Caught a cold, with a runny nose, sneezing, and feeling weak all over. Taking medicine is one part of the treatment, but dietary adjustment is also crucial. Improper diet can worsen a cold. Pay close attention to your diet now. Eating right is the key to a quick recovery.
1. Hard-to-digest food
Choose easily digestible liquid foods such as vegetable soup, congee, egg soup, steamed egg custard, and milk.
2. Too greasy food
The diet should be light and low in grease to meet nutritional needs and stimulate the appetite. You can have white rice congee, millet congee, or red bean congee, served with light side dishes like sweet pickled vegetables, turnips, pickled mustard tubers, or fermented tofu.
3. Insufficient water intake
Ensure adequate fluid intake. You can drink more acidic fruit juices, such as hawthorn juice, kiwi juice, red date juice, fresh orange juice, or watermelon juice, to promote gastric juice secretion and increase appetite.
4. Vitamin deficiency
Eat more foods rich in vitamins C and E, as well as red-colored foods, such as tomatoes, apples, grapes, dates, strawberries, beets, oranges, watermelon, milk, and eggs, to prevent colds.
5. Overeating
It's best to eat small, frequent meals. After the fever subsides and the appetite improves, you can switch to semi-liquid foods, such as noodle soup, clear chicken noodle soup, wontons, vegetable puree congee, meat floss congee, liver puree congee, or egg-drop congee.