Foods that are katu — bitter; amla — sour; lavana — salty — beyond degree; atyushna — scalding-hot; tikshna — pungent; ruksha — dry, harsh; vidahin — burning. Aharah rajasasya ishtah — desired by the rajasika. Duhkha-shoka-amaya-pradah — they bring physical pain, mental sorrow, and disease.
Krishna names seven excessive qualities and three harms. The rajasika tasted bold but pays in three registers.
Shankara reads foods intensely bitter, sour, saline, scalding-hot, pungent, harsh, and burning as cherished by the rajasika. The prefix 'ati' — excessive — governs all seven qualities; each taste is taken to extremity, not just present. Such foods, being instruments of rajasic agitation, produce immediate bodily affliction — duhkha — subsequent mental sorrow — shoka — and ultimately disease — amaya. The chapter's pedagogical arc: the food shapes the eater.
Madhusudana reads the ati-prefix as governing all seven qualities. Kati — pungent — is already covered by tikshna, so ati-katu points to extremes like neem. Aty-amla, ati-lavana, aty-ushna are well-known. Ati-tikshna is pepper and similar — marichadi. Ati-ruksha is sneha-rahita — fat-free, oil-free. Vidahin — bitter peppered foods that burn from inside out. The seven together name the rajasic palate; the three harms — duhkha, shoka, amaya — name its consequences.
Ramanuja reads foods excessively bitter, sour, over-salted, scalding, piercingly sharp, desiccating, and inflammation-producing as the beloved diet of the rajasika.
Ramanuja specifies the mechanism of harm physiologically: tikshna means shoshakara — desiccating; ruksha means parching; vidahi means inflaming — each quality assaulting the body's balanced constitution. The bhakta's discrimination operates at the physiological register: which foods harm and which support the kainkarya-life.
Madhva reads on the bheda-frame: foods excessively in these seven qualities are favored by the rajasika and yield duhkha, shoka, amaya. The Dvaita reading understands this through tama-rajas bondage: the jiva's dietary preferences express its degree of svatantra-fantasy from Hari, and these three harms are the structural consequences of misalignment. The bheda is preserved through the diagnostic.
Vallabha reads pungent, acidic, over-salted, scorching, sharp, rough, inflaming foods as the rajasika's pleasure. His terse gloss — 'rajasasya priyah' — signals that from the pushti-marga standpoint this verse is descriptive of those outside Krishna's grace. The implicit contrast is with sattvika food offered first to Krishna as prasada — food that has passed through the lila-relation receives a different structural quality regardless of its sensory profile.
Shridhara specifies concrete examples: ati-katu refers to neem and its kin; ati-tikshna to black pepper; ati-ruksha to kanguka and kodrava grains; ati-vidahin to mustard. These are not vices per se but harmful when taken in excess. The three-fold fruit is temporally ordered: duhkha at eating, shoka soon after, amaya across time. The diagnostic operates across three time-registers.