waste, meaning extra weight, starts to accumulate and, when the intestinal “vessel” is full, it begins
distributing the waste to other areas of the body as well.
This increase of waste-weight may tempt you to go on a restrictive diet for a while. But the more often
you go on a diet, the less successful it becomes. Each new diet requires a different type of metabolism.
The continual abuse of your natural weight regulation reduces AGNI, the digestive fire, to a point when
almost no foods, even fresh, healthy foods, can be tolerated and utilized by the body. At such a stage,
obese people complain that they are putting on weight although they are hardly eating anything.
The producers of light-foods know all that. Since light-foods have become available in the
supermarkets, the sales of normal foods have increased too. If light-food had the effect of curbing
appetites and reducing the consumption of ordinary foods, you can take it for granted that light products
would have never made it into the food market. These man-made foods have certainly not been made
available to create a healthier population.
The Calorie-Plan Fiasco
What is most discouraging in the confusion around food today is that our generation is perhaps the first
one in the entire history of mankind to lose its natural instinct to know which foods are good for us and
which ones are not. We have left it to experts or nutritional scientists to make certain that we are being
nourished in the best possible way. Food is no longer considered to be God’s gift to man but a mere
collection of chemical components, including calories or joules, vitamins, fats, proteins and their various
amino acid components, carbohydrates, trace elements, etc. If the figures of nutritional daily requirements
were correct, no one in the world could ever be healthy because everyone would miss out on one vitamin,
mineral, trace element, or the other. For example, we would have to eat massive amounts of liver and
herring, to avoid vitamin D deficiency. Yet those who have never eaten fish or liver in their entire lives
have no less vitamin D in their bodies than those who eat it regularly.
Actually, the official figures for nutritional requirements are unreliable and misleading. In a major
study at the University Hospital in Vienna, researchers first calculated the nutritional values of the
patients’ diet according to the official nutritional figures and then analyzed the same food items in the
laboratory for their true nutritional contents. The experiment lasted for 38 days and the results were
astounding. The calculated figures for calories were 1/3 higher than were actually found through chemical
analysis. The difference with regard to carbohydrates was 44 percent, with regard to protein 50 percent,
and with regard to fats 60 percent! The conclusion of the study was that no process reliably shows what is
contained in food. Besides, foods such as tomatoes, potatoes, fruits, and vegetables change their
nutritional contents according to seasons, preparation, and storage and have different constituents in
different countries due to varied climatic, soil, and geographical conditions.
In addition, the information that indigestible fiber contained in whole foods doesn’t release calories is
incorrect. It is true that our body has no enzymes to digest fiber but we have plenty of bacteria in our
intestinal tract that can do this job even better than enzymes do. All fiber reaches the colon in undigested
form. Just as the bacteria in nature easily break down food fiber, so do the bacteria of the intestinal flora
digest the fiber that passes through the intestines. This may result in undesirable gases caused by
fermentation and release various fatty acids that are absorbed by the large intestines to serve as a source of
energy, which means they provide calories. Pectin, for example, is a fiber found in apples and can provide
283 calories per 100g, as much as in a 100g of ice cream!
The dilemma that arises from eating according to a calorie plan is that nobody can tell you for sure
how many calories are locked in a particular food, nor is it known how many calories are being utilized by
each individual. A Kapha type, for instance, has a slow metabolic rate and uses up less energy than a Vata