We use a lot of metaphors in Chinese medicine. Some of them get lost in translation and therefore can be really amusing. But, this one I’m about to share with you is pretty easy to understand and illustrates a great point. If there’s one piece of dietary advice I’d like you to know, it’s this. Think of your stomach as an oven. If you throw raw, uncooked food into it, it must work much harder to cook the food. In addition, the flame is easily put out when it comes in contact with cold food. A healthy oven must have an adequate flame to cook the food properly. If the food is not cooked the nutrients aren’t fully extracted. This is why most acupuncturists will recommend that you steam your vegetables (the healthiest cooking method) instead of eating them raw and heat up your food before you eat it. For you salad lovers out there, this is a double whammy… both raw and cold!

This advice completely contradicts the principles behind the raw foods diet, which not everyone is suitable for. If you begin having digestive symptoms such as bloating, gas, diarrhea or frequent loose stools, you may want to curtail the raw foods diet. In addition, you may also notice you have less energy, perspire more easily, and are dizzy. These are all signs of digestive or spleen Qi deficiency.

As mentioned above, steaming is the best way to breakdown food without compromising its nutritional value. Alternatively, cooking foods over long periods of time in a crockpot, for example, retains the nutrients in foods while increasing the ease with which you will digest it. Baking or grilling foods increases the amount of heat you add to the food, and this is not always beneficial to you. This particular type of heat can lead to toxic build up in the body manifesting as heartburn, skin rashes, constipation, or bad breath.