The growing population and the need to provide for everybody has forced us to make some undesired changes in our daily lives. The search of quick and effective life hacks has led to inventions which may not favour man’s health on the long run. One such invention is the pressure cooker. The pressure cooker uses pressure to elevate temperature and cook food within a short time without the wastage of much fuel. As convenient as it sounds, it creates more harm on the long run than any advantages.
Cooking is a process which involves complex chemical and physical transformation in the presence of heat. Digestion is considered homologous to this in our body and hence it is called Pāka in Sanskrit and the components involved in it are collectively called the Agni. In nature, fire always requires the support of air to burn. But if the air is turbulent (wind) then the fire spreads haywire. Similarly the agni in our body also requires the constant support of Samāna vāta to carry out its functions.
We have all studied the Ideal Gas equation: PV=nRT, which tells the relation between pressure, volume and temperature of a system. When we consider a vessel which is cooked with the lid on, the pressure exponentially increases inside the vessel. But there is no change in volume of the system. Hence it can be inferred from the equation that at constant volume, pressure is directly proportional to temperature. Rather, the change in pressure directly influences a similar change in temperature as well. To demonstrate the change in pressure, I made a small observation.
trim-86aff079-d614-4bc9-802a-e3a2d52f001e.MOV
trim-7bb75108-03d7-42c7-9daf-e0de95698322.MOV
There was a water bath with a pressure gauge at the side which contained a water column. When the water bath was heated with the lid closed, the water in the gauge level kept varying rapidly, moving up and down. But when it was heated with the lid open, the column of water in the gauge was completely still throughout.
When the lid is closed, pressure in the system became increasingly turbulent. We can understand by this that the pressure was not uniform throughout the system. According to what we learnt above, pressure influences temperature directly in a closed system. Hence temperature also doesn’t remain constant throughout. This affects the cooking process process in such a way that all particles are not cooked uniformly, and at the molecular level, there may be temperature dependent alterations in formation of compounds. This phenomenon is called विषम पाक. This vishamata or variation is a characteristic of Vāta dosha.
One more reason why food should always be cooked in an open container is due to the fact that an Oxygen rich environment aids the oxidation of any toxins and thereby converting them to harmless or less harmful substances.
