The clearest exclusions are pork and shellfish, refused on grounds drawn from the Hebrew Bible's dietary law, which Rastafari reads as scripture alongside the rest of the Old Testament. Beyond that baseline, most Rastas avoid meat generally, and a strict Ital diet is close to vegan, built around fruit, vegetables, grains and legumes prepared without canned, bottled or otherwise processed ingredients. Salt is minimized or left out entirely, on the reasoning that it, like other additives, is a foreign substance the body was not built to need, and alcohol is avoided by many adherents on similar grounds, though practice varies here more than on the meat and salt questions.
Cooking methods matter as much as ingredients: food is prepared fresh, without preservatives, and often without metal cookware among the strictest observers, who prefer clay pots on the reasoning that metal interferes with the food's natural properties. Coffee and dairy are treated cautiously by some Rastas and accepted by others, which is one of several points where Ital observance is a spectrum running from a loose general preference for natural food to a demanding daily discipline, rather than a single fixed rule enforced by any central authority.