It has been calculated that we spend approximately seven hundred hours per year eating and drinking. Food is obviously important for sustaining the body, but it also is important to us emotionally and socially. We eat to satisfy all kinds of desires, not merely to still hunger.

For most of us, eating is associated with pleasure. If we have a problem with food, we most likely also have a problem with life as a whole, since food is symbolic of material, bodily existence. . . .

In brief, we should eat wholesome food that nourishes both body and mind, and we should consume it as if we were meditating.

Georg Feuerstein, Yoga Gems