A Mother’s Love

Nothing can compare to a home cooked meal from a loving mother. We’ve already talked about the risk we take with our emotional, physical and spiritual well-being when we eat out. Well, in the ideal home, a mother’s cooking is filled with loving intention and healing energy and is therefore the best source of spiritual and physical nutrition on the planet! (Of course, with modern gender roles so blurred, the same could be said of a loving father.)

The sad truth, however, is that, with mothers all over the world ceding control of the dinner table to scientists, food marketers and governments, a terrible thing happened. Tradition and common sense went out the window, and as Michael Pollen notes, “Thirty years of nutritional advice have left us fatter, sicker, and more poorly nourished. Which is why we find ourselves in the predicament we do: in need of a whole new way to think about eating.[1]”

A loving nurturer like a mother will invest all her loving intention into the meals she prepares. That sort of loving intention is not only invaluable, but also worshipable. In fact, in the Vedic tradition, the father (Pitru Devo Bhavaa) and mother (Matru Devo Bhavaa) are considered the first guru and second guru respectively and should therefore be worshipped.

In Sanskrit, the word “Guru” consists of two words: “Gu” – which means darkness or ignorance and “Ru” which means “remover of.” The guru is someone who helps to remove ignorance from our hearts and enlightens us.

In the Bible, it is also stated:
Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.

I have provided a comparison chart on the following page between food prepared by a loving Mother and that which you can buy in a restaurant. I could have extended this list indefinitely, but these are what I feel to be the most important pros and cons of eating a meal prepared by one’s loving mother versus a meal prepared by a restaurant:

Prepared by a loving Mother

• Made with loving intention
• Prepared carefully
• Cleanliness honoured
• Selfless
• Focused intention
• Pure motivation

Prepared at a Restaurant

• Made with the intention of profit
• Prepared hastily
• Cleanliness compromised
• Selfish
• Distracted intention
• Material motivation

It is easy to see the benefits of eating a home cooked meal, and yet, every year, Americans will spend, on average, $1,000 eating out (which is said to be less than it once was).

Good Magazine, in partnership with Whole Foods, chronicled[2] the proportion of income Americans spend on food today as compared to the past. And guess what? They’re spending less than ever.

In 1949, Americans spent 22% of their incomes on food, whereas in 2009 they spent a meager 10%. However, of this 10%, nearly half (40%)[3] is spent on food away from home, and research[4] has found that meals prepared outside the home are less healthful.

How is this so? Because, while saving money seems like a good thing, the cheap processed foods we buy outside are often produced by factory farming and industrial agriculture and supported by government subsidies, which we ultimately pay for in the form of taxes. Also, with jumbo-sized products being priced more economically, Americans may be getting more for their dollar, but they’re also gaining more weight, losing their health, spending more on healthcare, and supporting environmentally unsustainable practices.

The Seven Mothers

According to the Vedic tradition, there are actually seven mothers in our life:
The first mother is our biological mother, from whose womb we have come to this world. Then there is the wife of the teacher or spiritual master; the wife of a priest; the wife of the king, or the queen; the cow; the  nurse or caregiver; and finally, the earth, often referred to as “Mother Nature.” In Sanskrit, the country in which we take birth is called deça-mätåkä or “motherland.” We refer to our language as “mother tongue.” So you can see that there are so many mothers, of which the cow is just one. In India, a cow is sometimes addressed as amba, which also means mother. (In broken dialect people sometimes use the word amma.)

There is one common principle that characterizes all genuine mothers, and that is selfless, loving service to their dependents. This pure loving intention is the true life giving force that our mothers nurture us with. Whether it is milk from her breast or the fruit of a tree, a mother’s offering is pure. No matter how hard modern science tries to emulate the pure offering of a mother, it will never succeed. The failed history of baby formula is a case in point. In a recent report by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), tests performed on liquid baby formulas found that they all contained bisphenol A (BPA). This leaching, hormone-mimicking chemical is used by all major baby formula manufacturers in the linings of the metal cans in which baby formula is sold.

BPA has been found to cause hyperactivity, reproductive abnormalities and pediatric brain cancer in lab animals. Increasingly, scientists suspect that BPA might be linked to several medical problems in humans, including breast and testicular cancer.

[1] In Defense of Food, Michael Pollen p 81
[2] Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reyxkSWUjLI&
[3] US. Department of Labor, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditures in 2007 (Washington DC 2009)
[4] J.F.Guthrie, B.H. Lin, and E Frazao, Role of food prepared away from home in the American diet, 1977-78 versus 1994-96: Changes and consequences, J Nutr Educ Behav 34 (2002): 140-50