(Excerpt FOOD YOGA - Nourishing the Soul by Priya Vrata)
God could not be everywhere, so he created
mothers.
- Jewish Proverb
Nothing can compare to a home
cooked meal from a loving mother. We’ve already talked about the risk we take
with our emotional, physical and spiritual well-being when we eat out. Well, in
the ideal home, a mother’s cooking is filled with loving intention and healing
energy and is therefore the best
source of spiritual and physical nutrition on the planet! (Of course, with modern
gender roles so blurred, the same could be said of a loving father.)
The sad truth, however, is that,
with mothers all over the world ceding control of the dinner table to scientists,
food marketers and governments, a terrible thing happened. Tradition and common
sense went out the window, and as Michael Pollan notes, “Thirty years of
nutritional advice have left us fatter, sicker, and more poorly nourished.
Which is why we find ourselves in the predicament we do: in need of a whole new
way to think about eating.[1]”
A loving nurturer like a mother
will invest all her loving intention into the meals she prepares. That sort of
loving intention is not only invaluable, but also worshipable. In fact, in the
Vedic tradition, the father (Pitru Devo
Bhavaa) and mother (Matru Devo Bhavaa)
are considered the first guru and second guru respectively and should therefore
be worshipped.
In Sanskrit, the word “Guru”
consists of two words: “Gu” – which
means darkness or ignorance and “Ru” which means “remover of.” The guru is
someone who helps to remove ignorance from our hearts and enlightens us.
In the Bible, it is also stated:
Honor thy father and mother; which is the
first commandment with promise; That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest
live long on the earth.
I have provided a comparison
chart between food prepared by a loving Mother and that which you can buy in a
restaurant. I could have extended this list indefinitely, but these are what I
feel to be the most important pros and cons of eating a meal prepared by one’s loving
mother versus a meal prepared by a restaurant:
Prepared by a loving Mother
|
Prepared
at a Restaurant
|
Made
with loving intention
|
Made
with the intention
of profit |
Prepared
carefully
|
Prepared
hastily
|
Cleanliness
honored
|
Cleanliness
compromised
|
Selfless
|
Selfish
|
Focused
intention
|
Distracted
intention
|
Pure
motivation
|
Material
motivation
|
It is easy to see the benefits
of eating a home cooked meal, and yet, every year, Americans will spend, on
average, $1,000 eating out (which is said to be less than it once was).
Good Magazine, in partnership with Whole
Foods, chronicled[2]
the proportion of income Americans spend on food today as compared to the past.
And guess what? They’re spending less than ever.
In 1949, Americans spent 22% of
their incomes on food, whereas in 2009 they spent a meager 10%. However, of
this 10%, nearly half (40%)[3] is
spent on food away from home, and research[4]
has found that meals prepared outside the home are less healthful.
How is this so? Because, while
saving money seems like a good thing, the cheap processed foods we buy outside
are often produced by factory farming and industrial agriculture and supported
by government subsidies, which we ultimately pay for in the form of taxes.
Also, with jumbo-sized products being priced more economically, Americans may
be getting more for their dollar, but they’re also gaining more weight, losing
their health, spending more on healthcare, and supporting environmentally
unsustainable practices.
The Seven Mothers
According to the Vedic
tradition, there are actually seven mothers in our life:
The first mother is our
biological mother, from whose womb we have come to this world. Then there is the
wife of the teacher or spiritual master; the wife of a priest; the wife of the
king, or the queen; the cow;
the nurse or caregiver; and finally, the earth, often referred to as “Mother
Nature.” In Sanskrit, the country in which we take birth is called desa matrika or “motherland.” We refer
to our language as “mother tongue.” So you can see that there are so many
mothers, including the cow, in the Hindu tradition, because of her selfless
service to provide milk. In India, a cow is sometimes addressed as amba, which also means mother.
There is one common principle
that characterizes all genuine mothers, and that is selfless, loving service to
their dependents. This pure loving intention is the true life giving force that
our mothers nurture us with. Whether it is milk from her breast or the fruit of
a tree, a mother’s offering is pure. No matter how hard modern science tries to
emulate the pure offering of a mother, it will never succeed. The failed
history of baby formula is a case in point. In a recent report by the
Environmental Working Group (EWG), tests performed on liquid baby formulas
found that they all contained bisphenol A
(BPA). All major baby formula manufacturers use this leaching,
hormone-mimicking chemical in the linings of the metal cans in which baby
formula is sold.
BPA has been found to cause
hyperactivity, reproductive abnormalities and pediatric brain cancer in lab
animals. Increasingly, scientists suspect that BPA might be linked to several medical
problems in humans, including breast and testicular cancer.
Food is a gift from MOTHER Earth
Humans cannot actually manufacture food.
We can manipulate ingredients, but it is impossible for us to create food from
scratch. Of course you could plant a seed and cultivate a garden, but who
created the seed? Within every seed lies a dormant plant or tree, ready to
fruit and spread more seed. The phenomenon is an endless cycle of kinetic
transmutation of nature, to which Man has little to do with. American
Playwright, George Bernard Shaw put it this way:
Think of the fierce energy concentrated in
an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and
it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep,
and nothing happens but decay.
Despite technological advances in food
production, including cloning and genetic manipulation of foods, genetic
scientists have failed to create a single blade of grass from raw chemicals. Genetic
engineering (GE) and genetically modified organisms (GMO) are, in reality, just
modifications of what has already been naturally created by God. It is absurd
to think that we can ever match the brilliance of Mother Nature and create like
her.
[1] In Defense of Food,
Michael Pollen p 81
[2] Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reyxkSWUjLI&
[3] US. Department of Labor, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer
Expenditures in 2007 (Washington DC 2009)
[4] J.F.Guthrie, B.H. Lin, and E Frazao, Role of food prepared away
from home in the American diet, 1977-78 versus 1994-96: Changes and
consequences, J Nutr Educ Behav 34 (2002): 140-50
