Ayurveda is widely considered to be one of the oldest health care traditions still in practice today. Originating in India over 3,000 years ago, it is now increasingly recognized and practiced globally including in many European countries and the United States.Food and nutrition play a crucial role in the health care wisdom of Ayurveda. The Ayurvedic Science of Food and Nutrition discusses the various principles of healthy eating as prescribed by Ayurveda. Divided into three sections, it addresses the fundamentals, the clinical applications, and the future challenges of Ayurveda. Specifically, the book discusses issues such as the concept of diet, the use of food as medicine, especially to treat diabetes and cancer, convalescent food practices, and fasting therapy.The Ayurvedic Science of Food and Nutrition is unique in that it is one of the only books to investigate the scientific rationale behind Ayurveda, enabling this health care tradition to potentially be incorporated into a Western clinical practice model when this latter conventional therapy is found to be ineffective.

Universal applicability of ideas and concepts

Part I. Ayurvedic Fundamentals of Food and Nutrition.- Ayurvedic Principles of Food and Nutrition: Translating the Theory into Evidence Based Practice.- The Basic Tenets of Ayurvedic Dietetics and Nutrition.- Concept of Diet in Ayurveda and its implications to the modern world.- Applying Ayurvedic Eating Principles to the Science of Stress linked Food Behavior.- Part II. Integrated food science and its clinical application.- Integrating the Science and Art of Using Food as Medicine.- Integrated Food and Nutrition in the Management of Diabetes.- Convalescent Food Practices in Ayurveda.- Food based interventions for cancer management - an Ayurvedic perspective.- Food Based Therapeutics: A Converging Paradigm of Traditional and Modern Food Science.- Fasting as a Curative Practice: Historical, Traditional and Contemporary Perspective.- Part III. Ayurvedic Food Science: Challenges of proving its uniqueness in the purview of Science.- A scientific examination of western dietary practicesas they relate to food practices in Ayurveda.- From book to bedside: Challenges of translating Ayurvedic science of food and nutrition for the common benefits.