P.J.
0
WHY INDIANS EAT WITH THEIR HANDS
You may have often wondered why people eat with their hands in Kerala. Eating food with your hands feeds not only the body but also the mind and the spirit. That is the Vedic wisdom behind Kerala's famous Banana Leaf Experience whose pleasure can only be appreciated fully, it is said, if one eats with hands and not fork and spoon.
Traditionally, Indians -- not just in Kerala -- have always eaten with their hands but the experience and its virtues have been elevated to a gastronomic art by the chefs at Vivanta by Taj Bekal, a picturesque 26-acre resort in the northern Kasaragod district of Kerala, flanked by the famous backwaters and the Lakshadweep Sea.
And to lend logic to the eating-by-hand experience for fussy foreigners, especially Westerners who would think twice before scooping up curry with their fingers, the maitre d'hotel lays before each guest at Latitude - the multi-cuisine restaurant with an accent on regional Kerala cuisine and a scenic view of serene waters and swaying palm fronds - captured pithily in printed paper the "Vedic wisdom behind eating with your hands".
"Our hands and feet are said to be the conduits of the five elements. The Ayurvedic texts teach that each finger is an extension of one of the five elements. The thumb is agni (fire) -- you might have seen children sucking their thumb, this is nature's way of aiding the digestion at an age when they are unable to chew; the forefinger is vayu (air), the middle finger is akash (ether -- the tiny intercellular spaces in the human body), the ring finger is prithvi (earth) and the little finger is jal (water)," the paper explains.
The 'banana leaf experience' has been redefined by the hotel from the traditional 'sadya', or banquet, in Malayalam, says Ashok Pillai, the executive sous chief. Sadya is traditionally a vegetarian meal served on a banana leaf on special occasions, during weddings and other celebrations. All the dishes are served on the leaf and eaten with hands sans cutlery, the palm and fingers being cupped to form a ladle.
A sadya can have about 24-28 dishes served as a single course and is usually served for lunch as it is quite heavy on the stomach. Preparations begin at dawn and the dishes are made before 10 in the morning on the day of the celebration. "At Vivanta by Taj at Bekal we have given a twist to the experience by adding delectable preparation of fish or meats as per request," Samir Khanna, the affable general manager, told IANS during a recent trip.
The centerpiece of sadya is navara, a medicinal rice type, that is one of the native genetic resources of Kerala and famed for its use in Ayurveda. Navara is used as a nutritional rice and health food and is said to be therapeutic for conditions such as arthritis, paralysis, ulcers, urinary tract infections, neuralgic and neurological disorders.
For a novitiate to Kerala cuisine, the food does not stop coming, and the helpings are as much as you can ingest. Most people stop at the second helping and react in surprise when waiters with buckets of curry offer to ladle more on the leaf-plate.
Foreigners, after their initial cultural reservations about eating with their hands, awkwardly slurp and lap up the food, any messiness be damned. As a concession to non-vegetarians, karimeen or pearl spot, the local fish, is served fried or in curry form.
Since the "experience" requires some preparation, those guests who want to partake of it need to intimate the chef in advance and tables are laid out separately in the restaurant for those who are eating on the banana leaf.
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Our hands and feet are said to be the conduits of the five elements. The Ayurvedic texts teach that each finger is an extension of one of the five elements. Through the thumb comes space; through the forefinger, air; through the mid-finger, fire; through the ring finger, water and through the little finger it is earth.
Each finger aids in the transformation of food, before it passes on to internal digestion. Gathering the fingertips as they touch the food stimulates the five elements and invites Agni to bring forth the digestive juices. As well as improving digestion the person becomes more conscious of the tastes, textures and smells of the foods they are eating, which all adds to the pleasure of eating.
Indian people eat with their bare hands, actually with the right hand (left hand is considered unclean as it is used for wiping the bottom etc.)
This may sound barbaric and uncivilized to non-Indians, especially westerners, but when you shed all the prejudices and biases, you realize that it actually provides significant benefits besides being a cultural custom.
The most common benefit heard is that when eating with your hands, you are able to verify the temperature of the food before putting it into your mouth and in this way to avoid the burning of your mouth in case the food is too hot.
But there is another benefit, an energetic one:
When the food passes your hand before it enters your body, it undergoes an energetic cleansing, similar to the one some do before eating by placing their palms above the food.
Energetic cleansing of food is highly important. As with any other material, food absorbs the energies of the people through which it passed: the seller in the market, the cooks, the waiters, and so on. Naturally, all these people carry their own accumulated mental charge, negative and positive, expressed energetically in pains, feelings, emotions, impressions, thoughts, reactive patterns and conditionings. Energetic cleansing of the food assures that most of these energies will not infiltrate your body with the food and make their effects from the inside.
The kind of food you eat decides the kind of utensils you use. There is no one size fits all. If it is a burger or a sandwich, you better eat it with bare hands smile emoticon. Imagine sitting in McDonalds joint and eating every fry with fork and trying to cut the burger with a knife.
Fork usage primarily came from Italy where eating hot pasta with bare hands was a problem. During the Renaissance, Italian culture became the in trend thing and the table manners of eating with fork & knife spread elsewhere. Fork & knife, make real sense when you have bulk meat that you want to cut. Also, when the foodstuffs are little more homogenized, these devices work better.
Indian foods are so diverse in form and structure that no group of metallic devices would really do the complete job. You need to use all the dexterity of your fingers to manage the food. It is not without reason that we are given opposing thumbs wink emoticon [The papad in the center of the plate has to be broken (like Tortilla chips) and fork would not work in this case.]
A SMALL JOKE FOR SHARING :-The Indian president, Dr. Radhakrishnan, met Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill and they sat down for lunch. Before sitting, Dr. Radhakrishnan washed his hands and as the meal was served, he used his hands in eating the meal. Churchill told Dr. Radhakrishnan, "Why are you using your hands? Use spoon and fork, they are more hygienic".
Dr.Radhakrishnan's repartee was, "Since nobody has used my hand to eat before, my hand is more hygienic than any spoon you can find."
This is the most apt reason WE have found for eating with bare hands!!
COIMBATORE VENKATA SUBBA RAO RAGHAVENDRA RAO
Source:
http://www.quora.com/Why-do-a-good-number-of-Indians-eat-us…
.http://food.ndtv.com/…/vedic-wisdom-behind-eating-with-you…/
http://www.foodrepublic.com/…/rules-eating-your-hands-india…
You may have often wondered why people eat with their hands in Kerala. Eating food with your hands feeds not only the body but also the mind and the spirit. That is the Vedic wisdom behind Kerala's famous Banana Leaf Experience whose pleasure can only be appreciated fully, it is said, if one eats with hands and not fork and spoon.
Traditionally, Indians -- not just in Kerala -- have always eaten with their hands but the experience and its virtues have been elevated to a gastronomic art by the chefs at Vivanta by Taj Bekal, a picturesque 26-acre resort in the northern Kasaragod district of Kerala, flanked by the famous backwaters and the Lakshadweep Sea.
And to lend logic to the eating-by-hand experience for fussy foreigners, especially Westerners who would think twice before scooping up curry with their fingers, the maitre d'hotel lays before each guest at Latitude - the multi-cuisine restaurant with an accent on regional Kerala cuisine and a scenic view of serene waters and swaying palm fronds - captured pithily in printed paper the "Vedic wisdom behind eating with your hands".
"Our hands and feet are said to be the conduits of the five elements. The Ayurvedic texts teach that each finger is an extension of one of the five elements. The thumb is agni (fire) -- you might have seen children sucking their thumb, this is nature's way of aiding the digestion at an age when they are unable to chew; the forefinger is vayu (air), the middle finger is akash (ether -- the tiny intercellular spaces in the human body), the ring finger is prithvi (earth) and the little finger is jal (water)," the paper explains.
The 'banana leaf experience' has been redefined by the hotel from the traditional 'sadya', or banquet, in Malayalam, says Ashok Pillai, the executive sous chief. Sadya is traditionally a vegetarian meal served on a banana leaf on special occasions, during weddings and other celebrations. All the dishes are served on the leaf and eaten with hands sans cutlery, the palm and fingers being cupped to form a ladle.
A sadya can have about 24-28 dishes served as a single course and is usually served for lunch as it is quite heavy on the stomach. Preparations begin at dawn and the dishes are made before 10 in the morning on the day of the celebration. "At Vivanta by Taj at Bekal we have given a twist to the experience by adding delectable preparation of fish or meats as per request," Samir Khanna, the affable general manager, told IANS during a recent trip.
The centerpiece of sadya is navara, a medicinal rice type, that is one of the native genetic resources of Kerala and famed for its use in Ayurveda. Navara is used as a nutritional rice and health food and is said to be therapeutic for conditions such as arthritis, paralysis, ulcers, urinary tract infections, neuralgic and neurological disorders.
For a novitiate to Kerala cuisine, the food does not stop coming, and the helpings are as much as you can ingest. Most people stop at the second helping and react in surprise when waiters with buckets of curry offer to ladle more on the leaf-plate.
Foreigners, after their initial cultural reservations about eating with their hands, awkwardly slurp and lap up the food, any messiness be damned. As a concession to non-vegetarians, karimeen or pearl spot, the local fish, is served fried or in curry form.
Since the "experience" requires some preparation, those guests who want to partake of it need to intimate the chef in advance and tables are laid out separately in the restaurant for those who are eating on the banana leaf.
**************************************************
Our hands and feet are said to be the conduits of the five elements. The Ayurvedic texts teach that each finger is an extension of one of the five elements. Through the thumb comes space; through the forefinger, air; through the mid-finger, fire; through the ring finger, water and through the little finger it is earth.
Each finger aids in the transformation of food, before it passes on to internal digestion. Gathering the fingertips as they touch the food stimulates the five elements and invites Agni to bring forth the digestive juices. As well as improving digestion the person becomes more conscious of the tastes, textures and smells of the foods they are eating, which all adds to the pleasure of eating.
Indian people eat with their bare hands, actually with the right hand (left hand is considered unclean as it is used for wiping the bottom etc.)
This may sound barbaric and uncivilized to non-Indians, especially westerners, but when you shed all the prejudices and biases, you realize that it actually provides significant benefits besides being a cultural custom.
The most common benefit heard is that when eating with your hands, you are able to verify the temperature of the food before putting it into your mouth and in this way to avoid the burning of your mouth in case the food is too hot.
But there is another benefit, an energetic one:
When the food passes your hand before it enters your body, it undergoes an energetic cleansing, similar to the one some do before eating by placing their palms above the food.
Energetic cleansing of food is highly important. As with any other material, food absorbs the energies of the people through which it passed: the seller in the market, the cooks, the waiters, and so on. Naturally, all these people carry their own accumulated mental charge, negative and positive, expressed energetically in pains, feelings, emotions, impressions, thoughts, reactive patterns and conditionings. Energetic cleansing of the food assures that most of these energies will not infiltrate your body with the food and make their effects from the inside.
The kind of food you eat decides the kind of utensils you use. There is no one size fits all. If it is a burger or a sandwich, you better eat it with bare hands smile emoticon. Imagine sitting in McDonalds joint and eating every fry with fork and trying to cut the burger with a knife.
Fork usage primarily came from Italy where eating hot pasta with bare hands was a problem. During the Renaissance, Italian culture became the in trend thing and the table manners of eating with fork & knife spread elsewhere. Fork & knife, make real sense when you have bulk meat that you want to cut. Also, when the foodstuffs are little more homogenized, these devices work better.
Indian foods are so diverse in form and structure that no group of metallic devices would really do the complete job. You need to use all the dexterity of your fingers to manage the food. It is not without reason that we are given opposing thumbs wink emoticon [The papad in the center of the plate has to be broken (like Tortilla chips) and fork would not work in this case.]
A SMALL JOKE FOR SHARING :-The Indian president, Dr. Radhakrishnan, met Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill and they sat down for lunch. Before sitting, Dr. Radhakrishnan washed his hands and as the meal was served, he used his hands in eating the meal. Churchill told Dr. Radhakrishnan, "Why are you using your hands? Use spoon and fork, they are more hygienic".
Dr.Radhakrishnan's repartee was, "Since nobody has used my hand to eat before, my hand is more hygienic than any spoon you can find."
This is the most apt reason WE have found for eating with bare hands!!
COIMBATORE VENKATA SUBBA RAO RAGHAVENDRA RAO
Source:
http://www.quora.com/Why-do-a-good-number-of-Indians-eat-us…
.http://food.ndtv.com/…/vedic-wisdom-behind-eating-with-you…/
http://www.foodrepublic.com/…/rules-eating-your-hands-india…