As the Spring Festival approaches, various advertisements for nourishing soups are everywhere on the streets, but cases of adverse health effects from improper consumption are also on the rise. Experts believe that the Chinese dining habit involves a lot of "soups and liquids," and drinking nourishing soups in winter has tonic effects. However, using soups for health also requires "targeting the specific condition," and drinking the wrong kind can increase health risks.
Mr. Zhang, who works in the media, has recently been feeling mentally tired and physically weak. During a dinner with a client, he saw a restaurant recommending a nourishing soup for "qi and blood," which was stated to have tonic effects such as "clearing the blood and supplementing qi." Who would have thought that after eating it for a few days, he became agitated all over, had a nosebleed, and his spirit was listless, as if he had a serious illness. When he sought medical advice, a TCM expert, after understanding Mr. Zhang's constitution, pointed out that this was a typical case of "blind supplementation." His body's internal deficiency-fire was already旺盛 (prosperous/flourishing), yet he was consuming medicinal materials like ginseng that increase heat, and randomly drinking soups for nourishment, which had the opposite effect. Mr. Li, who is middle-aged, his wife made him a homemade bone broth every day after winter began. Because the bone soup was simmered for a long time, it was rich in purine substances. Mr. Li, who already had gout symptoms, found that his joints and toes became more painful.
Experts believe that during the festival, making soups requires even more attention to "targeting the specific condition." In fact, one medicinal diet soup is not suitable for everyone. For example, a thin person might have an excess of "fire" and should focus on nourishing yin. Another example is that meat soups contain a lot of purine, which can trigger gout in people who suffer from it. Especially for patients with chronic diseases, they must absolutely not supplement blindly without understanding their body's condition of "cold-heat deficiency-excess." Most medicinal diet soups contain Chinese medicine specifically for treating certain ailments. Using the wrong medicine for the condition, or medicine that is not suitable for one's constitution, can even be harmful, even if it's a mild supplement.
Medicinal materials have their properties; do not add them randomly
Professor He Yumin from the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine pointed out that among the patients he has encountered, it is a common practice to randomly add medicinal materials to nourishing soups. For example, some restaurants offer "mountain treasure nourishing soups" with ingredients listed as wild and precious edible fungi from the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, such as boletus and termite mushrooms, as well as songrong mushrooms from the virgin forests of Northeast China, and fresh natural fungi, plus medicinal materials like lingzhi and cordyceps. Putting so many things together inevitably creates a chaotic mix. Some of the medicinal diet soups offered by restaurants are even more outrageous. The so-called "Ten Great Supplements Hot Pot" includes pungent and活血 (invigorating blood) medicinal materials like star anise, cinnamon, fennel, angelica, and astragalus, plus "heaty" foods like lamb and dog meat. Such an act of "adding fuel to the fire" without any explanation is bound to cause illness for customers with yin deficiency and internal heat.
Homemade nourishing soups also often disregard proportions and the principle of "targeting the specific condition." According to the Ministry of Health, there are 79 kinds of raw materials that are both medicinal and edible. However, many more than these are available on the market. When making "Angelica and Astragalus Black-bone Chicken" at home, the weight ratio of angelica and astragalus to the chicken should be 1:100. That is, for a 1000-gram black-bone chicken, 10 grams of angelica and astragalus should be added. However, many families don't even weigh the ingredients when adding angelica and astragalus. Homemade bone soups, fish soups, and chicken soups are the most common. It is generally believed that meat, fish, and chicken bones are rich in chondroitin and collagen, which can improve the body's absorption of calcium. But these soups, made from ingredients rich in high protein and high fat, can not only make people feel greasy if consumed in excess but also lead to nutritional surplus and have the potential danger of causing weight gain.
Make soups with a mix of meat and vegetables
TCM experts point out that nourishing soups, when consumed correctly, can promote health, but when consumed incorrectly, they can also increase health risks. Soups made from a single type of food should be drunk as little as possible, such as pure vegetable soups or mushroom soups like cabbage soup, radish soup, winter melon soup, and mushroom broth. Although pure vegetable soups have a heat-clearing effect, drinking them frequently can enhance the diuretic effect, causing the body's useful fluids to be excreted with urine. This phenomenon in TCM is called "劫津" (robbing the body's fluids). Soups rich in high protein and high fat, such as chicken, meat, bone, and fish soups, are not only unsuitable for people with gout but can also lead to nutritional surplus for the average person.
Since the nutritional content of each food people commonly eat is not comprehensive, even various "rich broths" that are abundant in amino acids still lack several "essential amino acids" that the human body cannot synthesize on its own, as well as various minerals and vitamins. Therefore, it is recommended to cook soups with a mixture of several animal and plant foods. This not only allows their umami flavors to complement each other but also makes the nutritional content more comprehensive and balanced, creating a mutually beneficial effect.