What is Sattvic Food?
Sattvic food is simply living food, with life energy inside it. Sattvic food items usually come from mother nature as a whole and are consumed with bare minimum human interference (like cooking, or processing).
This diet was first introduced in Indian Ayurveda and has been used for thousands of years to help people heal from chronic diseases and stay healthy without any medication. Especially senior citizens, because as your body ages, it is essential to feed it more healthy, wholesome food to support your digestive system.
Sattvic food diet is an ideal diet for everyone, whether you are trying to lose weight or improve your health. Sattvic food is the type of food that will enhance your digestion, calms your mind, heal chronic diseases, and maintain your health throughout your lifetime.
Why Eat Sattvic Food?
As you might have heard, “what you eat is what you become.” Let’s understand this today.
In this modern system of diet classification, this has been medically proved that foods that are very light on the gut they can provide us with constant energy are classified as sattvic bhojan.
In contrast, other foods that reduce the vitality of our body are called Rajasik or Tamasik foods.
Rajasik Food has too many spices, heat, oil, sugar, and salt. Moreover, these foods take a lot of our energy indigestion, making us feel arrogant, angry, self-centered, anxious, and impatient.
On the other hand, Tamasik Foods are known as foods that have been made three-four hours before and consumed multiple times for the next 24 to 48 hours or even more (like, stale home-cooked meals or packet foods). Such foods add characteristics like laziness, tiredness, depression, lethargy, ignorance, and apathy.
Lastly, Sattvic Food refers to any food that has one of the three vital qualities called sattva, which translates as “potency,” “positively charged“, “comes from nature“, “is unrefined” and “is unprocessed.”
In simple words, the sattvic diet is an ancient Ayurveda practice from India, which is now practiced all over the globe named – Veganism/Plant-Based Diet.
So, when you eat sattvic food, you feel light on your toes, your brain functions better throughout the day, there is a feeling of satisfaction, and you will give your body less time to struggle with indigestion.
What to Eat During Sattvic Diet?
The sattvic diet contains mainly fresh vegetables, grains, fruits, seeds, and nuts, high in all three qualities “potency,” “comes from nature“, and “is unprocessed.“
Sattvic Food List to Eat
1. Fresh Fruits like melons, papaya, pear, apples, berries, grapes, bananas, etc.
2. Fresh Vegetables like beetroot, gourds, bell peppers, carrots, leafy greens, etc.
3. Whole Fats like fresh coconut kernel, soaked nuts, and seeds like pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds or peanuts, etc.
4. Whole Grains with Bran like brown rice, red rice, whole wheat, bajra, quinoa, oats, amaranth flour, ragi, broken wheat, etc.
Sattvic Food List to Avoid and How to Replace?
- Animal dairy
- White table salt
- Processed white sugar
- Meat, fish, beef, or eggs
- Hot Red Spices & Garam Masala
- Soya Products like soy nuggets, soy milk or tofu
- Do not use any type of oil for cooking, be it – olive oil, coconut oil, butter, desi ghee, refined oil, etc. As oils are processed and not found from the nature , hence we can not use them.
All these items are strictly and entirely off the charts while following a sattvic food diet. Such food items have been listed as “SLOW POISON” and thus, we cannot even consume these items occasionally.
Now, you will judge by saying, how can we stop eating all mentioned above, well it’s very easy:
- Replace table salt with pink Himalayan salt or rock salt.
- Replace sugar with natural sweeteners like dates & jaggery.
- Replace oils with whole fatty foods like fresh desiccated coconut kernel.
- Replace animal meat and soy-based protein foods with organic plant-based protein powder.
- Replace hot spices with fresh herbs like coriander, green chillies, lemon juice, and fresh turmeric.
- Replace animal dairy with nuts dairy like almond milk, coconut milk, peanut butter, peanut curd, cashew cheese etc.
The Advantages of Sattvic Food
Sattvic food health benefits are derived from the rich content of nutrients and proteins that our ancestors had to eat in their time. They consumed the raw form of these nutrients when they were still hunting and gathering their foods.
The basic form of these nutrients still had the highest percentage of nutrients than any other form of food that we have today. This has also been attributed to the fact that our ancestors had to live in harsh and cold environments that caused many of them to suffer from serious diseases.
They had no means of refrigerating or warming their food. Instead, they had to rely on their raw and natural food diet for all of the energy that they required. This proves how powerful is plant-based food.
1. This diet is one of the richest sources of vitamins and minerals, making it very effective in strengthening your body and improving your health. In addition, when you make this kind of diet a part of your life, it helps you get rid of your bodies’ toxins over time.
2. The reason raw foods are so healthy is that they lack the harmful components of cooked food. So many cooked foods that we eat today, such as junk food and oily snacks, have lots of salt and other ingredients used as preserving agents, that are not good for our system. Sattvic food contains no excess salts, oils, or any chemicals. Thus, it keeps our gut healthy.
3. Sattvic diet also has many micro-nutrients, such as iron, which is found in higher amounts in raw foods than cooked foods. Iron is essential for the blood, so it is important to eat more natural foods.
4. One of the best benefits of this kind of food is it’s low in fats and cholesterol. High cholesterol is toxic for our health as it can also cause cardiovascular diseases and strokes if not controlled on time. This makes the sattvic diet an excellent choice for those who want to lose weight and keep their heart strong.
5. In addition, fiber-rich vegetables and grains will take care of your constipation problems. Researchers and doctors worldwide are now recommending high-fiber diets because this kind of diet is considered very nutritious for the gut. Sattvic diet also contains high fiber content, which can help you in getting a clean digestive tract.
6. The good bacteria that are found in the colon help to break down the foods we eat. By increasing the number of these bacteria, you will start getting more benefits from your diet. The more bacteria you have in your system, the easier it will be for your stomach to digest foods. These good bacteria can be easily found in plants-based probiotics like peanut curd, chickpea curd, and green leafy vegetables.
7. Sattvic foods are life-giving and healing foods and they can help you heal any chronic illnesses and diseases like Thyroid, PCOD/PCOS, Hair Fall, Arthritis, Obesity, High Blood Pressure, Uric Acid, Skin Diseases, and Diabetes. There are many people all over the globe who served through its advantages within just 90 days of sattvic diet.
The Sattvic Diet Rules of Thumb
- Cook fresh and eat fresh.
- Do not use any oil for cooking.
- Use only clay pots to cook your food.
- Eat only seasonal and regional food items.
- Eat three times more vegetables than grains.
- Don’t overeat on sattvic foods just because it’s healthy.
- Do not combine and eat different categories of fruits at one time. (For example: do not eat sweet with citrus fruits).
- Do not consume excessive nut-based foods as it is high in calories and it might tend you to gain weight quickly. Eat them only if you are highly active, like an athlete or a growing kid. If you are eating sattvic food to heal chronic disease, try to avoid nut-based foods altogether.
- Eat grains only one time a day and do not mix different types of grains in a meal. (for example: do not eat rice and rajma, together in a meal).
- Do not cook your fruits. Tomatoes, egg plants, and coconuts are fruits, and cooking these can destroy the nutrients. Make sure you pour them after switching the stove off, close the lid, and let it cook with the leftover steam in your pot.
- Cook in small quantities. Do not reheat stale meals and eat them again. Especially meals with fruits like tomatoes and coconuts involved in them, because this can change the nutrition value and make it more poisionius for your sytem.
- To achieve maximum benefits from your diet, ensure that you have plenty of water daily. An average human must drink 2 to 3 liters of water every day, irrespective of the weather.
- Fatty snacks and junk food cause havoc with your digestive system. Thus, ensure that you don’t consume any junk food, packet foods, canned foods, or homemade oily snacks.
The Bottom Line
If you simply want to improve your health and heal your body, then you should consider including more plant-based foods in your diet.
Once you have achieved this, this will ensure that you get all the food health benefits that will help you improve your diet, heal any chronic disease and achieve maximum wellness for all your life.
Sattvic food has been enjoyed throughout history by people living in the Indian subcontinent. Now you too can enjoy these benefits by simply adding a few raw fruits and vegetables to your diet.
The only way you will reap the benefits of sattvic food is when you will follow above mentioned each and every point with utmost mindfulness.
