WHAT IS THE KEMETIC DIET?

In this article, we will be discussing food for the Mind, Body, and Soul as taught by Ancient Egypt.

You will learn how the Kemetic Diet (as well as Kemetic Yoga and Kemetic Fasting) can play a significant role in your overall health.

If you seek to change your lifestyle and to balance your entire personality, following the Kemetic Diet might be precisely what you need. It is a lifestyle that is greatly inspired by the way of life in Kemet/Kamit, today called Ancient Egypt, with its followers today called Kemetics.

By choosing to follow this lifestyle and incorporate these practices, you will make choices that:

  • Improve your physical health 💪🏾
  • Improve your mental health 🧠
  • Improve your spiritual health 🙏🏾

You might be wondering why this ancient lifestyle is essential today, or how you can follow it. Indeed with the pace of society and toxicity in the food choices available to us, this creates a challenge.

Additionally, much of the high-quality fruit and vegetables on the market are over-priced but this highlights how much of an investment good quality food is.

This article will explain the Kemetic diet in its entirety, and show you why it is the best even in our modern world. Coupled with Kemetic fasting, yoga and meditation you will improve your overall health and lifespan.


What is the Kemetic Diet?
(In-depth Analysis)

The Kemetic Diet is an eating plan that follows the religious and cultural laws of ancient Egypt. As detailed by Muata Ashby in his 2005 book, Kemetic Diet: Ancient African Wisdom for Health of Mind, Body, and Spirit (link to .pdf), this diet seeks to help people achieve the highest levels of health; to improve their personalities through better physical, mental, and spiritual health.

Kemetic fasting, intermittently, added to the diet can also heighten the senses and enhance mental clarity. In Kamit, health represented one’s whole being, not just the lack of illness, or disease.

A healthy person, therefore, is one who eats foods meant for human consumption (vegetables), pays attention to their thoughts, emotions, and actions, and continually seeks to attain a higher level of consciousness. All this constitutes the primary purpose of life in Kamit:

Seeking Enlightenment.

Enlightenment in Ancient Egypt, meant a state of abiding happiness, that no matter the situation or condition, one maintained a state of calmness and joy at all times. To achieve this state, one had to train the mind to control negative emotions of anger, sadness, depression, jealousy etc.

This process of preparing the mind started with the food consumed.

The diet of Kemet/Kamit was vegetarian or vegan, meaning no meat and animal products, cooked foods, or junk foods. Food played an integral role for those who sought Enlightenment, also called initiates or Priests and Priestesses of the temple.

The belief was that food had to be treated as sacred.
For food to be sacred, it had to represent the Divine, and as such, be as green as Asar.

Asar was an Egyptian god of agriculture, fertility, and reincarnation. He was depicted as a green deity and believed to be a reincarnation of the Divine. He, therefore, inspired the establishment of vegetarianism in the Kemetic Diet; to eat green and become as Divine as Asar.

Green vegetables contain chlorophyll whose role is to trap sunlight to enable the process of photosynthesis.

In Kamit, and particularly in the Asarian Culture (the tradition of Asar), the Sun is Divine (Ra). Thus, by eating vegetables (green, organic foods), one traps the Sun (Ra) in the body, and therefore, becomes Divine.

In other words, eat ‘light’ to become ‘light’. It is the same concept they (Ancient Egyptians) followed by only baking food using the sun; to prepare it by the power of the Divine.

In Kemetic Diet, it is believed that meat is unfit for human consumption as it leads to digestive problems (dis-ease). Consuming animal products, such as dairy, was not advocated for as well. Rather than consume dairy to be healthy, it is advisable to consume what the animals consumed to be able to produce such healthy products.

In the same view, instead of eating meat to become as healthy as an ox, it is better, and less violent, to eat what an ox eats.

Modern followers of the Kemetic lifestyle understand that food is the cause of all dis-eases such as diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure etc. Meats, other animal products, overcooked and processed foods, junk foods etc. are therefore harmful to the body; they are hard to digest, and they allow bad mental habits about food.  

If one continually eats these foods, they continually assault the body until the point where it cannot fight back. When the body is weakened as such, it is exposed to dis-ease, and illnesses become more powerful.

One needs to eat foods that are easily digested and assimilated by the body as required, and these are vegetables and fruits. Vegetables enhance an alkaline system, therefore making the environment inhabitable for illnesses and stress.

 The Kemetic Diet Guidelines

In Ancient Kemet, the diet was a crucial part of a person’s lifestyle. If approached the wrong way, it was considered the cause of all disease. As such, all who sought physical, mental, or spiritual Enlightenment followed a strict vegetarian diet.

According to Muata Ashby, Ancient Egyptians were guided by the belief that health was not merely the absence of illness, but a holistic approach to food as a link between them, their gods and ancestors.

In respect to this view, the Kemetic Diet advises people to eat as follows:

  1. To only consume staple foods; starches accompanied by vegetables. The ideal starches are grains, root vegetables, and legumes. Some examples of these starches are rice, wheat, beans, potatoes, and lentils. Those which cannot be eaten raw are to be plainly cooked, for example, potatoes should only be boiled and eaten that way.
  2. To consume green juices, daily if possible. These are juices made with vegetables such as celery, spinach, kale etc. If one can get organic vegetables, the health benefits would be better.
  3. To never, or only occasionally consume some foods that are considered to offer little or no health value to a person. When eaten, these foods place a lot of strain on the digestive system, and as such, may only be consumed in small quantities and on very special occasions. These are foods like eggs, some nuts, some fruits, alcohol, and some meats, e.g. fish.
  4. Fasting is also advocated for in this diet, as a way of purifying the body. In Muata Ashby’s book, it is shown of the discovery by Hippocrates in his documented travels to Kamit; that the people engaged is a consecutive three-day fast every month.

The Kemetic Diet seeks to eliminate stress on the organs and in doing so, on the body, mind and soul. To effectively empower a person to attain Enlightenment, or abiding happiness and peace, Ancient Egyptians incorporated the following physical activities in addition to the diet. Modern followers should practice these as frequently as possible.

  1. Exercise and practice yoga to detoxify the body and keep fit. As shown by the findings of Plutarch on the Initiate’s diet in Muata Ashby’s book, obesity was advised against in Kemet as having excess fatness (weight) could weigh down the soul. In the modern world, as well, excess weight is detrimental to one’s health as it invites diseases such as arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, and gall bladder disease, among others.
  2. Practice breathing techniques to increase oxygen flow and Life Force Energy intake, cleanse the lymphatic system, relax the mind, and provide heart exercise.

Kemetic Activities For The Mind And Soul

The purpose of this diet is to achieve a level/state of consciousness that is also independent of bodily concerns. Doing this brought happiness, peace, harmony, and joy, and therefore Enlightenment. When one is enlightened, they attain oneness with the Divine. These are some activities incorporated in this diet that purify and improve the mind and soul of an initiate.

  1. Meditation to calm the mind and eliminate all negative thoughts and emotions.
  2. Praying, Mantras and Chants to detoxify the soul.
  3. Reading scriptures, books, etc. to detoxify the mind.
  4. Helping others to detoxify the soul and mind.

Example of a Morning routine on the Kemetic Diet

  1. Upon waking up in the morning, before consuming anything else, drink an alkaline drink such as:
  2. Lemon or lime infused water (Using purified water)
  3. Coconut water, obtained from a young jelly coconut.
  4. One or two cups of purified water with a green vegetable powder.
  5. Perform a breathing exercise such as:
  6. Sit cross-legged, and with your hands in front of you with palms together. Breathe in deeply, and as you do so, lift your hands, spreading them apart.
  7. As you breathe out, bring your arms together in front of you again.
  8. Repeat about five times, gradually increasing your pace.
  9. Repeat some affirmations that uplift your mood, and give you the willpower to pursue Enlightenment.
  10. Eat a cucumber after the exercises to hydrate and further alkalize your system.
  11. Eat a tablespoon of soaked raw almonds; they will be easily digestible and have increased nutrient content. Almonds are rich in Protein, Calcium, Magnesium, and Vitamin E.

Conclusion

The Kemetic Diet enables Enlightenment by teaching the power of food on the connection between body, mind, and soul to motivate one to discover themselves (Know Thyself). By following this diet, one discovers how to eat the right food to improve the physical body, and what to do to improve their mental and spiritual health.