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Q: Do you believe in the Chinese concept of hot and cold foods?
NO. I didn't think Chinese like cold foods. I don't like reheated meat, don't know why. I will eat cold chicken, spare ribs, beef etc. Once when I was eating a cold spare rib a woman was telling me it needed to be heated. I got out cold fried rice from the refrigerator and ate some and told her, Canada is cold, we eat cold food. We eat frozen raw fish. I had her too, then fessed up and laughed.
I never really bought into the chinese concept of cold/hot foods until recently. I had a tooth problem recently and i was told not to eat any "hot" foods because it would cause swelling. By hot foods they meant all sorts of things I didn't consider hot , for example tangerines are considered a "hot" food.
I thought this was silly and ignored it, and low and behold my face swelled up pretty bad and it looked like I had a golf ball in my cheeck.
Since then I listen to Chinese people more about hot/cold foods and their affects.
Nope. Been here six years, eating Chinese food and all...
It's not a matter of believing the concept itself, it's more to understand from a scientific point of view the effects of cold or hot foods on the system.
Any item of food has its own properties in terms of vitamins, minerals, etc. The conjugation of these properties directly affects the body when being absorbed. Like eating too much cheese or dairy products may induce some acidity in the stomach, while eating for instance cheese and baked potatoes may balance the level of acidity because of the starch.
The concept in itself if explained the Chinese way as no reason to be believed, but if you can explain the direct of the food absorbed in terms of properties (minerals, vitamins, etc) and their causal relationships between their absorption and the body's reaction to them, you may have a grounded reason to believe in it.
That's often the problem with Chinese TCM and other Chinese medical believes is not that their concept is wrong but rather that it doesn't provide any "logical" or "factual" elements to justify the theory.
Scandinavian:
do you have a link to a document in English that describes the science behind this ?
I'm not a big believer in this. My wife is though, which means that I still have to put up with it. I feel the same way about the idea that the wind makes you sick, which again is something that isn't nearly as prominant outside east asia.
Wo bu zaihu, but everytime I try to order aubergines and capsicum with chilies, the waitstaff get anxious.
