When food has a 90% impact on health, why we just focus on lifestyle which is 10% only

“Everyone has a different purpose in life, but don’t most of us want to enjoy good health and longevity”, the son asked his father.

The father, also an Ayurvedacharya, (an Ayurvedic master) replied nonchalantly “what bothers you my son? Are you still in doubt with the changes of the past year? Change is the name of the game and taking responsibility for your own life is yours”.

Are the sheer number of more than 100 million suffering and 2 million lost lives casting heavy on your soul? Life gives us many experiences for a reason.

Not satisfied with the cryptic response, the son persisted “when technology has advanced at a rapid pace when medicine and medical care has improved vastly in the last 20 years, why did everyone suffer so much in this pandemic?

Not only physically, but also mentally, financially, psychologically, spiritually and financially”. I thought humanity has prospered and progressed. “But the reality is in stark contrast”, and he paused midway.

Son, listen attentively “when we nourish ourselves with gratitude for the deep wisdom of nature; we are returning this love and respect by honoring our life as sacred and interconnected with all, there is.

By nourishing ourselves in nature’s way, we are given a map to live by that honors and unites the life, death, light, and dark equally”.

The father continued “thus, deepening our relationship with mother nature through the food we eat, infusing our bodies with her consciousness through the energy of food growing right around us will have a greater effect on our consciousness, on the physical, emotional, spiritual, and collective levels as well as on our overall state of well-being.”

Things have changed dramatically over the last few decades, though not in a straight line. Theories came, and theories went. Opinions swung to and fro, with wave on wave of dietary advice.

No corner of traditional nutrition science and the advice it gave has gone untouched, and the swings from one spectrum to another are as vigorous as ever.

Clearly, there has been much confusion in nutritional science this past half-century, and there still is. As Spector says, while some nutritionists advise us to nibble continuously (“grazing”), others recommend a few big meals.

Over the past 30 years, too, “almost every component of our diet has been picked on as the villain by some expert or other” and yet “our diets continue to deteriorate.”

These are profound teachings, thought the son. But he still was trying to break this down into actionable points, like every young one who shows impatience with wisdom but wants a more action-oriented approach towards life. His father was able to sense his restlessness.

But why is our immunity so weak, notwithstanding the resources at our disposal” exclaimed the son. What is it that we are missing, and why developed nations fared worst during the pandemic? Don’t they have all the money and the best of medical science to deal with this better?

He was clearly agitated! He thought that the rich nations would provide the much need assistance and support to the poor nation to come out of this dark tunnel. But his theory has been proved wrong due to the poor handling of the pandemic in most European nations and the US.

His father was in a trance. His theory of the long impending health crisis and the nation’s inability to deal with the same stood naked. Humanity has been caught with its pants down, the social, economic, and racial chasm was never so apparent.

And everything pointed to the existential crisis. But no one was sure to how come out of this vicious cycle. The uncertainty, poor handling, and lack of foresightedness put 40% of the world population at a greater risk.

The world is passing through an unprecedented level of stress and division. How can one heal the wound and build the consciousness and empathy to deal with future crises?

He cleared his throat and started slowly “building immunity is not an overnight process”. This is a lifelong commitment with no shortcuts and cheat days.

As we would agree all things have “prana” or life force and food being no less. It is a less quantifiable measure than, say, calories which is nothing but a mere unit of measurement.

Ancient people understood as we all do intuitively, that the nature of all things in this universe is energy. In traditional cultures, it is known by different names such as Prana, Chi, or Qi.

We can get lost in the exotic terms and forget the fundamental fact of these teachings that everything has energy.

An object charged with “prana” protrudes like a magnetic field, traditionally people used various rituals like offering foods as "prasadam" (offering to Gods) to deities in order to infuse the food with “prana” which only strengthened our connection with food and mother nature.

Various studies reveal that the diets of indigenous people were nutritionally far superior; their cooking techniques retained the good bacteria as well as shelf life too.

As the world is changing so are our views about food and nutrition. We are falling into the trap of materialism and reductionism where food is viewed as a sum of its parts leading to a fetishistic obsession with physical properties such as proteins, vitamins, minerals, and calories.

A controversial and talked about topics like a diet cannot be oversimplified and reduced to numbers. Neither does it work on the principle of selective omissions and inclusions as postulated by the nuevo dietary fads. As a result, we have become more prone to intolerance, allergies, deficiencies, and delusions.

“Let’s talk about our immunity, shall we,” asked the father. By now the winter sun stretched its orange hues across the horizon.

It was time for the evening rituals. Shall we continue tomorrow to learn how can we build immunity, said the father? Though eager to carry this conversation further, the son nodded his head in agreement respecting his father's dinacharya (daily regime).

To continue