On cold and rainy days and in winter generally, we need warm and nourishing foods. Soups, stews, porridges and warming spices are key to keeping your digestion fully functioning and ensuring you make enough energy (Qi) and blood to support the body to ward off illnesses.
In Chinese medicine the stomach is viewed as a cooking pot and our spleen/pancreas is likened to the fire beneath the pot that cooks the food. If we consume too many cold/raw foods we can damage this fire/cooking process and the food cannot be transformed and transported around the body and ‘sludge’ is left in the bottom of the cooking pot! This ‘sludge’ is called damp or phlegm and is often stored in the lung system or can manifest as water in the body.
People, especially children who have immature digestive systems, who have consistent runny noses and coughs or who tend to oedema would benefit from only eating warm cooked foods. Think about the foods that are grown in this country at this time of year… its not strawberries!
Worried that its not ‘raw’. Actually the bioavialability of vitamins and minerals is higher in a steamed carrot than a raw one, simply because without the cooking process we cannot break down many of the plant constituents and most of it passes straight through!