Ayurvedic Cooking Is a Tasty Pathway to Better Health

Ayurveda is one of the old’s oldest forms of holistic healing. It originated between two and five thousand years ago and is still practiced today. It teaches that the body can tell you all you need to know to keep it healthy.

What to Eat For How You Feel (Rizzoli, $40) is a unique cookbook by Ayurveda expert Divya Alter intended to help readers achieve physical and mental wellness through diet. She starts by introducing her audience to the main tenets of the practice. Then, through guiding questions, the author helps readers discover which digestive “style” is yours: airy, fiery or earthy.

Alter goes on to offer seasonal vegetarian recipes with goals such as energizing, cooling, or grounding. For each, she includes special notes on the health benefits of certain ingredients and suggested alterations, again depending on digestive style. Some attention grabbers: Carrot Walnut cake, Ginger Mint Limemade, and Calming Date Milkshake.

Along with Ayurvedic basics and goal-oriented recipes, Alter offers a variety of practical advice about when and how to eat. Her advice leans heavily on mindfulness; focus on eating when you are, sit while eating and don’t eat in front of your TV. She suggests that eating cooked food is less stressful on the body than raw food and she encourages readers not to eat until their bodies “ask” for food. What to Eat for How You Feel retrains you to listen to what your body is trying to say. It’s more than a diet; it’s a lifestyle.