Eating in Harmony with the Seasons

by Gary Danchak, OMD |

In order to stay healthy, especially during the cold & flu season of winter, Chinese Medicine recommends that you eat foods that are energetically in harmony with the season. Although it seems paradoxical at first glance, the best way to maintain balance is to bring your internal energy “in” by eating appropriate energetically cold foods in winter and “out” by eating energetically hot food in the summer.

In Chinese Medicine all foods have a particular energy, direction and flavor. Winter is the season in which energy moves inward and hibernates—it’s the time of pure yin (female, cold, fuel, potential-for-action), so it’s appropriate to eat energetically cold, salty foods (yin foods) so that you can cool off the interior of your body to the point that it’s in balance with what the exterior of your body is feeling outdoors. Winter is the season associated with the water/Kidney organ system whose duty is to “store the essence” (or “jing”), the time in which your body rebuilds teeth, bone and marrow.

Energetically cold, yin foods include beans, pork, shellfish, seaweed, hops, banana, barley, and grapefruit.

The overriding mantra in Chinese Medicine is: eat everything (preferably over rice). What they mean is it’s best to include more energetically cold foods in winter, but not to switch to an exclusively cold diet.

Spring is the season of growth, of yin-becoming-yang, the time when we fertilize our plants and ourselves. It’s the time to eat foods that have an upward moving energetic (warm and sweet foods) to stay in harmony with the season of growth. Spring is the season of wind and change. It’s associated organ is the wood/Liver, whose duty is to repair the sinews (defined as sources of strength, strong and rigorous), nerves and tendons.

Liver nourishing, spring foods include: cucumber, egg, green onion, persimmon, plum, wine, chicken, sesame, and not surprisingly, liver.

Summer is the time of pure yang (male, hot, fire, action-itself), and so it’s appropriate to eat yang foods—energetically hot foods that turn up your internal thermostat to match the heat that falls on the exterior of your body outdoors. The energetic is outward-moving. Summer is the season in which the fire/Heart organ system and the blood repairs itself.

Heart nourishing, summer foods include: pepper, ginger, cinnamon, radish, wheat, corn, pumpkin, goose.
Late summer is the season of the earth/Spleen, an organ system so important in Chinese thought that they made up a season for it: late or Indian Summer, the time of yang-becoming-yin. The Spleen is responsible for turning food into “gu qi” (food qi/energy), which combines with the “kong qi” (lung qi/energy) of the Lung to make the usable qi (energy) that guides the blood through our bodies. It’s the way we get energy from the outside world and use it to build and sustain muscle. Spleen foods include rice, beef, honey, peanuts, and squash.

Fall is the time of the metal/Lung system, the time of yang-becoming-yin. Its organ is the skin and nasal mucosa. It is a time for storing energy for the winter’s hibernation. Eat foods that move downward and begin to astringe, sour and cool foods, including: maize, millet, duck, grapes and green onion.

Inappropriate energetically cold foods should be avoided all year long because they create an internal pathogen called “damp” which slows the transmission of qi (life force/vital energy) in your organ systems. Among the worst are: sugar, alcohol, cheese (and all animal fats), icy cold drinks, excessive consumption of raw fruits and vegetables, processed foods and coffee. Seasonally appropriate eating means “including some appropriate energetically cold foods in the cold seasons, but not, of course, to radically change a basic good diet.

Choosing natural, unconcentrated seasonally appropriate foods from the bounty around us is the best way to maintain our health through all the seasons of our years.

References:

1. Lu, Henry C., Chinese System of Food Cures—Prevention & Remedies. Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., New York, NY 1986.
2. Flaws, Bob, The Tao of Healthy Eating—Dietary Wisdom According to Traditional Chinese Medicine. Blue Poppy Press, Inc., Boulder, CO 1998.

For more info, contact Gary Danchak, OMD at 775-849-9800.