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Hari Om, good day. Today we are in the kitchen of the Sridev Purījī Ashrama in Zagreb. This is our beautiful kitchen, as you will see later. Our topic is vegetarianism, specifically one aspect of it. Vegetarianism is a broad subject, and we will certainly discuss it many times. To break the taboo that vegetarians are in any way deprived, we begin today with the subject of vegetarianism and elite sports. We have chosen top athletes as a special group, considering that many people who begin vegetarianism are unsure whether it will be good for their health—especially for children, those with certain illnesses, or athletes. Today, we address the kitchen for athletes, specifically for elite athletes. In our yoga tradition, everyone is vegetarian for moral reasons. For us, ahiṁsā paramo dharma—non-injury is the highest duty. That is the main reason we are vegetarians in yoga. But of course, this does not mean we need to be ill. It is a type of nourishment that satisfies in every possible way. Children, adults, and the elderly can all be vegetarians. Except perhaps in some more serious illnesses, I have not yet encountered a single case where someone cannot be a vegetarian. Generally, everyone’s health improves if they eat properly in a vegetarian way. As with all diets, you can nourish yourself correctly or incorrectly. If you eat only bread and butter every day, you certainly will not be healthy and will not represent vegetarianism well. Today’s topic is the kitchen for elite athletes. What is important in their diet is that the food does not burden them; it should not weigh them down during training and sports activities while still providing enough energy. There are two directions here. One includes sports based on strength and endurance, like triathlon, cycling, or team sports. Here, besides muscular strength, endurance is crucial. The second segment includes sports like bodybuilding, where the emphasis is on nutrition for strengthening muscles and achieving greater muscle mass. We have a few ingredients here to show what this is about. The foundation of every healthy vegetarian cooking is healthy ingredients. If possible, obtain organic produce. Here in Croatia, we are blessed with markets full of stalls offering organic and healthy food. We have a diverse selection of vegetables and other vegetarian items. The quality of the food is important; the higher the quality, the better it will be utilized in the body, yielding a better result. The second extremely important thing is that you can turn even the healthiest food into something harmful. For example, if you take amaranth, boil it in three liters of water, overcook it, and oversalt it, all the healthy elements will go into the water, which you then drain. You will be left with a cardboard-like residue and achieve nothing. If there is no usefulness, it would have been better not to cook or eat it at all. Among foods in a vegetarian diet for athletes, whole-grain pasta is definitely recommended. Pasta is an easily digestible carbohydrate that provides plenty of energy; it is a complex carbohydrate that transforms into pure energy for athletes. Besides whole wheat pasta, you can use whole grain rice, chapati, and any whole grain bread—any whole grain carbohydrate. The next very important ingredient is tofu. Tofu is exceptionally easily digestible. They say it is almost one of the first foods newborns can consume—cooked tofu. I cook tofu because it is easier to digest than raw. Smoked food is not so easily digestible and comes later in the diet. Cooked fresh white tofu is extremely easy to digest and an exceptional source of protein. Along with cottage cheese and proteins from legumes, it provides an excellent foundation for muscle development. Among the basic ingredients that provide us with proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals, spices are extremely important in every vegetarian diet. Food without spices is not only tasteless; it will be difficult to persuade someone on a meat-based diet to switch to vegetarianism if you give them boiled vegetables without salt or flavor. But besides sensory pleasure, spices have a much more important role. They are truly medicines. Each spice has such a wide range of effects that simply by taking them, we can not only maintain our health but also significantly improve it—without taking pills. For example, it is very fashionable worldwide to sell turmeric capsules. Turmeric, or haldī, is one of the well-known spices today because it is sold in capsules for almost everything. Turmeric has anti-inflammatory properties; from some studies, it seems to be one of the most potent anticancer agents. Instead of swallowing capsules three times a day, use it in your diet. It gives a beautiful color; if you overdo it a bit, it gives a slightly ultra-yellow hue, but you cannot overdo it in terms of taste. It does not have a strong flavor and can be added to any food, sweet or savory. In sweet food, like cakes, if you add a little turmeric, everyone will admire and say, "Oh, how many eggs did you put in that cake?" However, it is turmeric. It is extremely beneficial for the intestines and even heals severe intestinal inflammations. If you take, for example, a teaspoon of turmeric with yogurt before each meal, mixing it into the yogurt with a little water and salt, and consume it before the meal, irritable bowel syndrome and colitis will surely reduce in difficulty, and in most cases, healing will occur. It is exceptionally good and must be consumed with legumes as it facilitates the absorption of proteins. Even if you consume an adequate amount of protein, if your body is not healthy enough to absorb it, you have achieved nothing. The majority, 90% of nutrient absorption in the body, takes place in the intestines, so your intestines need to be healthy. Turmeric is one of the helpers in that sense. Besides better absorption, turmeric also serves to remove uric acid from the body. So in any case, consume turmeric. That is the best advice. Besides turmeric, there are a number of other spices. Today, we will not cover them all, as we focus on the ingredients we will be cooking for our athletes. Jīrā, or cumin, is once again an almost indispensable spice, not only for Indian food. Many believe these spices are used only in Indian cuisine. If used in reasonable amounts, they can blend very nicely into any meal. Today, we will have both menus Mediterranean, so we will still use jīrā. Cumin reduces the formation of gas from legumes and actually softens them, making legumes much easier to digest when cooked. Besides those Indian spices, here we also have Himalayan salt. Himalayan salt is highly recommended for athletes because it facilitates the absorption of minerals. We all know that during training and sports activities, minerals are lost through sweating. Himalayan salt helps utilize the minerals ingested through food. It is usually a gentle pinkish color and has an exceptionally mild taste; there is almost no difference in taste from sea salt. You can use it in everyday cooking. Besides spices, we also have our traditional, let’s say, spices here. These may be somewhat exotic, but not too much in today’s times. Those are herbs, aromatic herbs. Unfortunately, we are recording this program at a time when they are not available, so we will use dried ones, which are an equally good substitute. You can dry spices yourself and prepare preserves in this way for the winter. One thing we actually forgot to mention: here you saw jīrā or cumin powder. We almost never buy, if possible, powdered spices. For grinding spices, there is the ṭhāṇī, a modern little device, but it has actually existed since the beginning of the world. The first elements of ṭhāṇī were stone and stone: one flat stone and one stone on top of it used for grinding spices. This is a slightly more modern version, and in my opinion, every household should have it, especially vegetarians; these are indispensable tools. It is good to grind them by hand, but if you are in a hurry, you can also grind spices using an electric mixer or something similar. However, this is much healthier, much better, and gives a much better aroma. You can grind the cumin here yourself; if the salt is too coarse, you can crush Himalayan salt. It is actually something without which you can hardly do in the kitchen if you use spices. So, that would be the ṭhāṇī. We mentioned those herbs. They are mostly mixed into Mediterranean cuisine, but again, today globalization is everywhere, including in the kitchen. It does not mean you cannot use imagination. If the taste suits you, there are no limits. You can combine everything that suits you and surprise both yourself and others with completely new combinations. Recipes and cooking are an art, so recipes are here, let’s say, a school, the basics. Every recipe can only give you an idea to create something of your own. Cooking strictly by recipes is like setting a machine to play Mozart. It will be good, it will be beautiful, and not a single note will be wrong, yet there will not be, as those familiar with music say, any soul. Every cook always adds something of their own to the cooking and to every recipe. Here it is no different—you should not be afraid; simply allow some inspiration in the moment. Over time, you will gain so much experience that you will actually know in advance what you can do, what will give you some taste in relation to what, and so on. So, one must be creative in the kitchen. Every kitchen is dull if there is no creativity. Spices allow us countless flavors and combinations, and yet, we return to that healthy aspect—they are indispensable in cooking. The first one is mother’s soul. Motherwort and thyme are two very closely related plants. In our regions, they have been used for a very, very long time, actually since forever. They were previously used to give food flavor when there was not enough salt. In ancient times, salt was extremely expensive, and spices were actually used to reduce the amount of salt while still enhancing the flavor of the food. Motherwort and thyme neutralize the fat from food and the body and are beneficial for digestion and the lungs. Among other things, they act to dissolve mucus and alleviate spasms and coughs. Even today, there are teas made from thyme and wild thyme that are drunk during colds, etc. However, why would you drink tea? Put motherwort or thyme in your food, and it will have the same effect as if you had brewed a tea from them, which may not always be very pleasant in taste. Besides motherwort and thyme, here we also have oregano. That is perhaps one of the most well-known spices; we all know oregano because of pizza. But again, it is not used only for pizza; oregano is a wonderful spice in many vegetarian dishes and truly has a delightful flavor. It works excellently on the nervous system, which is, for example, extremely important for those who sometimes experience disturbances such as dizziness and other ailments, as well as colds and all stomach illnesses. It helps with weak digestion. In fact, all the plants we have today aid digestion. What does it mean to aid digestion? This means they prevent the formation of gases, facilitate the absorption of nutrients, and improve digestion so that it is quick, so that food does not remain in the intestines or stomach for too long, which again creates tamas guṇa—we will not talk about tamas guṇa today, but on another occasion. But overall, food that remains too long in the intestines and stomach begins to rot, and that is certainly not good for health. Let us simplify things. About tamas, rajas, and sattva, we will address that on another occasion today, just as a note. Here, as a third element, we have a blend of Mediterranean spices, which includes all these spices, plus also basil and marjoram. Basil is known; the word itself comes from Greek, meaning royal. That spice is truly royal in every respect. From its taste, everyone who has eaten pesto on pasta knows that basil or tulasī has an extraordinary flavor, fresh. Of course, dried in these cases also works excellently for digestion, with anti-inflammatory effects. It has such a wide range of influence that there simply isn’t anything on which it does not act beneficially. So when you use herbs in the kitchen, not only will you achieve exceptional flavors and enhance the taste of some vegetables, but with legumes and all foods that cause gas, you will avoid that element. In the end, you will improve your health as if you were drinking herbal teas, as if you were actually undergoing a regimen of some herbal teas. Similarly, if you cannot use them fresh, try to ensure that the dried herbs are fresh, meaning not several years old but from this season. I would like to return for just a second to the topic of legumes. Pods say that most pods, peas, and beans came relatively recently from America to our regions. However, in our regions there is one legume that is native to us, and that is the fava bean. Beans are an exceptionally healthy legume. For a while, they were actually not used much because they were considered food for the poor. Everyone was buying expensive peas, while our broad bean was left to rot in the garden because it wasn’t considered as interesting. It is certain that we will more easily digest the food that our grandmothers, their grandmothers, and others ate, because in a way we have genetically adapted to that type of diet, just like every other animal. Now, if you introduce something completely outside of our diet too quickly, such as algae or some food entirely foreign to us, you will have problems. Of course, if you do it reasonably, step by step, you will be able to accept that even algae are very healthy food, a source of minerals and vitamin B12. So in any case, you should accept all that is good from every source, but if you can, base your diet on what is said to have been eaten by our grandmothers. Because it is certain that if you have sensitive digestion, this will definitely be the food you can digest most easily. Now we will return to today’s topic, which is nutrition for the athlete. The best way to break the taboo that vegetarians cannot be top athletes will be our two guests today. Actually, they are not guests; they are our yoga instructors here. They will tell you more about it. However, I can point out what healthy sports nutrition actually consists of. All the basic food items should be included, yet they must be easily digestible. Here we return again to easily digestible foods because of the spices, cooked in a way that makes them easy to digest while allowing all the elements to be utilized. We use cow’s cheese and dairy products in general, as we are not vegans but vegetarians. All dairy products are an excellent source of all vitamins, especially that famous vitamin B12, which many scientists believe is absent in a vegetarian diet. So, it can be found in cow’s cheese, and likewise, we can find B12 in various other products. If you strongly believe there isn’t enough of it, athletes usually take it in the form of brewer’s yeast. So, brewer’s yeast, cow’s cheese for B12. As for proteins, which are extremely important for muscle development, there are legumes—that is, pulses or legumes, tofu, and again, cow’s milk cheese. For minerals and vitamins, all vegetables are there, especially green vegetables, which should be consumed partly raw, like salad, and partly cooked, but again in a way that preserves all that is healthy within them. Normally, for vitamins, there are carrots and other things, various fruit, and one important thing is stone fruits. They are indispensable for athletes—of course, for everyone, but especially for athletes. This is something that cannot be missed for muscle mass. The kernels are extremely rich in essential oils and everything needed for building muscle mass. The last thing we forgot to mention in a vegetarian diet for athletes is good oils, healthy oils, or rather healthy fats. That includes olive oil, of course, which is our great Croatian treasure. It is truly beautiful, with its colors. Almost all of you know that in Croatia, you can obtain beautiful local olive oils that are rich in essential fatty acids and exceptionally healthy. Ghee is clarified butter; it is an exceptionally rich source, yet since it is actually a dairy product made from butter, it does not have the residue that makes butter unhealthy. Ghee is healthy; it does not clog the vessels, it is easily digestible, and in any case, it can be used in the diet. Ghee is generally excellent not only for those engaged in physical exertion but also for mental efforts, especially for children in development, as brain development requires essential fats. There is still much more that we could say about vegetarianism. This is truly just a small fragment of what we mentioned today, but these are actually all the essentials, everything important for preparing vegetarian food for athletes. Vegetarian food for athletes is a small segment within vegetarianism. There is truly so much there, and I hope that we will actually cover it all.