The cook’s role

OUR PHILOSOPHY

Food nourishes our body, mind, conscience and soul.
By helping our body remain healthy, our mind will also work better, and we will achieve greater balance. Moreover, if our mind and conscience are supported by good activity, our body will also feel better.
After eating a meal that was too big, too small or not well cooked, we have all felt tired, depressed and irritable.
The same happens if you eat when you are anxious, angry or nervous – you may not digest the food at all. You may get a headache or feel some other discomfort.
It is interesting to observe that eating changes our mood, mental attitude, feelings, propensity to more or less lofty thoughts.
If we eat a well-designed diet, we feel better and do not get sick. We can plan our diet to achieve a desired physical, mental or spiritual result.
It is not sufficient for athletes to simply eat, they also have to train, just like scientists, who must study. The results are exponentially more effective if you add mystical practices to your activities.
The Ayurveda dietary models, Chinese dietetics and Steiner’s philosophy explain in detail the processes that can be adapted to every individual’s constitution.
It should also be noted that physical diseases, not linked to the passing of time and our constitution, are most often of a psychological nature.
By adopting a healthy diet, doing appropriate physical activity and with a balanced psyche, we can extend our life expectancy as we will be less sick. Thus, it is also possible to avoid obstacles linked to our constitution and Karma, as the predisposition of every human to these is linked to the activities that are carried out.
A healthy diet
I developed an interest in eating well many years ago.
I usually study the contents of a particular diet and then test it on myself, cooking and eating the dishes suggested for long enough for them to have an effect on me.
I have always approached complete diets, in which there is a deep body-mind-spirit relationship.
It is true that if we keep our body healthy, the other parts of our being will feel better. It is even more true, however, that only by adopting a complete – holistic ̶ vision, can we act in a much more whole-hearted way.
Many diets available on the market are unbalanced if they are skewed towards false and dangerous life patterns. It is true, for instance, that if we are not fat, we are better off, but we must not become too thin at all costs because this does not necessarily make us healthier. Quite the opposite, it can lead to mental problems and unhappiness. Some smokers do not stop smoking so that they remain thin, there are people who eat meat-only diets to lose weight, and yet others who take laxatives too often without considering the dangers caused by overusing them. These people lose weight, but their skinniness is caused by an unhealthy imbalance. This condition also influences their minds and consciousness.
Each of us has a different physical-mental-spiritual constitution. Therefore, we should identify a dietary model that is suitable for us and not follow it for futile reasons, which are completely different to our way of being.
For these reasons, after reading the biographies of people who invented these incomplete diets, I immediately set them aside.
To be effective, a diet must correspond to an ethical, moral and spiritual order. Firstly, it is essential that the values of the person who follows a certain diet comply with those of the person who is proposing a particular food model. Only then can the diet help us improve our condition.
For thirty years now, I have been inspired by and I have been studying the more comprehensive diet models, which I experiment on myself and implement in my cuisine. However, I am fully aware of my limits and that I can always learn new things.
The three important schools of thought on diets I have examined are: anthroposophy, Chinese dietetics and Ayurveda.
Anthroposophy follows the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, the great philosopher, agronomist, educator and spiritualist.
When I lived in China and Japan I learned about Chinese dietetics, an extraordinary philosophical and food system that investigates the functioning of the body in relation to the Cosmos.
Over the last fifteen years I have approached Ayurveda, a style of eating that completely suits my way of being. This school of thought emphasises the importance of choosing a vegetarian diet to remain healthy and, also, to aspire to the evolution of one’s consciousness. Ayurveda states that Ahimsa is a more effective means of approaching God.
General nutrition rules
Our body is part of nature, and therefore, if the food we eat is not altered, we keep it healthy.
Our diet should alternate between raw and more vital foods and foods that are cooked and more easily assimilated by our body.
The food we choose must be fresh and come from a nearby area. It should be grown respecting nature and its seasons, cooked and eaten as soon as possible, ideally not later than half an hour after it has been prepared.
Vegetables must be cooked quickly and in a simple manner in order not to alter their essence, which consists of their colour, flavour and texture, which, together with nutritional values and for different reasons, contribute to keeping our bodies healthy.
Fruit is better eaten raw, while cereals and pulses must be well-cooked in pure water.
Fat, which is indispensable for assimilating substances and perceiving flavours, must be added at the end of the cooking process. This is true for herbs too, which are volatile in terms of flavour, but are important to stimulate digestion and give us pleasure.
The pleasure of eating for a higher purpose is one of the pillars of health, viewed from a holistic perspective.
Spices must penetrate food and be added first. Their purpose is to make food easier to assimilate and, as in the case of herbs, of stimulating digestive and other bodily functions.
Cheeses are more suitable when fresh. More mature cheeses are harder to assimilate. They must also come from animal-friendly farms. If animals are respected, the quality of their milk is better, both from a nutritional and energetic point of view.
Digestion and the transformation of nutrients into energy at all levels is facilitated and stimulated very effectively by fermented food products, a panacea found in every food tradition.
Fermented products are yoghurt, miso – fermented soyabeans – sauerkraut, sourdough, vinegar and yeast. They break down the precious substances present in food and set up the digestive process.
Another fundamental rule, as anthroposophy teaches us, is to choose unrefined food. The body must slowly assimilate substances, in a similar way to how a tree absorbs them from the earth. Therefore, sugar, alcohol and refined cereals should be limited or avoided. In order to make them more digestible, you can combine them with lots of vegetables that provide the sufficient amount of fibres, mineral salts and vitamins required for good digestion.
A healthy body easily adapts to changes and naturally uses the energies it has built up and preserved for different situations: physical, mental and spiritual.
In general, it is better to choose a varied diet, in which vegetables and fruit are the main ingredients, cereals are second, followed by proteins and fats that should not constitute more than 10% of the amount of food that is ingested.
Finally, it is better to eat small amounts rather than too much. Ayurveda emphasises that in addition to the aforementioned proportions of the different foods, you should never fill your stomach to more than half of its capacity. A weekly fast should also be observed to purify the body and you should follow a vegetarian diet.
The right food
Food nourishes all the dimensions of our being: the body, mind, psyche and the spirit. If we eat the most suitable foods, carefully cooked and eaten with the right attitude, we will be healthy. If we do not respect one of these principles, we will not be well prepared for diseases, that can appear at all levels of our existence.
It is also known that disease, besides being due to the food we eat, is caused by bad habits. Bad eating habits often correspond to bad habits in general. For example, the habit of not eating proper meals may stem from an overall chaotic way of living. Bad habits can become pathological, but good habits purify us and help us develop other good ones.
Exercise and breathing are also important.
If we are unsatisfied with our life, improving our habits can solve most of the obstacles we have accumulated ̶ obstacles to feeling well and being happier.
By choosing the food we eat, we can change our physical wellbeing, mental attitude, feelings, and tendency to have more or less lofty thoughts.
A targeted diet allows us to feel better and not get sick, but we can also plan it to achieve a physical, mental or spiritual result.
A healthy diet, reinforced by ongoing physical activity and a balanced psyche can lengthen our life expectancy by 30%, reduce diseases, and therefore suffering, by 90%, and avoid many of the problems related to our constitution and experience.
The results achieved by following a suitable diet are even more noticeable if you practise an introspective activity.
Food and spiritual practice
What we eat is what we are and what we have sown in this and our past lives. If what we eat is not wrong compared to what we are, we still have the chance to change according to a transformation to that to which we aspire. Eating just for the sake of it leads nowhere, and often our habits are not very good because they are linked to models that have been suggested to us by others and are not in line with our way of being.
There are food styles that constrain us, while others free us.
It is healthy to follow an advanced, open-minded and evolutionary diet, which is well represented by the vegetarian diet.
This helps us to be less prone to illnesses and more clear-headed. A way of life and food choices that strive to avoid violence, improve our relationship with our fellow citizens, all other beings and also ourselves.
Without this attitude, as yoga and Buddhism explain, not only is there no evolution, but there is also a risk of entering an involutionary spiral.
When we actually decide to change, once we have understood what is best for us, beyond our level of education and any mistakes we have made, an evolutionary leap forward will immediately occur. A leap forward in terms of body and mental wellbeing, our happiness, self-gratification, concentration, willpower, clear-mindedness, and understanding our desires.

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