The humid summer is on and it is going to be hotter and hotter the next 2,5 months. Or longer. Of course we are all trying to survive by lowering the outside temperature whenever we can, however, it is also very important to remember about the inner temperature of our bodies. How can we influence that? Fortunately, my awesome Chinese teacher let me in on the Chinese secret of cold and hot foods last year, and ever since then I have been trying to stick to it. And either it is the placebo effect or it is really working!
It all starts with the most fundamental concept in TCM ( Traditional Chinese Medicine) – Yin and Yang. – two opposite principles in nature. Yang is heaty and yin is cooling.To stay healthy we need to keep the balance between these two. And when our body is exposed to extremely hot or cold temperatures, we need to eat more cooling /warming foods to combat the changing weather. This is the most simple explanation, but if you want more details , check out these two websites, where you can find more profound explanations: http://www.pingminghealth.com/article/581/warming-and-cooling-characteristics-of-common-foods/ or http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/heaty.html
I don’t know about you, but especially in the summer , because of all the sweating and humidity, it can frequently happen to me that I will have some rash or the horrible pimples that appear in the least desirable moment. However, sticking to cooling/warming foods – diet helps add even in the polluted Shanghai, my skin gets better as I get olderJ
Here is the list of what is cold, hot and also ‘neutral’ and you can also see it in the picture I attached with this post.
Cool (yin) Foods:
Bamboo shoot, banana, bitter gourd, clam, crab, grapefruit, lettuce, persimmon, salt, seaweed, star fruit, sugar cane, water chestnut, watermelon, lotus root, cucumber, barley, bean curd, chicken egg white, marjoram, oyster, pear, peppermint, radish, strawberry, tangerine, and yogurt, broccoli, cauliflower, zuccini, corn, tomatoes, pineapple, turmeric and coconut water
Neutral (balanced yin and yang) Foods:
Honey, corn, abalone, apricot, beef, beetroot, black fungus, carp, carrot, celery, chicken egg yolk, cuttlefish, duck, fig, kidney bean, lotus fruit and seed, milk, olive, oyster, papaya, pork, potato, pumpkin, radish leaf, red bean, plum, sunflower seed, sweet rice, sweet potato, white fungus, yellow soybean, brussels sprouts, snow peas, sweet potato, taro, dates, figs, raspberries, raisins, sage, rosemary, thyme, brown rice, apple.
Heaty (yang) Foods:
Pepper, cinnamon bark, ginger, soybean oil, red and green pepper, chicken, apricot seed, brown sugar, cherry, chestnut, chive, cinnamon twig, clove, coconut, coffee, coriander (Chinese parsley), date, dillseed, eel, garlic, grapefruit peel, green onion, guava, ham, leaf mustard, leek, longan, mutton, nutmeg, peach, raspberry, rosemary, shrimp, spearmint, sweet basil, tobacco, vinegar, walnut, jackfruit, durian, leek, shallots, spring onion, , apricots, blackberries, black currant, mangoes, peaches, cherry, mandarin orange, grape.
However! The preparation of food may also change its properties! For examplebeef is neutral, but after grilling/frying it gets ‘heaty’ properties.