the three mahagunas

Mahagunas are the mental qualities:

• SATTVA: calm mind, awareness
• RAJAS: mental stimulation
• TAMAS: dullness of mind, darkness

There are three types of food correspondent to those mental qualities:

• Sattvic food: natural sweet taste, making and eating fresh, no over eating, boring. Examples:  all the sweet fruits, vegetables, lentils, beans, milf and dairy products, virgin oil, seeds, cereals. The sattvic food don’t stimulate the mind.
• Rajasic food: every kind of processed and refined food, processed sweet, salt, sour, pungent, like spices, tea, coffee, non veg (except pork and beef). It brings a feeling of guilt, sometimes the better medicine is say no.
• Tamasic food: leftover, re heating, overcooking, overeating, overheating, irregular eating, drugs, alcohol, beef, pork.

Two laws are crucial to understanding how the gunas work: the first law is the law of alternation, that means that the gunas interplay, never is one dominant over the other gunas; the second law is the law of continuity, the gunas tend to hold their particular natures for a certain period once they come into dominance, substances stabilize on the level of one of the three gunas, once tamas becomes rajas, or rajas becomes sattva they will continue in that same quality.