Eating With Your Hands: Facts

Feeding kids with your hand

When Vibhu started with semi solids, my mother told to use my hands to feed him. Frankly I never liked it before as well but as every elder in the family is doing this manner I just accepted it. I used to go to my Dada ji's places in my summer vacation and there we used to have our food with hands. When my mother told me to follow this for Vibhu, I did some research and found interesting facts.In quest of it, I asked my mother about it. She told me that first of all, it improves bonding with the baby. Second, as per our Hindu culture, it's believed that on the tip of fingers is Goddess Lakshmi, on the base of fingers is Goddess Saraswati; in the middle of fingers is Lord Govinda (Shishu Mandir Girls remember Karagre waste Laxmi... Slok). And all these deities bless the food so having it, is like having a “Prashad”.

Here are the points, which I think are good enough for me to accept it for Vibhu :

Vedic Facts

Eating is an elaborate ritual in India and certain traditions creates our cultural identity. Eating with hands, serving food on banana leaves, considering food as art are some of the cases which separated Indian food traditions from other countries. Every food traditions here has its meaning and reason as well. Eating with hands has its roots in Ayurveda. Our hands and feet are said to be the channel of the five elements ( space, air, fire, water and earth) and each finger is an extension of one of the five elements. Through the thumb comes space, through the forefinger, air; through the middle-finger, fire; through the ring finger, water and through the little finger it is earth. Eating with fingers stimulates these five elements and helps in bringing forth digestive juices in the stomach. So it improves digestion.


Scientific Facts

1 . When we eat food with our hands, our fingers come in contact with our food before we put it in our mouth. Our nerve endings in fingers sense the temperature and texture of the food, thereby preparing our brain for what we are going to be eating and triggering the release of the appropriate digestive juices and enzymes.

2. Our body is thought to have a certain kind of bacteria that protects us from the other harmful bacteria in the environment. This bacteria resides in places like our hands, mouth, throat, intestine, gut and the rest of our digestive system. When we eat with our hands, this pattern of bacteria is maintained and we are protected from harmful bacteria. Of course, it is important for us to wash our hands before and after we eat, to ensure that they remain clean and hygienic.

I try to do this with Vibhu. This way I can also ensure that food is not too hot before putting it into his mouth. He also enjoys it and now when he is facing his teething phase, he bites me sometimes. After biting my finger, every time he smiles like he is intentionally doing it as playing with me :)

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