Ayurveda - Sattvic, Rajasic, And Tamasic Foods, And The Peat Connection

[lvysaur]

Is anyone else familiar with these concepts? It seems that the concept of a "sattvic" diet/temperament shows a strong alignment with Peat.

Sattva is supposed to be a state of calm and spirituality. Rajas is a state of activity, and Tamasic is a state of anxiety/lethargy.

Fruits and unfermented milk products are unambigiously considered sattvic. Oily food is considered rajasic or tamasic.

There are some consideratons that don't fully agree with Peat, but I found it interesting that there seems to be a correlation.

 

[sunmountain]

Yes!
Yogis eat satvik milk and fruit and live at altitude. = peat?
Tamasic gets us down. The word Ama in it = endotoxin.
Rajasic: the word raja = King. Stimulating food for activity.

Can also see how these might have gotten abused into caste: satvik priestly, rajasic kingly, tamasic untouchable.

 

[DasaAyurveda]

Is anyone else familiar with these concepts? It seems that the concept of a "sattvic" diet/temperament shows a strong alignment with Peat.

Sattva is supposed to be a state of calm and spirituality. Rajas is a state of activity, and Tamasic is a state of anxiety/lethargy.

Fruits and unfermented milk products are unambigiously considered sattvic. Oily food is considered rajasic or tamasic.

There are some consideratons that don't fully agree with Peat, but I found it interesting that there seems to be a correlation.

Hello Ivysaur

I've just written about this very subject on my website www.dasaayurveda.com

Anyway, here's the article. I hope this answers some of your questions:

Understanding the Subtle Quality of the Foods We Eat

Those who practice yoga, and who have at least skimmed the yoga texts, are familiar with the three gunas, or subtle qualities of matter. Understanding these gunas are essential to practicing Ayurveda as well.

Sattva – purity, rajas – passion, and tamas – ignorance; these three qualities (and combinations of these qualities) are found in all material things: words, thoughts, homes, clothes, relationships, music… and even food. The wise (sadhus) generally advise one to cultivate a lifestyle of sattva-guna, or purity/goodness, because (1) it promotes a natural state of physical and mental health and therefore (2) such a lifestyle is most conducive to enlightenment and self-realization, which is the ultimate goal of Ayurveda.

Later I’ll explain why promoting sattva-guna in one’s diet and habits is one of the three universal principles of Ayurvedic remedy.

So people often ask about what foods we should or shouldn’t eat. Well, it’s not that easy. Most people are pretty lazy with their health. They would like to have oversimplified and absolute statements about a particular food that they can apply in all situations and thereby eliminate the need to think deeply about what they’re doing (are you like that?). How many times have you heard someone say, “I saw on a Facebook post that you shouldn’t eat this thing because it causes that thing to happen.”? Or, “I heard that eating guava everyday will put hair on your chest and cure cancer.”

Rather than falling victim to naive oversimplification, we can apply the science of guna (quality) and karma (action) to determine what we should and shouldn’t eat. Again, we can’t simply categorize individual foods as tamasic, rajasic or sattvic because any food can be prepared, served or even eaten in conditions which would change it’s guna.

For example, vinegar is generally considered tamasic because it’s created by fermentation. But a small amount of vinegar before a meal (especially quality apple cider vinegar) is proven to stimulate bile secretion in the liver and saliva in the mouth, thus improving the digestion. An excess of vinegar, however, will cause ulcers in the stomach and it will deplete ojas (immunity and potency). At the same time, a sattvic food like milk can cause illness if it is adulterated. Such is the case with over-processed, hormone laden, watered down and homogenized “milk” that you buy for $1 a gallon at the supermarket which causes people to develop lactose intolerance.

Rice can be cooked nicely and served with ghee, then it is sattvic; or it can be fried in oil with garlic and onion and chili, then it is rajasic; or it can be mashed and fermented into an alcoholic drink (sake), then it is tamasic. Therefore, in all cases, we have to consider the quality of the food rather than automatically categorizing each individual food. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna describes those qualities explicitly:

Bg 17.8 — Foods dear to those in the mode of goodness increase the duration of life, purify one’s existence and give strength, health, happiness and satisfaction. Such foods are juicy, fatty, wholesome, and pleasing to the heart.

Bg 17.9 — Foods that are too bitter, too sour, salty, hot, pungent, dry and burning are dear to those in the mode of passion. Such foods cause distress, misery and disease.

Bg 17.10 — Food prepared more than three hours before being eaten, food that is tasteless, decomposed and putrid, and food consisting of remnants and untouchable things is dear to those in the mode of darkness.

I invite you to start thinking about the subtle quality of foods. What do you think? Is this a practical way to determine what foods you should eat?

- See more at: Understanding the Subtle Quality of the Foods We Eat

 

[Bodhi]

I think it makes sense that according to Ayurveda foods have certain qualities and tendencies just like people...

This is reflected in the Dosha system and i think this is where the Ayurvedic Dosha system is very different form dr Peat's perspective...

dr Peat approaches the living body system as a unity which is interdependent and coherent on a cellular level and approaches disease and disturbances on this cellular level, so he studies substances that help to work in the direction to keep a coherence on a cellular level resulting in optimum health....

Practically this means one can work towards optimal cell metabolism which means that one can work to raise basal body temps and heart rate... ( and all that comes with it)

I think this is the point where Peat an Ayurveda differ...

In Ayurveda it's important to study, find out and see what your original (birth or karmic) Dosha or setpoint is , this means from the start that we have all DIFFERENT metabolic rates and different bodies and energy systems.

When u know your "Pakruti" you can work trough the Ayurvedic system to do all the things that are suited for your "Pakruti" aka birth constitution, the idea is that when doing this one reaches good balance between the Dosha's resulting in good health...

I think that when for example you have a Kapha constitution and you go Peating you are trying to change your Pakruti into an unnatural "Vikruti" (the Dosha which is not your natural but current state)

Prakruti and Vikruti

 

[michael94]

nice posts guys

Shivambu anyone? ^.^

 

[michael94]

At the same time, a sattvic food like milk can cause illness if it is adulterated. Such is the case with over-processed, hormone laden, watered down and homogenized “milk” that you buy for $1 a gallon at the supermarket which causes people to develop lactose intolerance.

I would like to add that orange juice from the store is adulterated as well! NOT FRUIT~

 

[lvysaur]

IMO the Tamasic category can be broken further into two groups:
"True" Tamas: Beef, lamb, paneer/dense cheese

"Toxic" Tamas: alcohol, stale food (resistant starch anyone?), spoiled food, etc

True tamasic foods have worthy qualities, and many people naturally crave them at times.

Toxic tamasic foods are literal toxins that nobody needs to consume.

 

[gately]

I've made comments on here long ago, and I believe Ivysaur disagreed with me then, but I'll restate it anyway because I find it frustrating: red meat, even beef, is not inherently tamasic in classical Ayurveda. Calling them tamasic stems from a bastardization of Ayurveda that religious zealots imposed on India's entire culture long after the early Ayurvedic texts were written. For crying out loud, beef was even recommended for certain disorders in the Charaka Samhita:

Beef is "useful in absolute vata, chronic rhinitis, intermittent fevers, dry cough, fatigue, excessive agni and wasting of muscles”

What DOES make meat tamasic is the way it is cooked. Boiled meat can be rajastic or even sattvic. Fried meat rajastic or even tamasic. Anything charred is resolutely tamasic.

Further, just because something is tamasic doesn't mean it is inherently unhealthy. It's rare, but some people need more tamas. I can think of a few overly sattvic, in the cloud yogis in my personal orbit who would do well to eat a charred up steak every now and then.

This is all self-evident btw. You don't even need to read the Ayurvedic source material for proof. Just study Ayurveda and go interact with people who have responded well to decades on the carnivore diet, they are often delightfully rajastic or even sattvic in nature. It's readily apparent.

Another way of just thinking about this logically is that one cannot live very long or with much vitality on purely tamasic foods. The very nature of tamas is inertia. So if red meat is tamasic, how can people who display obvious rajastic or even sattvic lives, be surviving PURELY on red meat, for decades even in some cases? Besides the modern day carnivore crowd, there are the plains Indians who subsisted with great vitality and rajas on almost entirely buffalo meat. And then there are the nomadic mongols, who's ENTIRE diet during most of the year was red meat, (supplemented in their short summer with fermented dairy.) The mongols were some of the fiercest warriors the world has ever known in their hayday...would be pretty hard to be a lethargic tamasic warrior, no?

All this bastardization of Ayurveda is why it basically sucks as a healing modality these days, btw. I've seen so many people go and try to cure their cancer or autoimmune disease with modern day Ayurveda, including by going to India for the "real deal," and they all got worse and barely made any progress. You'll literally have trouble finding an authentic panchakarma anywhere in the world at this point, including Kerala! I've been to Ayurvedic centers with multi-generational lifelong doctors of Ayurveda, who were world famous, and they still had less success than sick people just figuring crap out for themselves on the internet.

Here is a good blog by someone who knows more about real Ayurveda and has written a lot about the bastardization: trueayurveda

Fun tidbit: One of my favorite things he's written about is how basmati rice, the most beloved "healthful" rice in modern Ayurveda, is actually considered the lowest grade of rice in classical Ayurveda. That honestly tickles the hell out of me.

Anyway, if you're interested in the last bastion of real Ayurvedic medicine, as an actual system of medicine that might help you in some realistic way with serious disease, Tibetan Medicine is probably its last refuge. They adopted the Ayurvedic system long ago, and because they never rejected meat eating like the puritanical zealots in India--because Vajrayana is a path of non-renunciation--it stayed fairly pure. Not a lot of veggies to eat up on the plateau!

 

[Korven]

I've made comments on here long ago, and I believe Ivysaur disagreed with me then, but I'll restate it anyway because I find it frustrating: red meat, even beef, is not inherently tamasic in classical Ayurveda. Calling them tamasic stems from a bastardization of Ayurveda that religious zealots imposed on India's entire culture long after the early Ayurvedic texts were written. For crying out loud, beef was even recommended for certain disorders in the Charaka Samhita:

Beef is "useful in absolute vata, chronic rhinitis, intermittent fevers, dry cough, fatigue, excessive agni and wasting of muscles”

What DOES make meat tamasic is the way it is cooked. Boiled meat can be rajastic or even sattvic. Fried meat rajastic or even tamasic. Anything charred is resolutely tamasic.

Further, just because something is tamasic doesn't mean it is inherently unhealthy. It's rare, but some people need more tamas. I can think of a few overly sattvic, in the cloud yogis in my personal orbit who would do well to eat a charred up steak every now and then.

This is all self-evident btw. You don't even need to read the Ayurvedic source material for proof. Just study Ayurveda and go interact with people who have responded well to decades on the carnivore diet, they are often delightfully rajastic or even sattvic in nature. It's readily apparent.

Another way of just thinking about this logically is that one cannot live very long or with much vitality on purely tamasic foods. The very nature of tamas is inertia. So if red meat is tamasic, how can people who display obvious rajastic or even sattvic lives, be surviving PURELY on red meat, for decades even in some cases? Besides the modern day carnivore crowd, there are the plains Indians who subsisted with great vitality and rajas on almost entirely buffalo meat. And then there are the nomadic mongols, who's ENTIRE diet during most of the year was red meat, (supplemented in their short summer with fermented dairy.) The mongols were some of the fiercest warriors the world has ever known in their hayday...would be pretty hard to be a lethargic tamasic warrior, no?

All this bastardization of Ayurveda is why it basically sucks as a healing modality these days, btw. I've seen so many people go and try to cure their cancer or autoimmune disease with modern day Ayurveda, including by going to India for the "real deal," and they all got worse and barely made any progress. You'll literally have trouble finding an authentic panchakarma anywhere in the world at this point, including Kerala! I've been to Ayurvedic centers with multi-generational lifelong doctors of Ayurveda, who were world famous, and they still had less success than sick people just figuring crap out for themselves on the internet.

Here is a good blog by someone who knows more about real Ayurveda and has written a lot about the bastardization: trueayurveda

Fun tidbit: One of my favorite things he's written about is how basmati rice, the most beloved "healthful" rice in modern Ayurveda, is actually considered the lowest grade of rice in classical Ayurveda. That honestly tickles the hell out of me.

Anyway, if you're interested in the last bastion of real Ayurvedic medicine, as an actual system of medicine that might help you in some realistic way with serious disease, Tibetan Medicine is probably its last refuge. They adopted the Ayurvedic system long ago, and because they never rejected meat eating like the puritanical zealots in India--because Vajrayana is a path of non-renunciation--it stayed fairly pure. Not a lot of veggies to eat up on the plateau!

Thanks a lot for sharing that blog, I've been obsessed with reading through it. Ayurveda seems like such a complex system, would take years of study to get your head around it fully.

One thing that really stood out to me was this comment:

"I understand. This is why I explain that Ayurveda is not just as easy as what they are writing in the Western books.
I do not know about your fruit and vegetable cleanse to say that it was aama cleansing. Interestingly enough when you get deep into Ayurveda you realize so many things, like from a cultural context so much is known already here in india. Vegetables are not a huge piece of the diet. Infact, if you were to do a study, or someone was and research all the vegetables that are specifically explained to not have with different diseases you would come up with their qualities and find that those qualities are not good for those specific diseases. In the end what you would see is that vegetables are not as healthy as we think they are. This is why the diet of India used to be mainly grains and seeds and monocots and dicots or the pulses. Lots of flours, lots of breads, lots of spices, ots of dairy but not much vegetables and they are always cooked well. With oil. There is also a subhashita (words of wisdom) that states Hita Bhukta, Mita bhukta, ashaka bhukta in a response to the question of what brings health and happiness. it means basically of following what is the beneficial rules of eating, living or lifestyle and to not eat vegetables. Interesting.
So what to do with all of this information about Aama? Great question. I do not write so that people can quickly jot down a follow this and don’t do that chart, that is not Ayurveda. Ayurveda is understanding why and how and when for the individual, which is individualized, not a mass program. This is the beauty of Ayurveda. Unfortunately, i find it useless in the modern world where we are to busy with mundane distractions to understand something of such depth. it takes time and dedication to learn. Just as anything that has any value.
Just for the record, what is feeling good? What diagnosis is used for this? Not doubting you felt good after 3kg of black slimy stuff exited your system but using the raw food diet as an example, it is vata aggravating and the person feels good because of feeling light and having vata imbalanced. What is this though? Disease or health? Get the point? There is much more to it all than feeling.
Every year, yes. Go to India and do a month or 5 weeks of Panchakarma, at the same time learn more of Ayurveda. This is a real cleansing of the system made to the individual, once again not a mass idea of what cleansing is. o stay healthy, agni is the most important factor. Not doshas. If the agni is imbalanced everything else becomes imbalanced. if the agni is maintained, the doshas are maintained in balance. this is just one more reason why the dosha diet stuff is incorrect."

Basically, vegetables aren't all that great and you should base your diet around basic carbohydrates and dairy + the most important thing is to keep your digestive fire or 'agni' going. Without it you get a buildup of toxic waste and become diseased. These seem like very "Peaty" concepts to me.

The food combination aspect is also fascinating to me, such as dairy and fruit being a huge no-no. Maybe many health problems can be traced back to weird food combining because we've just lost that knowledge. I will try to incorporate some of these concepts into my own diet.

 

[lvysaur]

I've made comments on here long ago, and I believe Ivysaur disagreed with me then

Hey, I didn't mean to frustrate you, and I agree with most of what you said. I think the problem here is that I'm not well versed in Ayurveda, and you are. I'm simply stating my interpretation of Ayurvedic principles, based on what I've read on multiple websites.

Tamasic - on all the websites, Tamas includes "poisons" like alcohol, spoiled food. But also heavy foods like beef and paneer. I agree about the anti-beef zealotry, but that doesn't explain why so many people consider dense cheese to be tamasic. Clearly, people consider heavy dense filling foods to be Tamasic as well, independent of any anti-beef bias.

So my interpretation is that there are two distinct "types" of what Ayurvedic followers perceive as Tamas. There's a "heavy Tamas" (beef, cheese, possibly whole wheat?) and a "toxic Tamas" (alcohol, bacterial, fermented, putrid). I don't know what the phrase "Tamasic" was originally used for because I'm not well studied in Ayurveda. But it's clear that these two categories of food are different from both each other, and from the Sattvic-Rajasic categories.

Yes, the Mongols and Plains Americans were huge red meat eaters. That doesn't say anything about the gunas though. Perhaps the Americans and Mongols had an inherently Vata-Pitta type constitution (roughly equivalent to Sattvic-Rajasic), red meat consumption would help "stabilize" and "ground" them, bringing balance (rather than lethargy as you say). That's what I experience with red meat, unless I start eating Rajasic foods, which throws me into a negative feedback loop.

Fun tidbit: One of my favorite things he's written about is how basmati rice, the most beloved "healthful" rice in modern Ayurveda, is actually considered the lowest grade of rice in classical Ayurveda. That honestly tickles the hell out of me.

I know Peaters dislike Basmati, whole wheat, russet potatoes because of amylose fermentables, and favor Jasmine/Japanese/red potatoes for the amylopectin.

But experience-wise, Basmati and the others digest fine for me, with no discernible side effects. They digest slower and feel more filling, which is essentially a "heavy Tamas" type of trait, similar to beef and cheese. I feel better on these grains than on jasmine rice.

 

[snacks]

Hey, I didn't mean to frustrate you, and I agree with most of what you said. I think the problem here is that I'm not well versed in Ayurveda, and you are. I'm simply stating my interpretation of Ayurvedic principles, based on what I've read on multiple websites.

Tamasic - on all the websites, Tamas includes "poisons" like alcohol, spoiled food. But also heavy foods like beef and paneer. I agree about the anti-beef zealotry, but that doesn't explain why so many people consider dense cheese to be tamasic. Clearly, people consider heavy dense filling foods to be Tamasic as well, independent of any anti-beef bias.

So my interpretation is that there are two distinct "types" of what Ayurvedic followers perceive as Tamas. There's a "heavy Tamas" (beef, cheese, possibly whole wheat?) and a "toxic Tamas" (alcohol, bacterial, fermented, putrid). I don't know what the phrase "Tamasic" was originally used for because I'm not well studied in Ayurveda. But it's clear that these two categories of food are different from both each other, and from the Sattvic-Rajasic categories.

Yes, the Mongols and Plains Americans were huge red meat eaters. That doesn't say anything about the gunas though. Perhaps the Americans and Mongols had an inherently Vata-Pitta type constitution (roughly equivalent to Sattvic-Rajasic), red meat consumption would help "stabilize" and "ground" them, bringing balance (rather than lethargy as you say). That's what I experience with red meat, unless I start eating Rajasic foods, which throws me into a negative feedback loop.



I know Peaters dislike Basmati, whole wheat, russet potatoes because of amylose fermentables, and favor Jasmine/Japanese/red potatoes for the amylopectin.

But experience-wise, Basmati and the others digest fine for me, with no discernible side effects. They digest slower and feel more filling, which is essentially a "heavy Tamas" type of trait, similar to beef and cheese. I feel better on these grains than on jasmine rice.

Yeah the difference becomes really obvious if you meditate. I drink plenty of milk before I meditate sometimes and I'm fine but if I eat red meat within a few hours I'm mentally very sluggish even though once I get up I feel perfectly normal. The tamas here is subtler than digestive effect although that definitely plays a role. I unfortunately don't know who you are or how willing you'd be to consider that foods have subtle effects that aren't strictly chemical but if you want to see something interesting try meditating on an empty stomach, having eaten tamasic food only (i.e. a large ribeye) and after a balanced meal.

 

[gately]

Thanks a lot for sharing that blog, I've been obsessed with reading through it. Ayurveda seems like such a complex system, would take years of study to get your head around it fully.
...
Basically, vegetables aren't all that great and you should base your diet around basic carbohydrates and dairy + the most important thing is to keep your digestive fire or 'agni' going. Without it you get a buildup of toxic waste and become diseased. These seem like very "Peaty" concepts to me.

The food combination aspect is also fascinating to me, such as dairy and fruit being a huge no-no. Maybe many health problems can be traced back to weird food combining because we've just lost that knowledge. I will try to incorporate some of these concepts into my own diet.

You're welcome and you are getting it all right. Totally illuminating once you're exposed to authentic traditional knowledge, isn't it? Agni is king: 100%. Vegetables are not universally good for everyone. (I have a lot to say on that, but feel too wiped to rant on it right now.) And on food combining: One of the weirdest things for me about hardcore Ray Peat followers is their inability to tell that that certain food combination lead to Ama in the system. It might have something to do with the thyroid many here take (keeping the system very primed and revved up to handle whatever is thrown at it.) I have an extremely delicate system, do not take thyroid, and the effects of certain food combinations like orange juice and dairy, or fruit and meat, leave me feeling acutely bad in their respective ways. I have Crohn's disease which makes me incredibly sensitive to food combinations, so I sort of view myself as a canary in the coal mine, and strongly think there's a going to be a lot of deep-rooted ama issues (cancer) coming out of this forum in the next 15 years. Hope I'm wrong.

Hey, I didn't mean to frustrate you, and I agree with most of what you said. I think the problem here is that I'm not well versed in Ayurveda, and you are. I'm simply stating my interpretation of Ayurvedic principles, based on what I've read on multiple websites.

Tamasic - on all the websites, Tamas includes "poisons" like alcohol, spoiled food. But also heavy foods like beef and paneer. I agree about the anti-beef zealotry, but that doesn't explain why so many people consider dense cheese to be tamasic. Clearly, people consider heavy dense filling foods to be Tamasic as well, independent of any anti-beef bias.

So my interpretation is that there are two distinct "types" of what Ayurvedic followers perceive as Tamas. There's a "heavy Tamas" (beef, cheese, possibly whole wheat?) and a "toxic Tamas" (alcohol, bacterial, fermented, putrid). I don't know what the phrase "Tamasic" was originally used for because I'm not well studied in Ayurveda. But it's clear that these two categories of food are different from both each other, and from the Sattvic-Rajasic categories.

Aged dense cheese can also be rajastic or tamasic as far as I'm aware, sort of depends on the degree of age. Beef is rajastic, but I believe can be sattvic, depending on how it's cooked, as I've mentioned. They are both hard to digest. (Aged cheese much more so, though.) I think anyone who has told you that fresh paneer is tamasic is a charlatan and I would seriously advise you to stay far away from anything they have to say. Freshly made (as is authentic) paneer that hasn't produced a "sour" taste yet, is for sure sattvic. Think: freshly made paneer, freshly made (and minimally fermented, as in JUST a few hours) "sweet lassi." Yes, modern Ayurveda equates dense heavy foods with tamas, and that's precisely one example where they don't know what the heck they are talking about anymore.

One of the worst aspects of modern Ayurveda is that they have somehow convinced the masses that this stuff isn't self-evident, that you can't test the quality of foods for yourself. Try it: Eat a ton of dense aged cheese and you'll feel the inertia of tamas or passion of rajas for yourself. You won't feel that with fresh juicy red meat, especially if it's cooked in a wholesome way: you'll feel the calm of satva or the passion of rajas.

It's important to remember though, as I said, and as you suspected, that some people need more tamas. You have to remember what the gunas really mean, and that Tamas is inertia, dullness, and apathy. It's the feeling you get when you eat nothing but pre-packaged bakery goods that have been sitting on a store shelf for months, like ding-dongs and Cheetos food from a gas station. We all know the feeling it produces. It's self-evident, we don't need to rely on what a website or book tells us. We can all identify the food-effect of the gunas within ourselves so easily:

Assuming your digestion is up to par:

Drink a glass of warm milk, add a little bit of sugar and a little cardamom: you'll feel sattvic.
Eat a freshly made butter-garlic rotisserie chicken: rajastic.
Eat Cheetos and a ding-dong: tamasic.

Personally, I've found tamasic foods very helpful at different points in my health journey, particularly when I first had a kundalini crisis a decade ago. It helped bring my energy back DOWN to earth. Red meat was mildly helpful due to its heaviness and density and grounding nature, but it never produced the inertia of tamas I needed to shut down the machine.

And listen it's not you who frustrated me, it's all this bastardized Ayurveda which nearly everyone is learning from and thus repeating ad-naseum these days. You have to understand that authentic Ayurveda is almost non-existent in India. For all practical purposes, especially for a westerner, Ayurveda is a dead system. I remember going to do panchakarma many years ago at the Raj in Iowa, because all these insiders had told me that the multi-generational doctors at Maharishi Ayurveda doctors were the last stronghold of real Ayurveda in the West (and this was after flying around the country coming up empty in results with different practitioners, most of whom are still the most popular in this field...which baffles me)...and they were fine with their patients using canola oil instead ghee for the oleation process! Freaking insanity.

Interestingly, as I mentioned, this bastardization similarly applies to Chinese Medicine, but for very different reasons. For Ayurveda, it's because religious puritanicals took over nearly every aspect of life. With Chinese Medicine, it's because Mao systemized Classical Chinese Medicine into "Traditional Chinese Medicine..." So I guess you can say it's zealots on both sides. Anyway, there's a reason these modalities just plain aren't working anymore: they are corrupted. That isn't to say you can't find authentic teachers, but they are increasingly rare. That also isn't to say you won't get lucky, especially with a relatively minor health complaint. But I challenge you to find even ONE person who in recent years has cured a serious cancer or serious autoimmune disease using SOLELY modern Ayurvedic methods. For Ayurveda, I suspect it's literally impossible in the west to find an authentic practitioner. For Chinese Medicine, there are only a very small handful. Anyone reading this in the future is free to PM for the names of who I think is legitimate.

Yeah the difference becomes really obvious if you meditate. I drink plenty of milk before I meditate sometimes and I'm fine but if I eat red meat within a few hours I'm mentally very sluggish even though once I get up I feel perfectly normal. The tamas here is subtler than digestive effect although that definitely plays a role. I unfortunately don't know who you are or how willing you'd be to consider that foods have subtle effects that aren't strictly chemical but if you want to see something interesting try meditating on an empty stomach, having eaten tamasic food only (i.e. a large ribeye) and after a balanced meal.

The Vajrayana and Dzogchen practitioners of Tibet have been eating red meat and meditating for hundreds of years and they have no problem achieving "access concentration." True, they don't go to the jhanas. But I can tell you from experience: I have eaten meat-diet and gone beyond access concentration, so it's not like meat is some kind of inherent block to jhana, and I strongly suspect it isn't a block to even the Highest Goal. Of course, that doesn't mean meat doesn't make it more difficult...certainly, Ramana Maharshi thought so, for instance...

You might disagree with me, but I believe what you are doing is equating 'heaviness' with 'tamas.' (Because as I think I've proved red meat is not inherently tamasic.) For anything beyond access concentration, the channels (nadis) have to be clear and running smoothly, which is increasingly hard on a stomach full of difficult to digest food. Look, it's just straight up hard for prana to settle and run up the sushumna when the body is dealing with a steak and potato dinner. You have to remember that in the example you gave: milk is MUCH lighter and MUCH quicker to digest than a large ribeye steak. Yes, milk is a renowned meditative food because it is sattvic, but also because it a light and relatively easy to digest food (from an Ayurvedic perspective at least.) It's barely a burden on the digestion at all, especially if you have good Agni.

Beyond my own experience confirming this, and years of study, I've been in meditation circles ranging from Orthodox Hindu to Neo-Hindu to Theravadist to Vajrayana for about 14 years now, and I can tell you it's basically a universal truth amongst all serious practitioners that you can't get very far in shamatha on a stomach full of dense and heavy food, regardless of what it is. Even when I first started this meditational journey, it was literally one of the first rules I was taught: don't meditate after eating anything heavy.

And look, I'm just relaying my knowledge and experience. Could I be wrong? Definitely. I'm a constant contrarian, that's just my nature. I just want to make my case as strongly as I can. If I'm wrong about anything I’ve said, especially if red meat is tamasic and I'm leading people down a bad path, I'm deeply sorry.

 

[Uselis]

You're welcome and you are getting it all right. Totally illuminating once you're exposed to authentic traditional knowledge, isn't it? Agni is king: 100%. Vegetables are not universally good for everyone. (I have a lot to say on that, but feel too wiped to rant on it right now.) And on food combining: One of the weirdest things for me about hardcore Ray Peat followers is their inability to tell that that certain food combination lead to Ama in the system. It might have something to do with the thyroid many here take (keeping the system very primed and revved up to handle whatever is thrown at it.) I have an extremely delicate system, do not take thyroid, and the effects of certain food combinations like orange juice and dairy, or fruit and meat, leave me feeling acutely bad in their respective ways. I have Crohn's disease which makes me incredibly sensitive to food combinations, so I sort of view myself as a canary in the coal mine, and strongly think there's a going to be a lot of deep-rooted ama issues (cancer) coming out of this forum in the next 15 years. Hope I'm wrong.



Aged dense cheese can also be rajastic or tamasic as far as I'm aware, sort of depends on the degree of age. Beef is rajastic, but I believe can be sattvic, depending on how it's cooked, as I've mentioned. They are both hard to digest. (Aged cheese much more so, though.) I think anyone who has told you that fresh paneer is tamasic is a charlatan and I would seriously advise you to stay far away from anything they have to say. Freshly made (as is authentic) paneer that hasn't produced a "sour" taste yet, is for sure sattvic. Think: freshly made paneer, freshly made (and minimally fermented, as in JUST a few hours) "sweet lassi." Yes, modern Ayurveda equates dense heavy foods with tamas, and that's precisely one example where they don't know what the heck they are talking about anymore.

One of the worst aspects of modern Ayurveda is that they have somehow convinced the masses that this stuff isn't self-evident, that you can't test the quality of foods for yourself. Try it: Eat a ton of dense aged cheese and you'll feel the inertia of tamas or passion of rajas for yourself. You won't feel that with fresh juicy red meat, especially if it's cooked in a wholesome way: you'll feel the calm of satva or the passion of rajas.

It's important to remember though, as I said, and as you suspected, that some people need more tamas. You have to remember what the gunas really mean, and that Tamas is inertia, dullness, and apathy. It's the feeling you get when you eat nothing but pre-packaged bakery goods that have been sitting on a store shelf for months, like ding-dongs and Cheetos food from a gas station. We all know the feeling it produces. It's self-evident, we don't need to rely on what a website or book tells us. We can all identify the food-effect of the gunas within ourselves so easily:

Assuming your digestion is up to par:

Drink a glass of warm milk, add a little bit of sugar and a little cardamom: you'll feel sattvic.
Eat a freshly made butter-garlic rotisserie chicken: rajastic.
Eat Cheetos and a ding-dong: tamasic.

Personally, I've found tamasic foods very helpful at different points in my health journey, particularly when I first had a kundalini crisis a decade ago. It helped bring my energy back DOWN to earth. Red meat was mildly helpful due to its heaviness and density and grounding nature, but it never produced the inertia of tamas I needed to shut down the machine.

And listen it's not you who frustrated me, it's all this bastardized Ayurveda which nearly everyone is learning from and thus repeating ad-naseum these days. You have to understand that authentic Ayurveda is almost non-existent in India. For all practical purposes, especially for a westerner, Ayurveda is a dead system. I remember going to do panchakarma many years ago at the Raj in Iowa, because all these insiders had told me that the multi-generational doctors at Maharishi Ayurveda doctors were the last stronghold of real Ayurveda in the West (and this was after flying around the country coming up empty in results with different practitioners, most of whom are still the most popular in this field...which baffles me)...and they were fine with their patients using canola oil instead ghee for the oleation process! Freaking insanity.

Interestingly, as I mentioned, this bastardization similarly applies to Chinese Medicine, but for very different reasons. For Ayurveda, it's because religious puritanicals took over nearly every aspect of life. With Chinese Medicine, it's because Mao systemized Classical Chinese Medicine into "Traditional Chinese Medicine..." So I guess you can say it's zealots on both sides. Anyway, there's a reason these modalities just plain aren't working anymore: they are corrupted. That isn't to say you can't find authentic teachers, but they are increasingly rare. That also isn't to say you won't get lucky, especially with a relatively minor health complaint. But I challenge you to find even ONE person who in recent years has cured a serious cancer or serious autoimmune disease using SOLELY modern Ayurvedic methods. For Ayurveda, I suspect it's literally impossible in the west to find an authentic practitioner. For Chinese Medicine, there are only a very small handful. Anyone reading this in the future is free to PM for the names of who I think is legitimate.



The Vajrayana and Dzogchen practitioners of Tibet have been eating red meat and meditating for hundreds of years and they have no problem achieving "access concentration." True, they don't go to the jhanas. But I can tell you from experience: I have eaten meat-diet and gone beyond access concentration, so it's not like meat is some kind of inherent block to jhana, and I strongly suspect it isn't a block to even the Highest Goal. Of course, that doesn't mean meat doesn't make it more difficult...certainly, Ramana Maharshi thought so, for instance...

You might disagree with me, but I believe what you are doing is equating 'heaviness' with 'tamas.' (Because as I think I've proved red meat is not inherently tamasic.) For anything beyond access concentration, the channels (nadis) have to be clear and running smoothly, which is increasingly hard on a stomach full of difficult to digest food. Look, it's just straight up hard for prana to settle and run up the sushumna when the body is dealing with a steak and potato dinner. You have to remember that in the example you gave: milk is MUCH lighter and MUCH quicker to digest than a large ribeye steak. Yes, milk is a renowned meditative food because it is sattvic, but also because it a light and relatively easy to digest food (from an Ayurvedic perspective at least.) It's barely a burden on the digestion at all, especially if you have good Agni.

Beyond my own experience confirming this, and years of study, I've been in meditation circles ranging from Orthodox Hindu to Neo-Hindu to Theravadist to Vajrayana for about 14 years now, and I can tell you it's basically a universal truth amongst all serious practitioners that you can't get very far in shamatha on a stomach full of dense and heavy food, regardless of what it is. Even when I first started this meditational journey, it was literally one of the first rules I was taught: don't meditate after eating anything heavy.

And look, I'm just relaying my knowledge and experience. Could I be wrong? Definitely. I'm a constant contrarian, that's just my nature. I just want to make my case as strongly as I can. If I'm wrong about anything I’ve said, especially if red meat is tamasic and I'm leading people down a bad path, I'm deeply sorry.

Fascinating write up, thanks!

Slightly out of topic but when I was "spiritually questing" in Thailand which is Theravada I guess it always baffled me how monks look so light and full of zest despite their eating habits. As you probably know food comes from going on alms every moment and surprisingly in a country full of ripe fruits foods that is mostly eaten (at least from what I saw) are greasy and oily. Perhaps lots of fasting in between meals and walking good amount helped monks to stay in shape for meditation and in general.

 

[gately]

Fascinating write up, thanks!

Slightly out of topic but when I was "spiritually questing" in Thailand which is Theravada I guess it always baffled me how monks look so light and full of zest despite their eating habits. As you probably know food comes from going on alms every moment and surprisingly in a country full of ripe fruits foods that is mostly eaten (at least from what I saw) are greasy and oily. Perhaps lots of fasting in between meals and walking good amount helped monks to stay in shape for meditation and in general.

I’m a theravadist.

Theravada monks strictly follow the vinaya, which are the canonical rules for monastics.

As such, they are not allowed to eat after noon. They typically eat either one large meal a day (whatever they have collected via alms) or have a light breakfast and then a large meal around 11 AM. That’s it. Some are allowed medical drinks or a broth of some kind, later in the day, for health reasons.

There is a lot of faulty conjecture online as to why the Buddha prohibited eating after noon. It’s always annoyed me as the Buddha was very clear about why he asked monks not to eat after noon (and forgive me for being too lazy to look up the exact quote): he said it was for their health and “lightness.” In fact, it’s the only time I am aware that Buddha gave any advice whatsoever regarding health.

Nowadays many monks are very ill and diabetic as they age because the villagers will give them tons of sweets and rolls and poorly made Thai/Sri Lanakan Street food. They start their monasticism very skinny and eventually many get fat as they age. I used to think this was due to a slowing down of metabolism from the long term intermittent fasting, now I suspect it’s due to the nasty cheap vegetable oils and sugary wheat foods they are given. Just my thoughts on it.

 

[Uselis]

I’m a theravadist.

Theravada monks strictly follow the vinaya, which are the canonical rules for monastics.

As such, they are not allowed to eat after noon. They typically eat either one large meal a day (whatever they have collected via alms) or have a light breakfast and then a large meal around 11 AM. That’s it. Some are allowed medical drinks or a broth of some kind, later in the day, for health reasons.

There is a lot of faulty conjecture online as to why the Buddha prohibited eating after noon. It’s always annoyed me as the Buddha was very clear about why he asked monks not to eat after noon (and forgive me for being too lazy to look up the exact quote): he said it was for their health and “lightness.” In fact, it’s the only time I am aware that Buddha gave any advice whatsoever regarding health.

Nowadays many monks are very ill and diabetic as they age because the villagers will give them tons of sweets and rolls and poorly made Thai/Sri Lanakan Street food. They start their monasticism very skinny and eventually many get fat as they age. I used to think this was due to a slowing down of metabolism from the long term intermittent fasting, now I suspect it’s due to the nasty cheap vegetable oils and sugary wheat foods they are given. Just my thoughts on it.

Has to be food right? Cause forest monks walk a good amount and participate in maintainence tasks which can involve moderate intensity labour. From what I saw worst cases are in city wats where they have same diet but use vehicles for getting around plus do a lot of intellectual type of tasks.

 

[gately]

Has to be food right? Cause forest monks walk a good amount and participate in maintainence tasks which can involve moderate intensity labour. From what I saw worst cases are in city wats where they have same diet but use vehicles for getting around plus do a lot of intellectual type of tasks.

Yeah, I think it’s the food, too. For a while, as I said, I thought it was the IF, because of the anti-fasting sentiment in early days of Ray Peat land, but I have seen IF work for so many people long term, that I now think it’s the food quality. If you’re eating rancid seed oil laden noodles + fried wheat sugar rolls type crap once a day in large enough amounts, not even daily IF and exercise is going to burn through that level of toxicity.

 

[lvysaur]

Tamas is inertia, dullness, and apathy. It's the feeling you get when you eat nothing but pre-packaged bakery goods that have been sitting on a store shelf for months, like ding-dongs and Cheetos food from a gas station.

Except that isn't at all the feeling I get from eating savory snacks like Cheetos. The feeling I get is "inappropriately" energetic, sometimes twitching, hyperfocused, and jumpy. I interpret this as an excessively Rajasic state.

Likewise, you yourself said that inertia is a part of "Tamas". So by that definition, red meat is inherently at least partially Tamasic. All I am saying is that red meat (and dense cheese) is inertial. They make my body and mind feel more massive. I can even move my thumb in a much smoother and less jerky fashion after eating red meat, as if my thumb literally weighs more.

And the other part of what I'm saying is that the other parts of Tamas (dullness, apathy, lethargy) are not something that I get with red meat consumption. I get them with fermented food consumption, maybe alcohol. The Sattvic and Rajasic categories more or less make sense to me. So all I'm saying is that the Tamasic category, based on my experiences, would do better being split into two separate categories.

 

[gately]

Except that isn't at all the feeling I get from eating savory snacks like Cheetos. The feeling I get is "inappropriately" energetic, sometimes twitching, hyperfocused, and jumpy. I interpret this as an excessively Rajasic state.

Likewise, you yourself said that inertia is a part of "Tamas". So by that definition, red meat is inherently at least partially Tamasic. All I am saying is that red meat (and dense cheese) is inertial. They make my body and mind feel more massive. I can even move my thumb in a much smoother and less jerky fashion after eating red meat, as if my thumb literally weighs more.

And the other part of what I'm saying is that the other parts of Tamas (dullness, apathy, lethargy) are not something that I get with red meat consumption. I get them with fermented food consumption, maybe alcohol. The Sattvic and Rajasic categories more or less make sense to me. So all I'm saying is that the Tamasic category, based on my experiences, would do better being split into two separate categories.

If an artificial-laden food like Cheetos causes twitching and acute stimulation I’d say that’s more indicative of an adverse reaction to something in the food versus the distinct nature of its gunas. (And twitching would likely be more indicative of vata rather than pitta, IMO. But that’s not the point.)

But maybe Cheetos was a bad example. It’s been too long since I’ve had some. I can say that those pre-packaged lifeless pastries you can find at most gas stations which have been sitting there for months will reliably produce a tamasic state for me: apathy, inertia, dullness. But it’s been a long time since I’ve had some of those, too.

My point was you can identify the guna quality of food for yourself, not that Cheetos were the definitive tamasic quality producing food.

Something to consider that might seem like a tangent is that gunas make up our entire material existence. I believe nearly everything has shades of tamas, rajas, and sattva to varying degrees. So in that sense, yes, red meat inherently likely contains some tamas, but it’s almost semantics at this point, because the overwhelming quality of fresh beef, for example, is pretty obviously not causing inertia, dullness, darkness, and apathy in most people. (It could produce ama though, especially in someone who couldn’t digest it, and the clogging, toxic nature of ama could produce tamasic qualities...but that’s also besides the point.) When you identify the quality of a guna like tamas you then know what mantras (or rather what repeated combination of sounds) will produce a state of tamas. What music. What foods. What people. What drugs. What thoughtforms. What postures. Is it to some degree individual? Probably. But like everything else in life, there are general trends, including food qualities. But you don’t need an “expert“ telling you the sky is blue, you can look up and see it for yourself.

The main point I wanted to get across by ranting and raving here is that we know pretty clearly that cultures that lived almost exclusively on red meat for the majority of the year, such as the mongols, were clearly not filled with an overwhelming sense of inertia, apathy, and dullness. (As I said, you can’t be an effective warrior if you’re overall state is tamasic.) So thus it is impossible red meat is de facto tamasic. The proof is in the (blood) pudding.

I find it interesting btw, that the standard way the Mongolians ate their red meat, was by boiling it in a pot with hot rocks. Boiling is, as I mentioned earlier, the most sattvic way of preparing meat.

Also, I don’t think your mind feeling “massive” or the slow and steady way cheese and red meat make your movements feel is a quality of inertia. Inertia is the tendency to not move at all. Your reaction to slow and steady movement from those foods is more indicative of it’s quality of density, which both of those foods are. As is the feeling of your head feeling “massive” which has nothing to do with inertia either. Again that is density. As I said earlier, it’s easy to mistake density with tamas.

You ever take a gigantic bong rip in highschool and just stare at a spot on the wall of my friend Jeff’s Led Zeppelin poster and just sort of fall into a state of pure apathy and thoughtless dullness, so much so that you couldn’t move a muscle in your arms if you wanted to, and the desire to do so completely removed even though there’s a box of cookies directly to your right, which previous to the epic rip you had very much wanted, but you still don’t grab one...not so much out of a sense of peace and equanimity, but out of sheer freaking laziness? And then Jeff says, “Whoa that was a huge rip man, do you want a glass a water?” But you have forgotten what water is. You don’t even have the capacity to ask yourself the question, “What is water?” You can only exist in a dull, dark, state of motionless ignorance as you stare blankly at the spot on the poster which has become the emblem of the eternal void you will remember for the rest of your natural life?

That’s tamas.

Hopefully that example is more exact than eating Cheetos and we’ve all been in my old friend’s Jeff’s basement taking overly huge bong rips once or twice.

 

[Korven]

You're welcome and you are getting it all right. Totally illuminating once you're exposed to authentic traditional knowledge, isn't it? Agni is king: 100%. Vegetables are not universally good for everyone. (I have a lot to say on that, but feel too wiped to rant on it right now.) And on food combining: One of the weirdest things for me about hardcore Ray Peat followers is their inability to tell that that certain food combination lead to Ama in the system. It might have something to do with the thyroid many here take (keeping the system very primed and revved up to handle whatever is thrown at it.) I have an extremely delicate system, do not take thyroid, and the effects of certain food combinations like orange juice and dairy, or fruit and meat, leave me feeling acutely bad in their respective ways. I have Crohn's disease which makes me incredibly sensitive to food combinations, so I sort of view myself as a canary in the coal mine, and strongly think there's a going to be a lot of deep-rooted ama issues (cancer) coming out of this forum in the next 15 years. Hope I'm wrong.

Yeah that's one thing I feel is severely lacking with typical Western understanding of diet and nutrition. You pick apart a food in a lab and it's got x amount of that, y amount of that, z amount of that, and so on. And that's all food is, just numbers on a paper. Then based on what the current paradigm of how the body works, and what healthy is, you can say that food is healthy and that other food is unhealthy. Clearly there's more to it than that, which is why I'm trying to learn more about TCM and Ayurveda which bring in other qualities of food. The Peat paradigm also suffers from this overly mechanical, conceptual, abstract thinking.

You seem pretty damn knowledgeable about these things.... any idea why starch messes me up so badly from an Ayurvedic perspective? It seems to digest fine (except for heartburn which makes me think that maybe I'm not digesting it fine) but eating starch as a staple reliably makes my health a lot worse long-term. Actually I get very sick from eating it to the point where I can barely function. I think it has to do with the gut fermentation setting off the cascade of endotoxin/serotonin/NO/adrenaline. Which I hate because I could totally live off of dahl, rice and bread, they are delicious prepared properly!

Milk and meat I do best with. They digest well, don't give me the starch issues, but instead seem to make my health much better long-term. Maybe I was a mongolian in another life lol!

 

[gately]

Yeah that's one thing I feel is severely lacking with typical Western understanding of diet and nutrition. You pick apart a food in a lab and it's got x amount of that, y amount of that, z amount of that, and so on. And that's all food is, just numbers on a paper. Then based on what the current paradigm of how the body works, and what healthy is, you can say that food is healthy and that other food is unhealthy. Clearly there's more to it than that, which is why I'm trying to learn more about TCM and Ayurveda which bring in other qualities of food. The Peat paradigm also suffers from this overly mechanical, conceptual, abstract thinking.

You seem pretty damn knowledgeable about these things.... any idea why starch messes me up so badly from an Ayurvedic perspective? It seems to digest fine (except for heartburn which makes me think that maybe I'm not digesting it fine) but eating starch as a staple reliably makes my health a lot worse long-term. Actually I get very sick from eating it to the point where I can barely function. I think it has to do with the gut fermentation setting off the cascade of endotoxin/serotonin/NO/adrenaline. Which I hate because I could totally live off of dahl, rice and bread, they are delicious prepared properly!

Milk and meat I do best with. They digest well, don't give me the starch issues, but instead seem to make my health much better long-term. Maybe I was a mongolian in another life lol!

I don’t know why you have trouble with starch from an Ayurvedic perspective, other than to state the obvious which is it’s a problem of digestion, but I also don’t think Ayurveda or TCM will have many answers for you. Both are useful for understanding healing in a broader sense, and if you study them enough they change the way you see the world, much like anything I suppose, but I strongly suggest that if you are researching them with the goal to heal your present issues: look elsewhere. They are essentially dead systems of medicine getting almost zero significant results even in their home countries.

PM me a whole lot of more detail about your reactions to starch, what kinds of starch you’ve tried, your current diet and lifestyle, and what you’ve already tried and your reactions to those things ...and maybe if we’re lucky I’ll have an idea that might be helpful. But in a nutshell it sounds like some form of dysbiosis and endotoxin reaction, which you’ve probably figured out. The goal then is to find a way to empirically diagnose what’s gone wrong and find a way to treat it. Or, failing some diagnostic to work off of, just use some kind of restrictive diet + anti microbial + digestive aid shotgun approach and hope for the best. Of which there’s many useless paths to take and a few, usually, fruitful ones.

I have my own mysterious digestive issues I haven’t yet been able to solve so I’m hardly an expert, but I’ve seen what’s worked and what hasn’t for most people enough to suggest some things.