Ancient Food Philosophy That Feels Surprisingly Modern
Long story short: less optimising, more nourishing.
But the real value is in all the words below. It is a longer read, I have to warn you, but trust me, a very useful one. Because it explores a side of food we do not always stop to think about. Writing it has made me look more deeply at my own relationship with food and given me a much greater respect for everything food does for the body. I hope reading it makes you think a little more deeply about your relationship with food too.
Over time, my relationship with food has changed quite drastically. I saw food almost as my sweet therapist, my go-to comfort in moments of despair or joy. At another stage, I began to see it almost as the enemy, something to control, question, or feel guilty about. BUT now I see it very differently. Sattvic food is a beacon to longevity.
Eating more simply has changed the way I think about food, training, digestion and what it really means to nourish a body. Over the past few years, becoming stronger has also changed the way I understand my own body.
Once I began strength training consistently, paying closer attention to form, recovery and gradual progression, my body stopped feeling like something I simply lived inside and became something I learned to work with. I started noticing what gave me energy and what left me depleted, how much sleep could change a training session, how differently my body responded when it had been properly fed, and how quickly poor recovery caught up with me.
That shift has made me far more curious about food, not just in terms of calories, protein or performance, but in terms of how it actually makes me feel. I have become more interested in the relationship between nourishment, strength, digestion, energy and the quieter signals the body gives us when we learn to pay attention.
Naturally, food became part of that curiosity. The modern fitness world has very clear ideas about nutrition. There are macros to calculate, protein targets to reach, supplements to consider, meal timings to optimise and a seemingly endless stream of products designed to help us become stronger, leaner, faster or more efficient.
Some of that information is genuinely useful. I pay attention to protein. I understand the importance of carbohydrate for training and recovery. I am interested in the science of muscle and the way nutrition supports it.
But somewhere alongside all of that, I found myself increasingly drawn towards something much simpler.
Sattvic Eating. A Simplier & Different Way of Thinking About Food
It seemed, initially, almost at odds with the world of modern fitness. One is surrounded by performance language and optimisation; the other by bowls of dal, vegetables, fruit, grains, nuts, seeds, herbs and food prepared with very little theatre around it. Yet the more I ate this way, the more useful the contrast became.
Strength was important, protein was important, muscle & bone health was important. But what I missed out was understanding how food affected my body. And what changed was that I began noticing something fitness nutrition does not always ask us to notice: how food actually leaves us feeling. Not whether a packet says it contains twenty grams of protein. Not whether an app has turned green because I reached a target. But what happens in the hours after eating.
Asking the right questions in my mind, which were: whether the energy lasts. Whether digestion feels comfortable. Whether training feels supported rather than heavy. Whether I recover well. Whether I feel satisfied. Whether the body feels restless or settled.
It was a silent shift, and it made me curious about where the idea had come from and what, if anything, modern science could tell us about why some of its principles seem to make sense.
What Sattvic Actually Means
Sattvic eating is usually described as simply an Ayurvedic vegetarian diet, but that is a little too neat.
The word Sattvic comes from sattva, one of the three gunas described in Indian philosophical traditions. The gunas are three qualities used to describe the tendencies of nature, the mind and human behaviour: sattva, rajas and tamas. They are not fixed personality types, but qualities that are understood to exist in different proportions and to shift according to how we live. Sattva is associated with clarity, balance, steadiness and harmony. Rajas is linked with movement, drive, stimulation and restlessness, while tamas is associated with heaviness, inertia and dullness. Good! Now that we have that cleared out, let’s get into what it all means when food enters the picture.
Traditional teachings suggest that what we eat can also carry or encourage these qualities. Sattvic foods are therefore those believed to support clarity, vitality and balance, rather than overstimulation or heaviness. The idea is less about labelling foods as “good” or “bad” and more about noticing the effect they have on the body and mind.
These ideas were not originally calorie classifications or nutritional labels. They were ways of thinking about the qualities we cultivate through the things we repeatedly expose ourselves to, including food.
The Bhagavad Gita discusses food in precisely this way. In Chapter 17, food associated with sattva is described as that which supports life, strength, health, satisfaction and wellbeing, and is nourishing and pleasing. Rajasic food is characterised by extremes of heat, bitterness, sourness, saltiness and stimulation, while tamasic food is described in relation to staleness, deterioration and neglect.
Later yogic traditions developed these ideas further. The concept of mitahara, measured or moderate eating, also became important: not simply choosing certain foods, but thinking about quantity, restraint and the state of mind in which food is eaten.
This is what I find much more interesting than the lists circulating online telling us whether garlic is spiritual enough for dinner. At its heart, Sattvic eating is not really asking us to obsess over individual ingredients. It is asking us to consider the effect of food as a whole.
- Does it nourish?
- Does it sustain?
- Does it leave the body able to function well?
- Does eating it support clarity rather than excess?
Where Ancient Philosophy Meets Modern Nutrition
There is an important distinction to make here. Modern science has not established that foods possess measurable quantities of sattva, rajas or tamas. Nor is there robust clinical evidence showing that a specifically Sattvic diet has some unique physiological mechanism unavailable through other healthy eating patterns.
There is now scientific interest in Yogic and Sattvic dietary patterns, including a 2025 review examining their possible relationship with inflammation and metabolic health. The review describes a pattern based largely around fresh plant foods, whole grains, pulses, fruit, vegetables and minimally processed foods, but also makes clear that direct clinical evidence remains preliminary and that the underlying mechanisms require much more investigation.
That does not make the tradition irrelevant. In fact, it makes it more interesting.
Because when we remove the language of purity and look instead at what a sensible Sattvic diet tends to contain, much of it overlaps with things nutritional science already understands quite well.
It tends to increase vegetables, fruits, whole grains, pulses, nuts and seeds. It naturally brings more dietary fibre into the diet. It reduces the space occupied by heavily processed foods. It encourages meals made from recognisable ingredients and places greater attention on how and when we eat.
None of those things requires a mystical explanation.
They have physiology behind them.
The Energy Question
One of the first things I began thinking about differently was energy.
Actively training and taking care of my body healthily has made me respect carbohydrates far more than I once did. Muscle contraction requires energy, and carbohydrate stored in the muscles and liver as glycogen is one of the body’s important fuel sources during training. When exercise becomes harder or more prolonged, those stores matter.
This sounds obvious, but the language around carbohydrates has become strangely moralised. Depending on which part of the wellness world you happen to enter, they are either something to earn, something to restrict, something to cycle or something to fear.
Traditional Sattvic foods are rather unconcerned with this argument.
Rice is food. Potatoes are food. Oats are food. Fruit is food. Whole grains are food. Lentils contain both carbohydrate and protein. They are not trying to be anything else.
And I increasingly appreciate that simplicity.
When I train, I am deliberately asking my muscles to work. If I then chronically underfuel them in pursuit of some idea of eating perfectly, the contradiction eventually shows itself in energy, recovery and performance.
Good nutrition should not make the body increasingly afraid of food.
For me, one of the most useful things about eating more simply has been rediscovering carbohydrate as nourishment rather than merely as a number. Paired with protein, vegetables and some fat, it gives a meal substance. It makes training feel supported. It means food is doing the very ordinary job food was always supposed to do: providing energy.
Strength Still Needs Protein
Sattvic eating becomes more interesting; this is where tradition has to meet actual biological need. Muscle does not grow because a diet is wholesome in principle. Resistance training creates the stimulus, but the body still requires adequate energy and amino acids to repair and build tissue.
Protein therefore matters.
A large meta analysis of resistance training research found that increasing protein intake can improve gains in muscle size and strength, with the additional benefit tending to level off around approximately 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day in many healthy adults undertaking resistance training. That is not a magical number and individual requirements vary, but it gives us a useful indication of how important adequate protein becomes when we repeatedly ask the body to adapt to resistance exercise.
This was one of the places where I had to make Sattvic eating work for my actual life rather than follow it as an abstract idea.
A plate can be beautifully fresh, vegetarian and full of vegetables, but if I am training regularly, I still have to ask whether there is enough protein on it.
That means building meals deliberately around foods such as lentils and dals, beans, peas, tofu and soy foods, yoghurt, paneer or other dairy where they are part of someone’s diet, alongside nuts, seeds and grains that contribute smaller amounts.
Plant protein is not somehow incapable of supporting muscle. In one controlled resistance training study, a high-protein plant-based diet providing around 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram per day produced similar increases in muscle mass and strength to a protein-matched mixed diet over twelve weeks of training. The study was in young men, so it should not be stretched into a universal claim, but it demonstrates an important point: a predominantly plant-based diet and serious strength training are entirely capable of existing in the same room when protein and total energy are sufficient.
That is the balance I have found most useful.
I do not have to choose between simplicity and science.
I simply have to make sure simplicity is nutritionally complete.
The Gut Has Its Own Opinion
Digestion is where all of this becomes much more personal.
We can build an immaculate-looking meal on paper and still discover that the body has its own opinion about it.
One of the nutritional strengths of a plant-rich way of eating is fibre. Pulses, vegetables, fruit, whole grains, nuts and seeds all contain different forms of dietary fibre, much of which passes through the small intestine without being digested by our own enzymes.
When it reaches the colon, certain fibres become food for the microbes living there.
Those microbes ferment fibre and produce compounds known as short-chain fatty acids, including acetate, propionate and butyrate. These molecules are now an important area of research because they are involved in the health of the intestinal environment and have wider roles in metabolism and communication between the gut and the rest of the body.
I find this fascinating because it changes the way we think about feeding ourselves.
Part of the food on the plate is not only feeding us directly. It is feeding an entire microbial ecosystem that, in turn, produces things our bodies use.
But there is another lesson here that the wellness world sometimes skips.
More fibre is not automatically better in every quantity, for every person, overnight.
Human studies show considerable variation in how individuals and their microbiomes respond to different fibres. Type, amount, existing gut bacteria and the speed at which dietary change happens all matter.
I have become much more interested in that kind of individual response.
Not everything nutritious agrees equally well with every body. Wellbeing becomes more useful when we stop treating foods as inherently virtuous and begin paying attention to tolerance, quantity and context.
A diet should nourish the person eating it, not simply satisfy the rules of the diet.
Freshness Without Food Anxiety
Freshness sits very strongly within Sattvic thinking. The idea here is eat food that is freshly prepared. no leftovers. Traditionally, food prepared recently and eaten in good condition is valued, while food that has deteriorated, become stale or been neglected is associated with tamas.
There is something valuable in this, particularly in a world where so much of what we eat can be engineered, packaged and stored almost indefinitely. Cooking from basic ingredients brings us closer to the food itself. We see the vegetables being cut. We smell the spices warming. We know what has gone into the pan. There is less distance between ingredient and meal.
But I would not turn freshness into another form of anxiety. A properly cooled bowl of homemade dal eaten the next day has not somehow become spiritually contaminated because it spent the night in a refrigerator. Modern food safety and the realities of ordinary life matter.
The principle I take from Sattvic thinking is subtler than a prohibition on leftovers.
It is the value of food that has not been unnecessarily interfered with.
There is a useful difference between a meal prepared from lentils, vegetables, herbs, grains and spices, and one assembled mainly from substances created to imitate food while surviving months on a shelf.
That does not mean every packaged food is bad. Nor does it mean everything homemade is automatically nutritious.
It simply restores something I think we have lost: an awareness of the distance between the thing we are eating and the ingredients from which it came.
Food, Inflammation and the Problem With Wellness Claims
Inflammation is another word that appears everywhere in modern nutrition. Almost every ingredient seems either to “cause inflammation” or “fight inflammation”, usually with very little explanation of what inflammation actually is. Inflammation is not inherently bad. It is part of the immune system’s normal response to injury, infection and tissue repair. Even training itself creates a controlled physiological stress to which the body then adapts.
The problem is chronic dysregulation, not the existence of inflammation itself.
This is where I think we should be careful with claims made for the Sattvic diet.
A plant-rich dietary pattern naturally contains fibre, vitamins, minerals and a wide range of plant compounds, and reducing heavily processed foods while increasing these foods may contribute to better metabolic health. The recent review of Yogic and Sattvic dietary patterns proposes several plausible pathways through which such a pattern could influence inflammation, including fibre fermentation, plant polyphenols and changes in metabolic health. But the authors are also clear that the direct mechanisms and clinical evidence remain incomplete.
I prefer that answer.
It is less dramatic, but more useful.
We do not need to claim that dal “detoxifies” the body or that a Sattvic meal somehow switches off inflammation.
It is enough to understand that repeated dietary patterns matter.
A single vegetable curry will not transform our health. Neither will one processed meal destroy it.
The body responds to what we do repeatedly.
That principle runs through almost everything I have learned through training.
Mitahara: The Part We May Have Forgotten
Perhaps the most interesting part of the Sattvic tradition is not actually the ingredient list.
It is mitahara. The word is generally translated in relation to measured or moderate eating and appears within yogic thinking as part of the discipline surrounding food.
There is something remarkably modern in the idea. We spend enormous amounts of time discussing what to eat and surprisingly little thinking about the state in which eating takes place.
I can prepare the most nutritious meal imaginable and still eat it standing at a counter while looking at my phone, mentally answering an email and barely noticing that I have finished.
The food has not changed.
My experience of eating it has.
Modern research into mindful eating is still developing, and the findings are not as spectacular as some wellness claims suggest. A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis found that mindfulness and mindful eating interventions produced a modest reduction in food intake overall, particularly in controlled settings, but did not significantly alter subjective hunger or fullness. The researchers also noted the need for better real-world studies.
What I find valuable about mindful eating is not really weight loss anyway.
It is information.
When I slow down enough to notice a meal, I can actually learn from it.
I notice when I have had enough. I notice what sits comfortably. I notice whether I am still genuinely hungry or simply enjoying the taste. I notice which foods give me lasting energy and which leave me looking for something else an hour later.
That information is difficult to hear when attention is everywhere except the plate.
Perhaps this is where the older idea of mitahara becomes particularly relevant now. Moderation is not necessarily restriction. Sometimes it is simply enough awareness to know what the body is asking for before habit, distraction or emotion answers on its behalf.
The Nutrients Tradition Does Not Replace
There is one part of this conversation I think any responsible discussion of Sattvic or vegetarian eating should include.
A food philosophy does not replace nutritional requirements.
A predominantly vegetarian diet can be nutritionally excellent, but it still needs planning.
Iron matters, particularly because the non-haem iron found in plants is generally less readily absorbed than the haem iron found in meat. Pulses, nuts, seeds, green vegetables, whole grains and fortified foods can contribute iron, while eating vitamin C alongside plant-based sources can improve absorption.
Vitamin B12 deserves particular attention because reliable natural sources are largely animal-derived. People who eat dairy may obtain some B12 there, while those eating very little or no animal derived food need to think deliberately about fortified foods or supplementation.
Calcium, vitamin D, iodine, zinc and omega 3 fats are also nutrients worth considering depending on the exact composition of an individual’s diet. The NHS makes the same point: vegetarian eating can provide what the body needs, but variety and planning matter.
I actually like this practical reality because it prevents Sattvic eating becoming another idealised wellness identity.
There is no virtue in becoming nutritionally deficient in pursuit of dietary purity.
If the intention is to nourish the body, then the body has to remain part of the conversation.
What My Plate Looks Like Differently Now
The biggest change for me has not been creating more rules.
It has been creating a better structure.
If I am eating a meal around training, I think about whether there is enough carbohydrate to provide energy and replenish what I use. I make sure there is a meaningful protein source rather than assuming vegetables alone will cover it. I want colour and variety from plants, enough fat to make the meal satisfying, and food that my digestion actually tolerates well.
The plate might still look remarkably ordinary.
A dal made with lentils, vegetables and spices with rice or chapati. Yoghurt alongside it. Tofu with vegetables and grains. Oats with fruit, seeds, nuts and yoghurt. A vegetable curry with a substantial protein source built into the meal rather than treated as an afterthought.
The difference is that I understand the plate differently now.
I can see carbohydrate as training fuel.
I can see protein as raw material for repair.
I can see fibre travelling further into the gut than my own digestive enzymes can take it.
I can see colour as an indication of the extraordinary range of compounds plants produce.
And I can also see the thing that nutritional analysis cannot quite capture: whether the meal leaves me feeling comfortably fed.
That matters.
Strength and Stillness Were Never Opposites
Perhaps this is the part Sattvic eating has taught me most clearly.
For a long time, I thought strength belonged to effort.
The difficult repetition. The heavier weight. The discipline to continue. The willingness to return when progress feels slow.
And it does.
But training has also taught me that adaptation does not happen during the repetition alone.
The muscle needs the load, but then it needs recovery. It needs protein. It needs energy. It needs sleep. The nervous system needs periods in which it is no longer being asked to perform.
The stimulus matters, but so does everything that allows the body to respond to it.
Sattvic eating has fitted into that understanding far more naturally than I expected.
Not because it has given me a perfect diet.
Not because every traditional rule belongs in my life.
And certainly not because eating a particular way has suddenly made me spiritually evolved.
It has simply made me more attentive to nourishment.
There is strength in asking the body to do something difficult. There is also strength in giving it enough to recover afterwards.
There is discipline in training consistently. There is another kind of discipline in recognising when optimisation has become noise.
There is value in understanding protein, carbohydrate, muscle protein synthesis and the microbiome. There is equal value in being able to sit down with a simple meal and eat it without needing it to become a performance.
That is the quieter side of wellbeing I think I had been missing.
What Sattvic Eating Has Really Given Me
The modern wellness world has a wonderful ability to make ordinary things seem insufficient.
Food needs to optimise us. Water needs additions. Sleep needs data. Movement needs tracking. Rest has somehow become another task to perform correctly.
I am interested in science, so I understand the temptation. Once we begin learning how extraordinary the body is, it becomes difficult not to want to measure and improve everything it does.
But the deeper I go into wellbeing, the more I find myself returning to things that are remarkably simple.
- Eat enough real food.
- Eat a wide variety of plants.
- Make sure there is sufficient protein if you train.
- Do not become frightened of carbohydrate when your body needs energy.
- Pay attention to the nutrients a vegetarian diet can sometimes miss.
- Notice your digestion.
- Sit down when you can.
- Taste what you are eating.
Stop expecting one ingredient to rescue you from the consequences of an entire lifestyle. It’s ok to keep food in repetition mode; repeat the useful things often enough for the body to recognise them. That, more than any list of permitted and prohibited foods, is what I have taken from Sattvic eating.
The Sanskrit language describes it through sattva: balance, clarity, steadiness.
Nutrition science describes some of the same food through fibre, amino acids, glucose, micronutrients, polyphenols and microbial metabolites.
Training has taught me about progressive overload and adaptation. They are different languages, and I do not think we need to pretend they are saying precisely the same thing. But somewhere between them sits a very useful idea.
What we repeatedly give the body matters.
Not only in the gym. Not only on the plate. Not only in the quiet practices we call wellbeing.
All of it.
I still train because I want to be strong. I still care about muscle, consistency and what my body can physically do. Sattvic eating has not pulled me away from that; it has broadened what strength means to me.
Sometimes strength is adding another repetition.
Sometimes it is knowing what to eat afterwards.
And sometimes it is simply sitting down, allowing a nourishing meal to be enough, and giving the body the quiet conditions it needs to do what it has always known how to do.
Recover, rebuild and begin again.
Explore The Still Room for more on food, movement, nervous system health and the quieter rituals that support everyday wellbeing.
You may also enjoy exploring Ahloki’s ritual collection, created around a simple idea that runs through much of The Still Room: wellbeing is rarely about doing more. Often, it begins with paying closer attention to how we eat, move, rest and inhabit our everyday lives.
