No Onions, No Garlic, No Shame.

Ever wondered why Ayurveda recommends a no garlic and onion diet? While there are numerous health benefits of both onion and garlic, why does Ayurveda suggest food without these two basic ingredients? In Ayurveda, onion and garlic are more like medicine than food items. Ayurveda categorizes food on the basis of rasas (taste) and gunas. It defines the nutritional properties of food based on six tastes - sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, astringent and gunas or qualities, which are Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. Onions and garlic are considered to be Tamasic and Rajasic respectively, which means they are pungent in nature and result in an increase of bile and heat in the body.