Bhagavatam-daily 103 – 11.08.19 – Don’t fall for the bait of glamorized unhealthy food

Shrimad Bhagavatam 11.18.19 here the brahmana is continuing his instruction to Maharaja Yadu and he is describing what he has learned from a fish so so the tongue is extremely maddening is extremely agitating it makes a person almost like mad so this this wildly agitating tongue what does it do you know people in general a person is taste so it deludes the person with taste that means the person desires to enjoy and with the desire to enjoy what happens that to enjoy taste the person becomes deluded and an example is given death the person whose intelligence is very shallow who doesn’t have any substantial intelligence or asat is practically it has no reality no substantial it in it it’s useless just as the meena a fish is caught by the hooks of a fisherman so here another example from nature is drawn just as earlier it was mentioned that the elephant is attracted and captivated by touch or the moth is attracted by sight the deer is attracted by sound and here it is mentioned that the fish is attracted by taste now when a fish sees the bait on the fisherman’s hook the fish rushes towards it thinking oh there is such a delicious food for me let me just eat and enjoy it and then it gets the hook it gets the bait it gets the hook but the hook gets it that means it moves towards the hook and catches it in its mouth and it thinks that there is just a bait but behind the bait there is a whole contraption meant to trap the fish and as the fish swallows the bait as the fish gets the bait the bait gets the fish and that’s how the fish becomes trapped now in today’s world trapping people by the tongue is a multi-billion dollar industry and our food staffs are advertised glamorized and they are so much ubiquitously visible and appealing that people just gorge on food unhealthy food in unhealthy quantities at inappropriate times and they end up sick unhealthy foods most of the food that people eat they are fast foods they have excessive content of oil excessive content of salt excessive content of fat sugar sometimes essentially even from a medical point of view they are not good for health and so people just this sort of foods are glamorized because it’s big business a lot of money can be made from it and in the more the sort of salt and sugar and oil fat is there in the food in the more it gives immediate titillation to the senses and because it gives immediate titillation people want it more and more and more and people eat it also more and more and then the result is an obesity epidemic where people just grow wildly obese unable to control their weight unable to control their food intake and therefore the body bloats up now as technology advances the weighing machines that people use are becoming smaller and smaller nowadays there are small brick like weighing machines which are completely portable just keep one foot on the brick like weighing machine and measure the weight standing on one foot for a few moments so all the weighing machines are becoming smaller and smaller but the people on those machines are becoming bigger and bigger because externally there is so much propaganda for eating more and more and for various kinds of food so first of all they are unhealthy food stuffs and then people eat them in unhealthy unhealthy unsound quantities they eat them too much is stuff themselves often and then they often eat it in appropriate times in between some snacks snacks between meals becomes huge meals themselves sometimes the snacks are delicious and in this way the person gets more or gets trapped they become sick becomes obese and obesity is fast becoming the single biggest cause of avoidable death it’s become it’s a serious health hazard especially among children who become couch potatoes sitting in front of television set or sitting in front of video games or in front of their devices they keep playing games and they keep stuffing potato chips and other such fatty things they eat potato chips and become like potatoes and in this way they just get trapped now even what is mortifying of the culture is on one side it glamorizes food more and more and more so people want to eat people feel tempted to eat and all around there are tempting foodstuffs to eat but on the other hand the same culture which glamorizes food also glamorizes slimness people’s conceptions of beauty what kind of figure is considered beautiful have changed throughout history sometimes a person who has a good amount of fat on the body is considered beautiful not excessive fat of course but sometimes a person who has some level of fat is considered beautiful even females but then in today’s idea it is the slim figure that is considered very beautiful and even men are expected to be slim but they have to be muscular so now people get crushed between the urge to eat and the urge to look good and that’s why there are so many fitness programs which exploit this conflicting urges that drive people and this program’s promise you can eat whatever you want but you just take this pill and you will stay thin or you will become thin you lose weight in just one week or two weeks or five weeks or whatever and in this way the people suffer all the more because first of all they want to they want to eat good and they want to look good also they both don’t go together and then they spend money on some lose weight quickly programs and most of the time they don’t lose weight even if they lose weight after some time they gain that weight and again all the more and essentially there is a whole whole array of mental complexes that goes on surrounded by food so much so that there are just like the alcoholic anonymous there is there is gluttonous anonymous things like that people are so addicted to food they don’t know how to control their eating habit there are some people there are some according to WHO statistics there are 800 people million people who are undernourished but there are 1 billion people a thousand million people who are obese so more than the number of people who are suffering because of not having enough food more than that number is the number of people who are suffering because of eating too much so there are some people who are starving to death and there are other people who are eating their way to death it is in such a situation where the culture is trapping and dragging us to death so just as a meaner the fish gets caught by the bait similarly we need to have eyes of scripture by which you can see that the continuous glamorization of food it is in the culture is the fisherman’s hook by which people exploitative people with vested commercial interests simply is the what they are putting the bait into our tongue to empty our pockets and not just along with they may not have an intention to spoil our health but along with emptying their pockets they are also um actually spoiling our health and of course people who are captivated too much by the desire to eat eat eat eat and it becomes very difficult for such people to focus on any higher spiritual truth Chaitanya Mahaprabhu says jeev bhera lalasa ye iti utti dhai, shishno dhar parayana krishna nahi paaye one runs here and there jeev bhera lalasa runs here and there to fulfill the desires of the tongue iti utti dhai it’s very graphic and sweet Bengali runs here and there so shishno dhar parayana eventually once we eat a lot then the belly becomes full and then the desire to enjoy sexually comes up and parayana one becomes parayana dedicated to that devoted to that instead of being narayan parayana and then krishna nahi paaye so even as devotees we need to regulate our eating and we regulate our eating by recognizing that not all that we eat prasad and eat prasad at regulated times and in regulated quantities so appropriate food at appropriate times in appropriate quantities can save us from the physical turmoil and the spiritual distraction that results from attachment to food the way the fish is attached and trapped thank you