Eating with washed hands is one of the tradition practices and just as how important the site of the food, so also is the texture of the food. Interaction of the food with the hands on the lips gives strong signals to the brain and this inturn prepares our stomach to receive the food for digestion. There are lot of health benefits mentioned in various text books of Ayurveda. Eating with hands requires the presence of the presence of mind and contributes to what is called as the mindful eating. We need to know what we are eating. So the concentration will be definitely on the food. There are also other benefits where we Indians are used to eating on the plantain leaf and most of the food are in the form of solids, semi solids, liquids, sometimes combination of food is made or in some cases the food has to be smashed before we eat and such things are possible only wit hands and not possible sometimes with cutlery like fork, spoon and knife. There are other things like when we touch our food, we also know the temperature of the food. When we eat with the spoon, there are chances that your buccal mucosa or the mucosa lining of your oral cavity is likely to be burned. So the temperature is assessed before you eat the food. There are various benefits also like the fingers are the extension of the basic 5 elements called the panchamahabhota. So for example the thumb is the extension of akasha, then index finger is the extension of the vayu, the middle finger is the extension of agni. The ring finger is the extension of water, the little finger is the extension of earth. So to balance the 5 elements in the body, all the fingers interaction with the food actually brings out this balance and this helps us to taste the food, digest it and then assimilate into our system.

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