ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the ways in which young British Asian women understand food and health to be related. In particular the focus is on how a synthesis is made between the understandings that are recognisably 'western' and those that are clearly related to the Ayurvedic tradition of the Indian subcontinent. Studies of understandings of health among the ethnic majority have described how medical orthodoxy and lay understandings of health cannot be clearly distinguished from one another (Davison et al. 1991). Individuals in a mass society hold opinions that are modified versions of those of the health agencies in wider society. Although traces of a system of beliefs about health that pre-date current medical orthodoxy can be found (Helman 1990), lay populations generally show a thorough grasp of orthodox understandings of health and illness causation (Backett et al. 1994).
