Vrat Food Checker: Can I Eat This in My Fast?

Choose a fast, such as Ekadashi, Navratri or Maha Shivaratri, and type a food, such as sabudana, rice, potato or rock salt, and this free tool tells you what our guide to that fast says about it. The answer quotes the guide word for word and links to it. Leave the food empty to see everything the guide says about food for that fast. It covers the 16 fasts our puja and vrat guides describe in some detail.

How it works

Each of our vrat guides has a short part on how the fast is kept: what many people eat, what they avoid, and where families differ. The tool holds those sentences exactly as the guides print them, and for each one notes which foods it names and whether it names them as eaten, avoided, or taken by some families and not others. When you ask about a food, it finds every sentence of that guide that names it and gives one of five answers:

• Often eaten: the guide names it among the foods of the fast.
• Often avoided: the guide says it is avoided.
• Families differ: the guide says some take it and some do not, or one sentence names it as eaten and another as avoided.
• In the meals around the fast: the guide names it only in a meal of the vrat days, outside the fast itself. Our Chhath guide, for example, names rice, chana dal, bottle gourd (lauki), ghee, jaggery and roti in the meal of day one and the kharna prasad, which are eaten before the 36-hour fast begins, so the tool does not show them as foods of the fast.
• Not covered by our page: the guide does not name it. This does not mean the food is allowed.

Beside that answer, a separate block, “What named books say”, gives what two named books say about the food, in our short summary and not as a quote: Gita Press’s Vrat Parichay for every fast, and for Ekadashi also Sri Ekadasi Mahatmya, which sets out Gaudiya practice. The block never changes the answer from our guide. Where a book and our guide point different ways, as with sabudana on Ekadashi, the tool says so and shows both views.

The tool knows the common names of each food, in English and in Hindi, so chawal, basmati rice and rice all find the same answer, as do sago and sabudana, singhare ka atta and singhara flour, or sendha namak and rock salt. A word for a form of food, such as atta, puri, water or salt, does not decide the answer on its own when the rest of what you type is a food the tool does not know, so arrowroot atta is not read as wheat flour, nor coconut water as water. Some foods that people often ask about, such as samak, rajgira, makhana, peanuts or curd, are not named in our guides as foods of a fast, so the tool does not check them and says so rather than guess.

Reading the result

The large line gives the answer, and under it are the guide’s own sentences, each with a link to the guide. For a strict fast, such as Karva Chauth, Hartalika Teej or Chhath, a line above the table gives the guide’s words on how strict it is. When the guide names a food only in the meals around the fast, a note under its heading says so. The table lists every food the guide names for the fast, with its answer. Above the table, the “What named books say” block gives each book line that names the food, with a tag for what the book says (does not break a vrat, a havishya food, avoided, or eaten on the days around Ekadashi), and a line headed “Two views” where the book and our guide differ. With the food left empty, the block lists every book line for that fast. The health line at the foot is the guide’s own advice on who should speak to a doctor first.

Where traditions differ

Fasting customs differ between families, regions and sampradayas, and our guides say so: on Ekadashi, for example, some families eat rock salt and others do not, and on a Monday fast some avoid salt, some use rock salt and some eat a normal satvik meal. Some foods are not discussed in our guides at all, such as samak, rajgira or makhana, so the tool gives no answer for them. The guides describe what many people do, not a rule from one text. Where your family’s custom differs, follow it, or ask your priest.

The old texts say much less than the customs do. A general rule we have read and checked comes from the Mahabharata, in Vidura’s teaching to Dhritarashtra (Udyoga Parva 5.39.56 in the Pune critical edition of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Section XXXIX in Kisari Mohan Ganguli’s English translation). It names eight things that “are not destructive of a vow”: water, roots, fruits, milk, clarified butter, what is done at the desire of a Brahmana or at the command of a preceptor, and medicine. It names no particular fast. For Ekadashi, the Narada Purana says ekadashyam na bhoktavyam pakshayor ubhayor api, in our translation “on Ekadashi, in both halves of the month, one should not eat” (Uttara-bhaga, chapter 3, verse 17 as numbered in the GRETIL e-text). That is the strictest form of the fast, and our Ekadashi guide says the fast “ranges from none of grain to no food or water”. Neither verse names sabudana, potatoes, kuttu or singhara flour, or rock salt.

A published rule book says a little more. Gita Press’s Vrat Parichay (Pt. Hanuman Sharma, book 610, 27th reprint, Samvat 2073) gives the same eight things as its general rule no. 29, and then a list of havishya foods: khir, sattu, barley, shak, milk, curd, ghee, roots, mango, pomegranate, orange and banana. Its appendix, giving Gautama’s list, names shakarkand among the roots. For Ekadashi it says to avoid masur, chana, shak, honey, oil and a bronze vessel from Dashami to Dwadashi, and to eat havishyanna on Dashami and Dwadashi, the days before and after: barley, wheat, mung, sendha namak, black pepper, sugar and cow ghee. Gaudiya practice is stricter. Sri Ekadasi Mahatmya (BV Vishnu Daivata, Hindi, 2010, pp. 56 to 57) avoids on Ekadashi all grains, including samak rice and suji, and also sabudana, sesame and mustard oils, honey, many vegetables, hing, cumin and other spices. That differs from the common North Indian custom our Ekadashi guide describes, which lists sabudana among the foods of the fast, so for sabudana on Ekadashi the tool shows both views. For other fasts the Vrat Parichay is brief: for Navratri it gives only the ways of keeping the vrat (ekabhukta, nakta, ayachita and upavasa), for Maha Shivaratri only the rules for breaking the fast, and for Karva Chauth that one eats only after moonrise and the arghya, with laddus of atta and ghee as the naivedya; Kartika Chhath is not in it. So the food lists of Navratri, Shivaratri, Karva Chauth and Chhath, as our guides give them, are customs that many families keep today, and so, as far as we have found, are those of the other fasts. We have not found a classical text or a published rule book that sets them out fast by fast, so the tool’s answers quote our guides and claim no more than they say.

What it does not do

It does not give medical or dietary advice. A fast without food or water is hard on the body, and our guides ask anyone who is pregnant, nursing, diabetic, elderly, unwell or on regular medicine to speak to a doctor first. It does not set out the full rules of any one text or sampradaya: the named-book block gives only the lines described above. It does not answer for a food or a fast our guides do not describe. It does not tell you when to break the fast; for Ekadashi, use the parana time calculator.

Frequently asked questions