5 star review with a comment on itunes and email that to me and I will send it back to you. Thank you so much for listening. 

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.