First of all, I must note that the Classical Sanskrit diet is not a diet per se. It is a set of tools to help you make good dietary decisions. Secondly, elements of the Classical Sanskrit Diet can be applied to a number of other diets and so you may want to think about how you can use the fundamental "Decision Analysis ideas", as it were, to your own diet. Thirdly, one of the basic ideas in the Classical Sanskrit Diet is that if we went back to eating like people did prior to the twentieth century, our dietary outcomes would improve. This seems to be a sound idea, generally speaking.
And finally, another of the basic ideas in the Classical Sanskrit Diet is that we should eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables comprise the largest portion of this diet. Indeed, the set of foods to eat is directly borrowed from Dean Ornish's books. There is a list of foods listed in one of his books that essentially can be eaten in unlimited quantities. So, my thinking was that if all you did was to simply eat two out of three meals consisting only of foods in that list, you are probably already better off than you are right now. The diet I adopted was pretty simple : for breakfast and lunch, simply eat as much of the foods you want as long as they come from the list of foods that you can eat in unlimited quantities. By the time, it is time for dinner, you are probably already so full that you won't overeat. So, for dinner, I essentially allowed myself to eat anything I wanted - as long as the items were not in the "OUGHT NOT TO EAT" list. Items in the "OUGHT NOT TO EAT" list are reserved for special occasions.
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Enough of that. Let us get to business. Let us see how "Decision Analysis ideas" are applied in the Classical Sanskrit diet:
- Parsimony in decision making: Do not make the process of deciding what to eat a very laborious process. Make it as parsimonious as possible.
- In the Classical Sanskrit Diet, you basically have to memorize the list of foods in the Sanskrit language just once. Once you do that, your analysis of which food to buy in the supermarket is not dependent on the following variables: what foods you have already eaten that week, what foods you have sitting in the refrigerator, et cetera. You simply have to check whether the foods you ate are part of this Classical Sanskrit Diet list.
- Minimize decision time and minimize variable costs: Minimize variable costs of decision making. Allow for considerable flexibility in fixed costs.
- Again, in the Classical Sanskrit Diet, you basically have to memorize the list of foods in the Sanskrit language just once. That is a fixed cost. Once you do that, everything else is just about referring to a fixed list. That should not be hard.
- Employ distinctions between SHOULD and COULD, employ distinctions between SHOULD and SHOULD NOT, employ distinctions between MAY and COULD: Try to invest a certain amount of "fixed costs" in terms of what foods you COULD eat, what foods you SHOULD try to eat and what foods you SHOULD NOT eat.
- It is a good idea to divide what you eat into four parts - the whitelist, the blacklist, a third list, which can perhaps be called the "ought to eat list", and a fourth list which can be called the "ought not to eat list".
- The blacklist consists of foods you absolutely should not eat. This may be because of dietary restrictions due to illness. e.g. sugary foods for a diabetic. You can come up with this list based on advice from your doctor.
- The whitelist consists of the set of foods that is within the realm of possibility for the dieter. It is important to say, for instance, that a steak is part of a diet even if it is to be consumed very rarely. Save the steak for special occasions by all means, but put it on your whitelist. By doing so, you have identified the set of foods that are permissible. If you are a vegetarian, you would probably not put steak on there. Creating these distinctions creates "Clarity of Thought".
- The "Ought to eat" list consists of the set of foods that the dieter ought to eat : to create this list, identify a set of foods that you think should be on the "ought to eat" list. Americans generally don't eat enough fresh fruits and vegetables, so if you are anything like the typical American, you probably want to add a number of fresh fruits and vegetables to the "ought to eat" list. Again, creating this sort of distinction creates "Clarity of Thought"
- The "Ought not to eat" list consists of the set of foods that the dieter ought not to eat : this is the list in which most people get stuck. The production process of foods in America is a very sophisticated one. A very large number of new foods are created and it is seldom recognized that many of them are not easy to analyze by means of conventional diet. The big mistake many diets make, including the Atkins diet, is that they don't sufficiently clarify what is on the "Ought not to eat" list. This again is a very important distinction to make.
- The problem of "known unknowns" : The problem with most diets is essentially that new foods are not correctly factored in. Consider a new food - say, deep fried Tootsie rolls - that comes on to the market. This new food is factored into the diet only by means of certain variables such as calorie content. However, certain other important variables such as the constituents of the food are actually not take into consideration at all. This is obviously flawed. Think about it. A new food has jus come on the market. We don't know what lecithin or tannin or whatever else the food contains actually does to your body. Why then should diets not take into consideration the fact that there is a significant "known unknown" about these new foods?
- Employ mnemonics: It is very hard to keep all the above lists straight. So employ mnemonics.
- In the Classical Sanskrit Diet, we utilize Sanskrit as a way of remembering the names of foods on various lists. However, you are free to employ other mnemonics.
It is important for you to realize that what I am offering is not a new diet. Instead what I am offering is a new way of thinking about diets.
Every day, you make a large number of choices about what you eat. Why not get more intelligent about that? Why not make better decisions?
