I am catching up on some reading and contrary to what I thought, eating on an Ayurvedic diet doesn’t just mean eating legumes, rice and vegetables. A basic Ayurveda diet principles can be applied to any cuisine, be it Mediterranean, Asian, European, or whichever kind you prefer.

Ayurveda recognizes six tastes and it’s quite important to have all of them in your diet every day. The six tastes are:

Sweet – sugar, honey, rice, pasta, milk, etc.

Sour – lemons, hard cheese, yogurt, vinegar, etc.

Salty – salt, any salty food

Pungent – chili peppers, cayenne, ginger, any hot spice

Bitter – leafy greens, turmeric, lettuce, etc.

Astringent – pomegranate, beans, lentils, etc.

These six tastes are listed in the order they are digested in your body. Sweet gets digested first, that’s why it’s not a good idea to have a dessert at the end of the meal (which is typical in our culture) but rather at the beginning. How is that for an Ayurvedic diet tip! Salad, on the other hand, is perfect at the end of the meal. As I was catching up on reading about it, I remembered this in Europe. An Ayurveda Diet has a very holistic-medicine point-of-view about diet.