What Are The Six Tastes of Ayurveda?

Six Tastes of Ayurveda, is a perfectly balanced diet? It should encompass food items from different food groups that have proper nutrient values and of course, you should understand the requirement on a daily basis of these nutrients.

If you keep eating an unbalanced diet continuously, then over a period of time, you will suffer from ill health that may be due to a deficiency or maybe an overdose of some nutrients. But it is improbable that all of us are aware of the dietary requirements of our bodies.

In such a case, you should resort to Ayurveda, the age-old treatment therapy gaining immense popularity worldwide today. Ayurveda entails a complex dietary requirement for the people who adopt it.

However, the people who came up with all of this also came up with a simple dietary program that all of us can understand easily. This is referred to as the Six Tastes of Ayurveda.

What is taste in Ayurveda?

According to this program, we need a set of nutrients for the healthy well-being of our bodies. These could be fats, proteins, minerals, carbohydrates, etc. And all of this is contained in a meal that comprises the six tastes.

The six tastes 

• Sweet
• Sour
• Salty
• Bitter
• Astringent
• Pungent

Most food items have more than one taste. Gooseberry found in India has all the tastes except salty. Something like turmeric contains three tastes – pungent, bitter, and astringent.

Ayurveda entails that the best meal should comprise all six tastes. Each of the six tastes has a balancing effect and provides wholesome nutrition. They also help to minimize cravings and balance the appetite as well as digestion.

People in the west tend to include too much sweet, sour, and salty in their meals and tend to ignore the other three tastes. In the process, they end up having a very unbalanced diet. This is the cause of all the illnesses they suffer like heart problems, obesity, and the like.

Though the broad principle in Ayurveda is to include all six tastes in every meal that you eat, you have the option of customizing it as per the doshas that you are trying to balance at that point in time.

There are three types of dosha

• Pitta
• Vata
• Kapha

Suppose you need to keep your pitta dosha in balance, then you should choose the food items that are sweet, bitter, and astringent in taste and avoid excess of the rest.

If you want to keep your Vata balanced, you need to choose from more sweet, sour, and salty food items rather than bitter, pungent, or astringent.

To your Kapha balanced, you need to include more bitter, pungent, or astringent tastes in your meal. Ayurveda comprises following the six tastes to avoid diseases even before they occur.