Chinese people always suggest to avoid consuming heaty foods when you are having illness, sore throat, ulcers etc. But what heaty foods really are? The difference between heaty and cooling foods is always referred to the capacity of our body in generating sensation; though these foods do not aim at the temperature of the food itself, the sensation of the food will affect our body.

If a person suffers from cold rheumatism, eating foods with a warm or hot energy would be helpful. However, if the person's acne condition deteriorate due to the consumption of fried foods, it is beneficial to consume cooling foods to counter heatiness and relieve symptoms. This is all depending on the balances between the consumption of heaty and cooling foods. Therefore, you will see most chinese are consuming the two types of foods equally; drinking a cup of tea (cool) with a plate of fried rice (hot) and a plate of black pepper chicken steak (hot). That person will also consume some fruits such as watermelon (cool) after the meal.

Please do remember that anyone who once (or currently) has the asthma allergy should NOT consume any cooling foods. You may consume cooling foods, but definitely not in a regular basis (i.e. eat some cooling food once a month?). So please put that in your mind !

In this post, I will try to name some foods, classifying them in groups of hot, neutral and cool.


Caption: cooling foods; strawberry and cucumber

Cool Foods:
Bamboo shoot, banana, bitter gourd, clam, crab, grapefruit, lettuce, persimmon, salt, seaweed, star fruit, sugar cane, water chestnut, watermelon, lotus root, cucumber, barley, bean curd, chicken egg white, marjoram, oyster, pear, peppermint, radish, strawberry, tangerine, and yogurt, broccoli, cauliflower, zuccini, corn, tomatoes, pineapple, turmeric.


Caption: neutral foods; beans and papaya

Neutral Foods:
Honey, corn, abalone, apricot, beef, beetroot, black fungus, carp, carrot, celery, chicken egg yolk, cuttlefish, duck, fig, kidney bean, lotus fruit and seed, milk, olive, oyster, papaya, pork, potato, pumpkin, radish leaf, red bean, plum, sunflower seed, sweet rice, sweet potato, white fungus, yellow soybean, brussels sprouts, snow peas, sweet potato, taro, dates, figs, raspberries, raisins, sage, rosemary, thyme, brown rice, apple.


Caption: hot foods; blackberries and ginger

Heaty (hot) Foods:
Pepper, cinnamon bark, ginger, soybean oil, red and green pepper, chicken, apricot seed, brown sugar, cherry, chestnut, chive, cinnamon twig, clove, coconut, coffee, coriander (Chinese parsley), date, dillseed, eel, garlic, grapefruit peel, green onion, guava, ham, leaf mustard, leek, longan, mutton, nutmeg, peach, raspberry, rosemary, shrimp, spearmint, sweet basil, tobacco, vinegar, walnut, jackfruit, durian, leek, shallots, spring onion, , apricots, blackberries, black currant, mangoes, peaches, cherry, mandarin orange, grape.

By the way, ice cube is originally hot, but beer is cold. Coconut is hot, but the water contained in the coconut contained sodium (cooling) that will increase the speed of recovery for fever. However, it will not always work out for fever. This is also a reason I will not encourage anyone to consume coconut juice when they are ill.