10 reasons why you should eat your food with your hands!

10 Mar 10 reasons why you should eat your food with your hands!

Eating with hands has been around longer than cutlery. The most civilized of the civilizations like Indus Valley, Greek and the Egyptians used to and are still practicing in their modern societies is that of eating with Hands. Hence, it’s definitely not barbaric. However, today as western lifestyles are becoming predominant, so are the usage of spoons and forks to eat.

Let’s look at the numerous health benefits when you eat with your hands :

1. Touch is one of the most strong and often used sensation in the body. Feeling your food with your hands, you become more conscious of the taste, textures and aromas. The nerve endings on our fingertips signal the stomach to stimulate digestion.
2. Eating with hands increases the blood circulation in the hands. When we eat with our hands, its usual to join our fingers and thumb to eat, this is actually a Mudra and has its healing power on the body.
3. Eating with your very own hands automatically manages food portions and makes you eat slower. Digestion is better because you become more aware of the process of eating as you experience it with all your senses.
4. A spoon might seem more hygienic but a hand washed before eating is much better than stored spoon, which is exposed to home microbes and other germs which can cause disease. Likewise, washing hands and mouth after completion of food is equally important.
5. According to Ayurveda, Eating is supposed to be a sensory experience and it is said to evoke emotion and passion. According to the Vedas, hands are the most precious organs of action. Every finger is an extension of the five elements. An imbalance of any one of these elements can lead to diseases. Gathering the fingertips as they touch the food stimulates the five elements and invites Agni to bring forth the digestive juices in the stomach. Therefore when we eat we are putting together all the five elements and energizing the food we eat so it helps us become healthy and keep all our pranas (vital energies) in balance.
6. Protects your mouth from getting burnt: Your hands also act as a very effective temperature sensor. When you touch food it is easy for you to gauge how hot it actually is, and you are less likely to put food that is too hot into your mouth – effectively preventing you from burning your mouth and scalding your tongue.
7. Eating with your hands requires you to pay attention to what you are eating. You often need to look at the food and focus on what you are putting into your mouth. Such kind of mindful eating is much more healthier than eating with a fork and spoon that can be done mechanically. Mindful eating has numerous health benefits, amongst which the most important is the fact that it improves the assimilation of nutrients from the food you eat, enhances digestion and makes you healthier. Mindfulness leads to a sense of acknowledgement and acceptance of thoughts, sensations, and emotions to modify behaviors such as mindless masking our feelings with food, drugs or alcohol and binge eating disorders.
8. Clinical Nutrition studies have found fast eating is often the key for causing imbalance in blood sugar levels in the body. Eating with forks and spoons correlates with faster eating, contributing to the development of Type 2 Diabetes. Eat with your hands to stay fit by preventing such diseases. Eating by hand also promotes a sense of fullness and satiety as compared to eating with spoons and forks.
9. When the food passes your hand before it enters your body, it undergoes an energetic cleansing. As with any other material, food absorbs the energies of the people through which it passed: the seller in the market, the cooks, the waiters, etc. Naturally, all these people carry their own accumulated mental charge, negative and positive, expressed energetically in pains, feelings, emotions, thoughts, reactive patterns and conditioning. This is why energetic cleansing of food, by praying, placing your palms over your food, is highly important. Energetic cleansing of the food assures that most external energies will not infiltrate your body with the food intake.
10. Our fingertips are related to solar plexus chakra (thumb) heart chakra (index finger), throat chakra (middle finger), root chakras (ring finger) and sacral chakra (little finger). And when we eat with hands, the motion and touch activates the chakras, remove blockages in the chakras by strengthening and stimulating the energy channels throughout the body.

Now you know why in order to completely enjoy your food, you simply must eat it with your hands. So, ditch the utensils and instead eat with hands that will ensure you are not just feeding your body but also your mind and your spirit!