AFOVA Newletters of Year 2001

Page 50 of 52 Garlic subdues excess wind (vata) and mucus (kapha). Bile-dominated individuals (pittas) should avoid garlic. If it had a sour taste (thus giving it all six rasas) and did not have a bad smell, garlic would be categorized with sattvic foods. Foods cooked in butter or ghee are sattvic, but when foods are cooked in oil they become rajasic. Raw milk that has been boiled for a long time acquires a thick consistency and becomes rajasic. Red peppers, hot spices, pickles, oils, dry and fresh ginger, and salt are rajasic. Bread made with a pinch of salt is rajasic in nature. Foods that are hot in temperature while eaten, hot drinks, cold foods, and cold liquids are all rajasic. The temperature of food should not be greater than the temperature of the body and blood. Rajasic foods create an unstable intellect. Tamasic Foods Tamasic foods consume a large amount of energy while being digested. They are dry, old, bad smelling, decaying, distasteful, and/or unpalatable. Tamasic food increases pessimism, ignorance, lack of common sense, greed, laziness, irreligion, criminal tendencies, and doubt. Tamasic foods create a severe inferiority complex and antagonistic feelings. Foods that have been processed, canned, or frozen are tamasic. Foods that are cold and stale or that have been obtained by violence are tamasic, as are those that make one dull and drowsy, incompatible food combinations—like milk and vinegar, or radishes and honey-- produce tamas in the body chemistry. When hot and cold foods are taken together, they become tamasic. Meat, fish, and eggs are tamasic foods. Candies, biscuits, and bread more than eight hours old are tamasic. Cod liver oil and shark liver oil, as well as hard liquor, are tamasic. Medicines that create dullness are tamasic. By overcooking, foods become tamasic. Leftover food is also tamasic. Food contains prana, and this pranic energy is lost in food that is overcooked, overripe, or old. Dried milk, grains that create dryness, root vegetables (except carrots, beets, sweet potatoes, and turnips), and peanuts are tamasic. Indian breads--parathas, puris, and rotis—are rajasic but become tamasic about eight hours after they are cooked. All foods that create destructiveness are tamasic. If one is interested in remaining alert and inspired, one should avoid tamasic foods. @@@@@@@@@@@ Veterans’ Day It may be worthwhile to bring to your attention that in the USA, 11th November is observed as Veterans’ Day. You may wonder as to what a veteran is. “Some veterans bear visible signs of their service...a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye. Others may carry the evidence inside them...a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg...or perhaps another sort of inner steel... the soul’s ally forged in the refinery of adversity. Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem. You can’t tell a vet just by looking. What is a vet? He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armoured personnel carriers didn’t run out of fuel. He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown