Many office ladies start their day with vegetable juice. While it can provide direct nutrition from fruits and vegetables and help clear internal waste, everyone overlooks the most crucial point: the human body always prefers a warm environment. When the body is warm, microcirculation is normal, and the transport of oxygen, nutrients, and waste is smooth.
Therefore, when eating breakfast, never start with vegetable juice, iced coffee, iced juice, iced black tea, mung bean soup, iced milk, and so on. You may not feel any discomfort in your body in the short term, but in fact, it will gradually weaken your body. Why is this?
Breakfast should be a hot meal to protect the "stomach qi" (wei qi). In Traditional Chinese Medicine, stomach qi is a broad concept; it does not simply refer to the stomach organ. It includes the digestive and absorption capabilities of the spleen and stomach, acquired immunity, and the function of muscles.
In the morning, the yin energy from the night has not yet dissipated, and the temperature of the earth has not yet risen. The body's muscles, nerves, and blood vessels are still in a state of contraction. If you consume cold food and drinks at this time, it will inevitably cause all the body's systems to constrict further and blood flow to become more sluggish. Perhaps when you first start consuming cold things, you don't feel any discomfort in your stomach, but as time goes by or you get older, you will find that you cannot absorb the essence of your food, as if you are never full, or your stools are always loose, or your skin gets worse and worse, or you always have a faint phlegm in your throat that won't clear up. You catch colds frequently and have minor ailments constantly. This is what is known as damaging the stomach qi and weakening the body's resistance.
Therefore, the first thing you should eat in the morning should be hot congee, hot oatmeal, hot goat's milk, hot tofu pudding, hot soy milk, black sesame paste, Chinese yam congee, or Cantonese congee, and then have it with vegetables, bread, sandwiches, fruit, pastries, etc.
Because milk can easily produce phlegm and cause allergies, it is less suitable for people with respiratory, gastrointestinal, or skin problems, as well as for those living in humid climates.