Beef, a Great Stomach-Warming Food: Food Combining Taboos, People Who Should Avoid It, and How to Tell Real from Fake

Beef is one of the common meats, and its nutrients are closer to what the human body needs than those of pork. In traditional Chinese dietary therapy, beef is believed to warm the stomach, making it a great tonic food for the cold days of winter. Even so, beef cannot be paired at will. So, what can beef not be eaten with? Who should not eat it? How do you tell real from fake?

1. What can beef not be eaten with?

1. Do not eat it with foods that promote heat and fire, such as Chinese chives, baijiu, and ginger. Beef is sweet and warm, tonifying qi and fueling fire; Chinese chives are strongly pungent and strongly warm; baijiu is a strongly warm item; and ginger is pungent and warm in nature and flavor. Eating them together easily promotes heat and fire, which can cause oral inflammation, swelling and pain, mouth ulcers, and so on.

2. Do not eat it with pork. “Principles of Correct Diet” states: “Pork must not be eaten with beef.” Beef is sweet and warm, can tonify the spleen and stomach and strengthen the waist and legs, and has the effect of calming the middle and tonifying qi; pork is sour and cold, slightly cold, and has a cloying, yin-cold nature. The two have opposite effects and must not be eaten together.

3. Do not eat it with chestnuts. “Principles of Correct Diet” records that “beef must not be eaten with chestnuts.” The vitamins in chestnuts easily react with the trace elements in beef, affecting each one's nutritional value, and they are not easy to digest. Some people have found that eating beef with chestnuts causes vomiting.

4. Do not eat it with river snails, brown sugar, or olives. The flavors of river snails and beef conflict, and eating them together very easily causes abdominal pain, diarrhea, and indigestion; brown sugar contains a variety of organic acids and nutrients, and when it meets the protein in beef it produces adverse biochemical reactions, causing abdominal bloating; eating olives and beef together produces chemical reactions and causes abdominal bloating.

5. Do not eat it with bean paste, Cyperus rotundus, or Ceylon spinach, and so on. Eating beef with bean paste harms the five viscera, eating it with Cyperus rotundus causes jiuzi sores, and eating it with Ceylon spinach harms the body.

6. Do not eat it with catfish. Beef contains a component that, after combining with a component of catfish, produces a toxic element and causes poisoning in the human body; it can be treated with human milk and fermented soybean juice.

7. Do not eat it with fruits containing vitamin C, such as kiwifruit, strawberries, loquats, oranges, mandarins, persimmons, bananas, peaches, grapes, figs, apples, and so on. This is not conducive to the human body's absorption of nutrients and affects each one's nutritional value.

2. Who should not eat beef?

Beef is not suitable for everyone. People who have just had appendicitis surgery, people with gastrointestinal indigestion, people with excess internal heat, people with skin diseases, people with liver disease, people with nephritis, people with gout, and so on should not eat it. People with high cholesterol, people with high fat, the elderly, children, and people with weak digestion should not eat much of it; beef should not be eaten in excess, nor should it be eaten often, and once a week is appropriate; beef should not be smoked, roasted, or cured and grilled, so as to avoid producing carcinogenic substances.

3. Can beef be eaten with eggs, shrimp, pumpkin, sweet potato, or tofu?

Beef and eggs can be eaten together, and generally there are no adverse effects; beef and shrimp are in principle not incompatible, but considering taste and mouthfeel, it is recommended not to cook them together; beef and pumpkin can be eaten together, as the medicinal properties of the two do not clash, and eating them together has the effect of strengthening the stomach and tonifying qi; beef and sweet potato can be eaten together, as the two are not incompatible foods, and clinically there are no reports of adverse reactions from eating them together; beef and tofu can be eaten together, as there are no taboos between the two.

4. How do you tell real beef from fake beef?

Beef on the market is also adulterated. Usually pork is chosen for adulteration, and beef paste is also used to fake it. Even more despicable is artificial beef made with various additives. With such fake beef, it is not just a matter of being cheated out of money; worse still, it is bad for our health. Therefore, learning to tell real beef from fake beef is very important.

1. Learn to look. Look at the color of the beef: truly fresh beef is deep red all over, while fake beef is lighter in color and not as natural as real beef; look at the fat of the beef: real beef is clumped and slightly yellow in color, while fake beef is flaky and whitish in color; look at the tendons of the beef: the tendons of real beef are tightly embedded in the meat, while those of fake beef are not.

2. Learn to smell. Real beef has a slight gamey odor, while fake beef does not have a gamey odor; if it is adulterated with pork, then it has the rank odor of meat.

3. Learn to touch. The fibers of real beef are firmer than those of fake beef adulterated with pork. If it is water-injected beef, the meat fibers appear even rougher; on careful observation of the meat surface, moisture often seeps out, and it feels very wet to the touch; for beef that is not fresh, the color is dull and lusterless, the fat appears yellow-green, and after pressing with a finger the indentation cannot recover; on careful smelling there is an off odor or even a stench.