Alleviation of Doshas by adjusting the flavors.

Delicious ("sweet"), sour and salty all lower Vata. Bitter, pungent and astringent flavors reduce Kapha. The astringent, bitter and delicious flavors reduce Pitta. This reveals to us how we can adjust the flavors in order to influence the balance in the body. When we see that somebody has a body with a certain dosha (imbalance), their preferences should be clear to us - a person with a Kapha imbalance will probably prefer things that are delicious ("sweet") and dislike things that are astringent. If we want to decrease or increase the tendencies of the body, we can create a formula that will change the balance. Each material has its dharma and it must act in accordance with it, it cannot be otherwise. When these materials perform their dharma, then the imbalances of the body will be affected. The person will either make use of this opportunity or not. Everything that we ingest will do its job, it is up to us what we take in. We can also recognize these flavors in behavior. Ayurveda includes sound in the category of a dravya ("material" or "thing"). 

Food creates the body, as does our psychology (our liking and disliking), as does all aspects of our environment (how we move, how much we do of what activity, how these things combine. In Sanskrit the terms are samvaya (food as a cause of the body), nimitta (the mind as a cause of the body), asamvaya (the proportions of everything including the environment as a cause of the body).   

When we produce fabric, we use thread. Both the fabric as a whole and the thread are material, and so is the needle that turns the thread into cloth, but the needle does not remain within the fabric when it is done. In this example, samvaya is the thread (food), the body is the fabric, and the asamvaya factors that bind everything together are the needle - they do not remain behind materially, but their action has created the fabric.

The qualities (guny) of something determine its agni, the force that will drive how things behave. The sequence is (agni-guny)-mahabhuty-flavor-dosha.

When a person is "on fire" for something, then everything seems easy and the actions he takes will definitely have a result, but without this fire (agni), the exact same actions will seem heavy and impossible. Everything is dependent on context and relative.