Food for Fuel

The Bay Area has seen its share of both windy and cold showers, and balmy and warm rain. And you can definitely feel the changes in season, especially at night.

I’m using an extra blanket and I had to break out my Sunbeam electric warmer. It’s been hard not cranking the thermostat. But energy prices are at an all-time high, and it doesn’t seem they’re going to let up soon. With that said, I can’t really afford paying $70 electric/gas bills. Sure, wear a sweater and throw on socks, but you don’t always want to dress like you’re in the outdoors when you’re at home.

If you have a significant other, this is the best time to snuggle, but for the single folks, snuggling with your down, gortex jacket isn’t exactly a fun thing to do on a cold night. Many of my friends are shivering trying to shave a couple of bucks off their electric bill; as for me, I’ve spent nights in my “mummy”-style sleeping bag. Weird thing is, I’m not 20,000 feet atop a mountain, but on the floor of my apartment.

Hot tea helps takes the chill off the bones, as does warm milk and hot chocolate. So I’ve been thinking, can I use food as my source of warmth? It makes sense since my parents have always advocated eating foods and drinking soups that “warm” the body. Not warm in the sense that Americans drink soup when the weather outside is frightful, but how certain foods generate heat as they are being digested.

With a few simple changes and additions to your daily diet, you improve your body’s resistance to colder temperatures.

First of all, it’s important to eat more than you normally do during the winter months. But this doesn’t mean stuffing your face with cookies, candy and egg nog. It means have a little more protein and carbohydrates. Your body requires more sustenance during cold months, to maintain your body temperature.

When I lived in China, once cold weather set in, the school cafeteria changed its menu from pork and chicken to lamb. Soon, every dish I had was mutton. Mutton soup, braised mutton, mutton stew. My town happened to be known for its mutton hot pot; and people from hundreds of miles away would make the drive for mutton hot pot and wheat bread.

Mutton is probably the most popular “warming” food. I was a bit dubious at first of whether or not mutton soup would keep me warm. I broke a sweat eating the mutton soup, but hours later when my friends and I returned to our apartment, we noticed that our hands and feet were warm. It kept us warm through the harsh, bitterly cold winters in Sichuan.

Consider having lamb several times a week in place of your regular red meat. A good way of getting rid of the “gamey” taste is soaking the lamb meat in milk. Not only does it take away the gaminess, but it also tenderizes the meat.

In terms of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), every food has an effect on the body’s metabolic temperature, which TCM specialists consider is different from the body temperature you get from a thermometer reading. Metabolic temperature is the heat that your organs generate from the food when it gets digested. Food like mutton as well as chicken and ginger produce heat. That’s why many Chinese herbal soups use chicken as its meat/protein base, and include copious amounts of ginger.

On the flipside, you eat too many “warm” foods and you’re prone to catch a cold. This may sound confusing, but eat too many of these “warm” foods, and you’ll get ill because your body is too “hot.” Some of the symptoms you’d get from these hot colds are sore throats, fevers, sweating, cold sores, bloody noses.

If you’re on a budget but want to keep warm this winter, instead of layering and wearing your long johns 24/7, consider choosing particular foods that help generate internal body heat. I mentioned mutton, there’s also chicken, ginger, scallions, Chinese red dates, ginseng, apples, pumpkins, squash. Chicken soup is always soothing, why not make a chicken broth with fresh ginger and scallions. Or buy a roast cubed sugar pumpkin or kabocha squash.

Drink ginseng and eat that apple a day. I’m not claiming that these foods will create internal heaters in your body; however, they are all healthy choices, and even if you don’t feel warmer, you are still treating your body to a boost of nutrients.

This is by no means scientific, but mainly personal experience. The mutton did keep me warm for the harsh winter months in western China, and my parents’ ginseng tonic always warmed me up and made my cheeks rosy. If you’re curious, give the warm foods a try, but if you’re too cold, make a fire in the fireplace or just crank up the thermostat. You may have to eat cold cereal for a month to pay for utilities, but at least your toes will be warm.