Ayurveda suggests eating warm food in breakfast is the right choice

Do you like to have your cereal with icy cold milk or yoghurt, or is it cut fruits that give your mornings a much-needed start? While many people prefer cold breakfast options to warm, Ayurveda recommends having warm food as first meal of the day to rev up digestive system.

According to Ayurveda, a warm breakfast in the morning is important to prepare the body for digesting the biggest meal of the day – lunch. The ancient medical practice considers Sun as the source of our metabolism and considering it shines the brightest between 12 to 2 pm, it is considered the ideal time to have lunch.

At the beginning of the day, the metabolism needs a gentle kickstart and a warm breakfast helps in digesting the food better and prepare your gut for the day ahead.

warm breakfast
Breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day. So, don’t skip it. Image courtesy: Shutterstock

“In the morning, the sun rises and so does our agni (digestive fire/appetite). It’s not functioning to its optimum capacity. So, in order to prepare our gut to be able to digest the meals throughout the day, having a light and warming breakfast is best as it’s light to digest and prepares your gut for optimum digestion,” says Ayurveda expert Dr Dixa Bhavsar.

She says that warm breakfast is more like a warm-up exercise for the digestive fire that we do to prepare our body for the real exercise which is digesting lunch that needs more strength.

“Ayurveda suggests having heavy lunch between 12 to 2 pm because that’s the time when the sun is at the peak in the sky and our digestion capacity is optimum likewise,” says the expert.

warm breakfast
Warm breakfast keeps your gut fine. Image courtesy: Shutterstock

What cold breakfast does to our digestive system

“Having a cold breakfast is more like pouring water on a burning fire which will blow it off rather than helping it burn. Hence Ayurveda suggest having warm and light breakfast like freshly cooked porridge, stewed fruits (apple/pears), different chillas (pancakes), boiled legumes (moong, chickpeas for the people who exercises) or just boiled vegetable soup,” advises Dr Bhavsar.

The Ayurveda expert, however, says cold breakfast are ideal for the people with high pitta but for other prakriti people, warm breakfasts work the best.