Hi Matthew, I have been profoundly grateful for your writing and found much solace in your words during this time. That being said, I feel that this passage is disingenuous and doesn't adhere to the critical and intellectual standards your work usually sets.

First, the Ayurvedic diet you refer to, which is called Kitchari, is often (exclusively from what I've been exposed to) cooked with any selection of seasonal vegetables, cooked with ghee or coconut oil and an array of spices like turmeric, coriander, ginger, cumin, fennel, salt and pepper and others depending on the season--then it's topped with fresh herbs like cilantro, and it's often even topped with yogurt or chutneys or a side of green soup.

To allege that a balanced meal with basmati rice, beans, vegetables, fats and spices (the only thing omitted from this dish that doesn't mean the standard pyramid of nutritional recommendations advised in Western public health is fruit, which also is allowable as snacks or for breakfast during fasts in my experience with Ayurveda over the last five years) that has been consumed like "chicken soup" over the Indian subcontinent for thousands of years is comparable to an all-meat diet, which has never been consumed by any people at any known point in human civilization is lazy and erroneous.

This false equivalency diminishes your overall point, which is a valuable and accurate one, and which doesn't necessitate weaponizing information or ideas that you may not know enough about to speak on accurately.

Thanks for everything you do. And for the record, I'm also deeply concerned by disinformation and quackery in Ayurveda, but I have also personally experienced how eating neutralizing food (that is, food that isn't overly oily, overly spicy/heating, or overly stimulating/sugary) can neutralize at the very least some basic digestive issues like constipation or diarrhea and also mitigate some corresponding anxiety or exhaustion (I'm sure you wouldn't deny the vagal brain/gut connection that science has "discovered.").

Just because some of Ayurveda may be sheer nonsense doesn't mean that all of it is, and I think presenting information in the way you did here does a disservice to the idea that people can trust or extract *any* kind of spiritual value from these practices overall that aren't mutually exclusive to believing in science and rationality.