Is it true that raw sprouts are too "cold" to eat? Debunking the second sprout myth
"It's not about not eating them, it's about eating them in a balanced way." - Dr. Hsieh Pei-fen
Dr. Hsieh Pei-fen, a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner with many years of practice, says: all foods should be eaten in a balanced way; you don't avoid something just because it is cooling or drying. When Greenvines promotes sprouts to consumers, it often encounters quite a few consumers who hold the idea that "sprouts are cooling in nature, so don't eat them, and even if you do, you shouldn't eat them raw." So Greenvines specially interviewed Dr. Hsieh Pei-fen, consulting and verifying with her, hoping to share the correct concept of eating sprouts with everyone.
Eating cooling or warming foods is a rule of thumb and depends on individual constitution
Dr. Hsieh told us, "The four properties of food - cooling, cold, warm and hot - are summarized based on the body's reactions that follow after eating the food, and this principle comes from human life experience." For example, summer is very hot, and eating watermelon can relieve the heat, so watermelon is a relatively cooling food; when a cold wave comes in winter, we eat mutton hot pot or ginger duck to warm our bodies, so mutton, ginger slices and other ingredients used for warming tonics are classified as relatively warm-hot foods.
Dr. Hsieh says: "The four properties of food cannot be defined or quantified with numbers or science. How to eat a food depends on individual constitution, and also on your recent physical condition. If a patient comes in saying they have had a lot of internal heat lately and a dry mouth and tongue, then we would suggest they eat less of the relatively dry-hot foods." By supplementing with foods of different properties according to whether a person's constitution tends toward cold or toward dry heat, you can take in the benefits of different foods and condition your constitution, and balanced intake is the most important and correct dietary concept.
"The enzymes are all cooked away - isn't that a real shame?" - Dr. Lin Pi-hsia
Enzymes are a kind of active protein. In the human body they are catalysts for chemical reactions, and can strengthen metabolism and promote digestion. When we cook food, once the temperature goes above 55 degrees Celsius, the three-dimensional structure of enzymes is destroyed, and the enzymes lose their activity.
Sprouts contain abundant, highly diverse and highly active enzymes. The interior of a sprout is full of all kinds of enzyme activity, including protein-breaking enzymes, fat-breaking enzymes, and the metabolic enzymes needed to sustain growth. Only by eating sprouts raw can you fully obtain the intact enzymes, nutrients and phytonutrients that have not been destroyed by high heat.
Add nuts or stir-fry to neutralize the cooling and warming - it's not that hard
When making sprout dishes, such as blended vitality soups, vegetable and fruit juices or raw sprout dishes, we can add relatively warm-hot nuts, ginger slices or sesame to neutralize their cooling nature. In addition, some sprouts, such as mung bean sprouts and black bean sprouts, can also be simply stir-fried or quickly blanched - forms of heating that are neither excessive nor prolonged - to reduce the concern that eating them raw is too cooling. People with a weaker spleen and stomach or a relatively deficient-cold constitution can also slightly reduce how often they eat them, and try not to eat them on an empty stomach early in the morning. In short, by pairing different foods to balance cooling and warming, and adjusting how much you eat according to your own physical condition, you don't have to worry that because a food is cooling in nature, you must sacrifice the rich nutrients and enzymes you get from eating sprouts raw.