Zohran Mamdani Eats With His Hands: Here’s Why It’s Good for Your Gut

How Eating with Hands Promotes Good Gut Health

Modern science suggests there is more to eating with hands than just cultural significance. For ages, Ayurveda has advocated hand-to-mouth eating as the gold standard of activating digestive enzymes even before eating. 

Here’s how it may benefit your gut: 

• Boosts Digestive Enzymes: The sense of touch plays a crucial role in stimulating digestion. When you touch our food with your hands, your fingers send signals to the brain about the texture, temperature of the food. With these signals sent ot the brain, it leads to the release of the right gut enzymes, helping your body to better prepare for digestion after food consumption.
• Promotes Mindful Eating: Eating with a fork or a spoon often leads to overeating, while eating with your hands naturally slows down the pace of eating. This approach fosters a sense of fullness at the right moment, avoiding indulging in bigger portions while curbing hunger pangs. Moreover, it also allows your body to register food fullness and prevent bloating or acid reflux.  
• Promotes Gut Flora: Eating with your hands helps in promoting gut health by increasing natural bacteria (and not harmful bacteria) that reside on your hands. Of course, it is important to wash your hands well before and after every meal. These beneficial bacteria can work on your immune system, training it and stimulating microbial diversity within the intestines.

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Wellness Blends with Cultural Shift

Eating by hand is not simply a cultural tradition, but a gut-friendly, Ayurvedic-approved approach to fulfilling food habits. According to Ayurvedic philosophy, each of the five fingers symbolises one of the five elements (earth, water, fire, air, and space) and that eating with your hands makes you directly aligned to these forces. Wellness-wise, eating with hands instils a better mind-body connection with food-eating behaviour, which is mostly absent in the contemporary world of eating with a fork and spoon.

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Is Eating With Your Hands Worth Trying? 

If engaging your hands while eating has been on your list for long, this might be the right time to do so. And while it's no rocket science, it might be a little daunting for people trying to practice eating with their hands for the first time.

So, here are a couple of helpful tips to start your journey: 

• Wash your hands thoroughly every time before and after meals.
• Start eating with your hands with easy foods such as rice dishes, flatbreads, or grain bowls.
• Use only your fingers to pick up the food to eat, and do not use your palm, which might lead to clumsiness and messy eating. 
• Make sure to eat slowly and consciously, and be led by your senses.

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Conclusion: Eating with Hands is Not Just a Trend

A viral moment of Zohran Mamdani eating with his hands was not only about food but about cultural identity, history, and possible health benefits. With the modern world turning towards sustaining a healthy gut, simple age-old eating habits like eating with hands are gaining the much-deserved traction. From promoting gut health to curbing overeating habits, using your hands to eat might be the best habit you can apply in your daily routine.

So, the next time you are sitting at the dining table, think about dropping the fork and your tummy, and perhaps your soul, might thank you.