by Dr. Amy Wiesner
Over 5,000 years ago, the seers in India observed life and organized their observations into a system called Ayurveda, Ayur meaning “life” and Veda meaning “science”. Like many of the topics we discuss on this site, ayurveda is about healthy living. Whether it's eating organic foods or decreasing the toxins in our environment, we focus on improving our own vitality through good living practices.
According to Ayurveda, everything in the world is composed of the five elements: water, fire, air, ether and earth. These elements represent the qualities of energy or matter. These elements affect us both internally & externally and imbalances affect our health. The body, mind and consciousness have to be balanced for complete health, thus the elements in and around us must be balanced. These philosophies of Ayurveda are very similar to those of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Ayurveda even has it’s own version of acupuncture to help balance people!

A Blogger For Any Diet
In another sense, I was very much amused by all the uproar realizing people’s anger was not because of an unpopular stance on abortion or gay marriage, but a grocery store. Now that is funny!!! I had no idea that people were so attached to where they bought their food. Shame on me, though, as food is always chock-full of intimate meaning for people. Lesson learned.
In the wake of the fallout from the DFO articles, this week allow me to offer a more personal piece that I hope will establish a context for what I write, and why I write it; a kind of road map to my inner gastronome.
The first item on the colloquial menu is the term “connoisseur”; this is what I consider myself in the food arena. Think of it as the “who does this guy think he is?” part of my writing. The second proffering is the usefulness of critique and analysis. While criticism nearly always gets a bad rap, I think we need critics and critical understandings of any subject, food included. As subjectivity is common to all of us, being critical can actually help us appreciate even our least favorite ideas by allowing us to see there is always another side to any story. But first, the connoisseur…
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