Summer Health Preservation: Dietary Considerations
Diet should be mindful of intake and expenditure, corresponding to the solar terms. Picky eating habits need attention. For health preservation, diet is about aligning with the natural order, including heaven's timing, earth's resources, and human harmony. For instance, vegetables and fruits vary between the north and south; eating produce from a different region can easily cause physical discomfort.
Health preservation leans more towards Traditional Chinese Medicine. The greatest variable is one's own physical condition, which determines when, what, and from where to eat. It's not like Western medicine where an injection can achieve a specific result. It's like choosing what vegetables to eat. Many people are currently obsessed with health preservation, seeing it as a trendy pursuit, but this can easily lead to harm. Below are some minor points, to be chosen according to individual needs.
(1) Eat more gourds: In summer, high temperatures cause the body to lose a lot of water, which needs to be replenished in a timely manner. The water in vegetables is natural, clean, nutritious, and biologically active, filtered through multiple biological membranes. Gourds contain over 90% water. All gourd vegetables have the effect of lowering blood pressure and protecting blood vessels.
(2) Eat more cooling vegetables: Eating cooling vegetables helps to promote saliva production to quench thirst, relieve vexation and summer heat, clear heat, and purge fire. Among gourd vegetables, pumpkin is considered warming, while the rest like bitter melon, loofah, cucumber, snake melon, watermelon, and muskmelon are cooling vegetables. Tomato, celery, and lettuce are also cooling vegetables.
(3) Eat more "germ-fighting" vegetables: Summer is a season for frequent human diseases, especially intestinal infectious diseases. Eating more "germ-fighting" vegetables can prevent illness. These vegetables include: garlic, onion, chives, and scallions. These allium vegetables are rich in plant-based broad-spectrum bactericides that can kill and inhibit various cocci, bacilli, fungi, and viruses. Among them, garlic is the most effective, and it is best eaten raw.
For summer dietary conditioning, the diet should be low-fat, low-salt, rich in vitamins, and light. People sweat a lot and have poor appetites, so they can use various nutritious health porridges to whet the appetite and regulate the body. For example, having porridge for breakfast and dinner, and soup for lunch, can both promote saliva to quench thirst, cool and relieve summer heat, and nourish the body. When cooking porridge, adding some lotus leaves (called lotus leaf porridge) gives it a fragrant aroma with a slight bitterness, which can stimulate the appetite, relieve summer heat, nourish the stomach, clear the intestines, and promote saliva production. Adding mung beans to the porridge or cooking them alone into a soup has effects of relieving summer heat, quenching thirst, clearing heat and toxins, promoting saliva, and promoting urination. Soaked dried lentils cooked with rice into a porridge can clear summer heat, transform dampness, strengthen the spleen, and stop diarrhea. In addition, red bean porridge, mint porridge, tremella fungus porridge, kudzu root porridge, and bitter melon porridge are all good foods for summer.
At the same time, it is also important to supplement certain nutrients.
(1) Supplement sufficient vitamins, such as eating more fresh fruits and vegetables like tomatoes, bell peppers, winter melon, watermelon, bayberry, muskmelon, peach, and pear;
(2) Supplement water and inorganic salts, especially paying attention to potassium supplementation. Beans or bean products, fruits, and vegetables are all excellent sources of potassium. Eat more foods that clear heat and drain dampness, such as watermelon, bitter melon, peach, dark plum, strawberry, tomato, and cucumber, all of which have good effects of relieving summer heat;
(3) Supplement protein in moderation. Fish, lean meat, eggs, milk, and beans are all the best sources of high-quality protein.