SUMMER NUTRITION

Summer cooking methods are light and short, with some salt and more water (relative to the spring season). On hot days (above about 23°C), stir-fried vegetables are cooked at high temperatures and quickly. This leaves the food cooked on the outside and raw inside. On hot days you also use some salt to replace body minerals that are lost through sweating. Broths and cooling herb teas (see below) are better drinks when it is hot, than ice-cold drinks. Ice-cold drinks shock the system, and in particular the liver and stomach, obstructing the digestive system.

Avoid stodgy and fatty foods and meals. These interfere with the free circulation of blood and Qi, which is at its maximum in the summer. As temperatures rise (above 20°C), you reduce your consumption of such highly nutritious but hard to digest and warming foods as fatty meats, oily fish, eggs, nuts, seeds and grains. You do not cut them out all together: meats, fish, nuts, eggs and grains give a sense of satisfaction. This prevents emotional eating and bingeing and snacking. But, once temperatures rise above 20°C , warming foods should not dominate the diet. Warming foods belong, more properly, to the spring, autumn and winter seasons. As you may have noticed, frying, deep-frying and grilling is frowned upon in TCM. These cooking methods hamper digestion. Grilling, moreover, dries the juices in foods. This makes grilled foods drying. If you insist on grilled or fried meats in summer, serve them with cooling and moisturising fruits and ovaries such as tomato, cucumber, kiwi, mango, papaya, and pineapple. These can either be cooked with the meat or served in marinaded side salads. They counteract the warming and drying effects of grilled meats.

Create a cool atmosphere around your meals. Do not eat in the glaring sun, but seek or create a shaded spot. Food should be kept out of the sun. Direct sunlight causes the immediate loss of vital essences or vitamins. This applies to fruit juices as well.

On the hottest days you do best to stick to lighter and smaller meals and to drink plenty of warm fluids such as cooling flower teas and vegetable broths. Refrigerated and iced drinks shock the system, in particular the liver. Provided that you do not suffer from stomach heat or overall dryness, you can take some hot spices on the hottest days. These help you sweat. Most people, however, do well to refrain from hot spices, in any time of the year. They embed a condition called ‘stomach heat’. Stomach heat is epidemic. If you nevertheless insist on hot spicy meals, take them in combination with refreshing and moisturising fruits or salads. Refreshing and cooling vegetables such as radishes, lettuce and local fruit and fruit teas help counteract the scalding and drying effects of hot spices. Note that the drying effect of hot spices is not completely nullified by juicy fruits and salads.

As temperatures rise above 20°C, you serve more cooling or refreshing foods, such as salads (ovaries), sprouted seeds, fruit, cucumber and tofu. Do not overeat on post-digestive cold foods such as tofu, spinach, bananas, green tea and beer. They prevent sweating. Though tofu and tempeh are ideal meat substitutes in the summer (for healthy people), they should still be taken in moderation (similar to all foods). Their post-digestive nature is cold. (The ‘post-digestive nature’ of foods refers to the effect of foods on the body temperature after digestion.) Taken daily and all the year round, post-digestive cold foods weaken the digestive system of even the most robust people. In moderation they nurture, in excess they damage! Warming herbs such as rosemary, oregano and thyme neutralise the cooling effects of cold food products.

Physically cold and ice-cold foods and drinks should also be avoided. They shock the liver and contract the jaws, gullet, and stomach. This means that digestion comes to an abrupt halt and resumes only when the spleen and kidneys have reheated the stomach. Taken on a regular basis and in combination with meals, cold and ice-cold foods and drinks such as ice-cream deserts and refrigerated alcoholic and soft drinks, weaken the digestive system and cause blockages. Physically cold foods and drinks also prevent sweating. If you do, nevertheless, sweat, this sweating consumes inherent energy. This exhausts the warming, yang energy that you have build up over the winter. In TCM terms, you withdraw too much basic yang-energy from your system. This cools and immobilises your system and leads to internal cold and a vulnerability to colds and other infections.

Author Details: Leni Hurley