Āṅgan No. 8
Extra mirchi? The Gītā has an opinion.
Chapter seventeen sorts food by the mind that craves it. At 17.9 comes the list for the restless, driven mind, rājasa: food that is bitter, sour, very salty, too hot, pungent, dry and burning.
The verse is blunt about the result. Such food causes pain, sorrow and disease.
Every Indian knows the feeling the morning after a plate of pani puri with extra mirchi. The Gītā wrote it down first.
Arjuna asked his. Samvāda answers yours with the Gītā's own verses.
Samvāda is software, an AI companion tuned to the Bhagavad Gītā. It is not a person. It answers from the verse and shows you which one, and it never pretends to be Kṛṣṇa.
कट्वम्ललवणात्युष्णतीक्ष्णरूक्षविदाहिनः।आहारा राजसस्येष्टा दुःखशोकामयप्रदाः।।
kaṭv-amla-lavaṇāty-uṣṇa- tīkṣṇa-rūkṣa-vidāhinaḥ āhārā rājasasyeṣṭā duḥkha-śokāmaya-pradāḥ
Foods that are bitter, sour, very salty, excessively heating, highly pungent, dry, and burning are all dear to Rajasika men; they cause pain, sorrow, and disease.
17.9 is verse 603 of 700, and verse 9 of 28 in chapter 17.
Rājasa and rajas (the restless quality), in any form, appears in 23 verses of the 700, first at 6.27 and last at 18.38.
17.9 falls under the speaker label of Kṛṣṇa.
Counted by Vāṇi on the 700-verse text at getvani.app/gita.
Kṛṣṇa's account of food in chapter 17 comes in three verses, one for each kind of mind. 17.8 lists food that is sweet, oily, substantial and agreeable, and that supports long life, strength, health and happiness, dear to the clear mind. 17.9 turns to the restless, driven mind, rājasa, which likes food that is bitter, sour, very salty, very hot, pungent, dry and burning. The verse states the result in plain words: pain, sorrow and disease. It is not a rule about spice as such. It ties what a person craves to the state of their mind. Then 17.10 describes the food of the dull, heavy mind, the stale and the spoiled. Read in order, the three verses give a quick way to look at your own plate. The wider passage is in chapter 17.