Food is the best medicine and the best long-term treatment available in any system of medicine anywhere in the world.

A balanced diet is critical for good health. Wrong diet is responsible for 90 percent of physical disease. Wrong diet can also reduce or nullify the effects of herbal treatments, therefore Ayurveda places considerable importance on the correct food and the optimum ways to prepare and eat that food.

A balanced diet for Ayurveda can be very different from what we commonly understand. Balance is in reference to the three humors and agni (the digestive ability), not to vitamins, minerals, and nutrients.

This is because Ayurveda perceives people as individuals and not machines. The six tastes are used to determine which foods are good for your constitution. First you must determine your individual constitution, then you must know the basic action of the tastes on you—for example, sour, salty, pungent tastes increase pitta, so should be avoided in every meal if you are pitta.

Lastly you can choose the foods that balance or harmonize your constitution over a long period of time.

Many doctors and nutritionists today look at people as machines that need different fuel and lubricants to operate smoothly. Why doesn't the mechanical school of diet and medicine work? Well, it does work if it happens to fit your constitution, and it doesn't if you are of another constitution.

That's why there are many different dietary methods existing today, because there are so many different constitutional possibilities. Nutritional theories do not consider that you may digest food and minerals differently from the next person.

You cannot feed all people on the same food with similar results. Someone may be satisfied with a Chinese meal for four or five hours while another person may be hungry again in two hours.

The metabolism of each person is very different and has different needs. The metabolism is the sum total of the three humors, balanced and controlled by pitta and agni.

Food and drink are the most important medicines for the body because they are the most consistently ingested substance in the body.

What you drink ultimately turns into prana and what you eat ultimately turns into ojas (ojas is the basis of your reproductive fluids and of the immune system).

Ayurveda says that food closest to its natural state provides the best quality and quantity of prana, therefore vitality to the body.

Processed foods do not have enough (if any) prana to vitalize the body over a long term; they also produce little or an inferior quality of ojas. That means that buying a fresh head of broccoli at a large supermarket is better than frozen or commercially canned broccoli, but by far the best choice is to buy it from the farmer.

Ayurveda states that food is far easier to digest when lightly cooked. And if it is cooked with a little spice it is even easier to digest.

Yes, it is amazing! Because as mentioned earlier, there really is no such thing as Ayurvedic food. There is only a system to ascertain the energetic actions of plants and foods. With this system of assessment it is possible to use food from any climate or culture in the Ayurvedic manner.

The correct balance of food energetics for your constitution is the best medicine and the best dietary regime for a long, healthy life.