Yogiplate: The Fundamentals of Sattvic Food

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Ayurvedic diet varies by body type, a person's nature, their lifestyle and the food they grew up eating. Nobody knows that better than Radhavallabha Das, who cooked for thousands of devotees and monks at the ISKCON ashram in Mumbai and the adjoining Govinda's restaurant.

In Yogiplate, he teaches us how to identify our unique body type, lists the vegetables, fruits, grains and spices that will suit us, and explains how sattvic food nourishes the body, mind and inner soul. Written in a conversational style, Radhavallabha shows us how to pair the correct ingredients, avoid the ones that are harmful to us, and focus on the oil, salt and water that we use for cooking.

This book will teach you how to tailor a unique diet that will form the foundation of a happy and healthy life.

Radhavallabha Das is an acclaimed chef, author, former monk, yoga teacher, speaker and life coach. He has over two decades of experience in sättvic and Ayurvedic vegetarian cooking, developed by reading Ayurvedic texts. He is the founder of Yogi Plate, an organization dedicated to educating people about sättvic cooking.

After completing his MTech from IIT, he decided to become a monk at ISKCON, Mumbai, to dedicate his life to the service of society. There he cooked for 250 residents of the ashram daily for more than a decade. As head chef, he led a team of highly acclaimed chefs who were featured in National Geographic Channel's India's Megakitchens series, serving about 10,000 plates of sättvic food every day. He was also the cook of his Gurudev, HH Radhanath Swami, for seventeen years.

But the love for Ayurveda grew from discussions with Dr Sanjay Pisharodi, a fellow ashram resident with an MBBS degree and also great knowledge of Ayurveda. Radhavallabha Das has conducted more than 200 cooking workshops across the world and has held seminars on the importance of an Ayurvedic diet, including at the headquarters of Microsoft, Amazon and Intel in the USA.

Currently he lives with his wife Hansapriya in Silicon Valley in California. He is working with a team to bring healthy food to people through cloud kitchens, live cooking workshops, seminars and one- on-one consulting.

I am thrilled to learn about Yogiplate. I see this as not just a deeply researched writing but a revelation from the core of Radhavallabha Das's heart, nurtured over decades.

My association with Radhavallabha Das dates back to the 1990s and since then, we have had many cherished moments together at the monastery in Chowpatty, Mumbai. Apt to the context of this book, most of those moments were nourished in the aromatic kitchen of the temple or in the famed yatra kitchens that we erected during the annual pilgrimage to holy places in India. Radhavallabha Das is passionate about cooking. But, beyond that, he is so mindful about the finer nuances of cooking that he strived to deliver a fine dining experience not just for the hungry belly but for the yearning soul as well.

Tasting food is a divine activity of directly experiencing God's inconceivable creation. The diversity in the t made available seasonally, topographically and nutritionally is types of food something that has left scientists awestruck since centuries. However, based on numerous reports produced by the United Nations and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), there are heart-wrenching numbers on food waste. Global food waste could feed 2 billion people a year and creates 3.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas.

Further, 28 per cent of the world's agricultural area is used to produce wasted food. Radhavallabha Das worked diligently to formulate hundreds of recipes into Excel sheets and prevented food loss while scaling up the production, notably so during large-scale cooking. He has applied all his technical education to cooking to achieve this. This book will educate readers about the material and spiritual value of food and thus inspire them to be more conscious of the optimal utilization of food.

The Chandogya Upanisad says, 'Ahara-fuddhau sattva- fuddhih sattva-fuddhau dhruva smrtih smrti-lambhe sarva- granthinam vipramoksah. When one's catables become sanctified, and by eating sanctified foodstuffs, one's very existence becomes purified; by the purification of existence, finer tissues in the memory become sanctified, and when memory is sanctified, one can think of the path of liberation. With this foundational principle, together we cooked tons of sättvic food that has touched the hearts of thousands of people. Radhavallabha Das visited many ancient Vedic temples, studying their traditional cooking under the guidance of experienced cooks. In Yogiplate, he draws inspiration from the annals of Ayurvedic texts to delve deep into the value quotient offered by different food items, the wellness element associated with each and the personalized food recommendations based on one's unique body type to nourish a sound body, serene mind and spirited soul.

To sum up: through the book, this yogi serves on a plate the science of Ayurveda and the reader can have a delectable experience by experimenting with this science through the yoga of sattvic cooking and mindful living.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages