We humans love things that come easy. Putting loads of work and effort into something tends to be shied away from in favor of an easier path. This is evident in our eating habits. Most of us do not go home after work and start to wash and prepare fresh organic vegetables for steaming, stir frying, nor tossing into a raw salad. In fact, cooking at home for dinner is still done substantially less than it was in the past. Many of us can remember our grandmothers whipping up fresh home cooked meals. That habit and lifestyle was not passed down through the generations as much as it perhaps should have been. Convenience took over, and people became accustomed to swinging by a restaurant to pick up food that someone else labored to prepare. Unfortunately, most of our convenient foods are not healthy options. Hamburgers, hot dogs, fries, pizza, and basic sandwiches are not the most nutritious of food options. Yet, the fast and quick food retailers are thriving. They know that with today’s hectic lifestyle, people don’t want to make the effort nor take the time to prepare themselves healthful mealtime feasts. Their time is too valuable and feels scarce. This vicious cycle will continue until we purposely learn to slow down and make our bodies a priority. Eating healthily and oxygenating our body appropriately through physical activity both can be time consuming, but are necessary factors in loving ourselves. These are the two basic self-love habits that we could all undertake daily.
When it comes to eating healthy, we’ve learned all about the food pyramid model and a variety of other healthy eating diet trends. An eating concept that is highly interesting is that of hot and cold energy. The food that we eat can be easy or difficult to digest. Food that is difficult for our body to process and digest requires more energy to get from mouth to anus. Food that moves freely and easily though our gastrointestinal (GI) system requires less energy to process. Foods that are difficult for our body to process and digest are considered hot energy foods, while those that are easier to process and readily digestible fall under the cold energy foods category. The visual that one can use to better understand this concept is that of a slip-n-slide. When a slip-n-slide is dry, then we find it much more difficult to slide down it. Our dry skin tends to stick to the slide with friction, and we don’t slide down very smoothly nor quickly. We must exert a certain amount of effort to slide down the dry slide with our dry skin. Conversely, when the slip-n-slide has water flowing down it, the water acts as a lubricant which helps to wet our skin and facilitate our sliding experience. We glide down the slide rather quickly with ease with the aid of the water. There is little to no extra effort needed to slide down the wet slide.
If we consider the food that we feed to our furry pets, then we will better understand hot and cold energy foods. Dog food for instance, is marketed as having all the nutrition that a canine needs. Dry dog food is a hot energy food. It requires the dog’s body to use extra energy and water to process through their system from mouth to tail. The dog must compensate for the loss of its internal water by drinking more water when it is eating dry dog food. Canned dog food, on the other hand, requires less energy and water to process because it already has water in it. This type of food is slimy and can get through the dog’s digestive system better than the dry dog food can. In general, foods that have a high water content do not require as much from the dog’s body to be processed.
The human body is said to be comprised of about 70% water. In particular, our gastrointestinal system requires adequate water to process and eliminate the foods that we eat. When we eat foods that are dry or difficult to digest due to their absorptive nature, our body must work in overdrive to process and digest these foods. For example, eating dry foods such as cookies, crackers, breads, pretzels, and granola bars requires extra internal energy and water to process. Other foods that are difficult for the body to process are meats, grains (like rice, oats, and wheat), and dairy products which also require loads of energy and water to digest. Grains absorb lots of water. They can potentially dehydrate us on the inside without us even realizing it. When we sit down and eat a large portion of rice or a big bowl of cream of wheat, our body must use lots of extra water to get these foods through our system. So, it’s important to drink extra fluids when we eat these sorts of foods. Meat is also difficult to get through the body, especially for those of us who like our meat well cooked. Meats that are well done tend to be drier than juicy undercooked meats. Again, our body requires more water and energy to transport the meat through our entire GI system.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have the foods that are readily digestible due to their higher water content. Cold energy foods are those that require much less internal energy and water to process. Think of a nice summer day, and someone serves you a beautiful slice of watermelon. Upon eating the watermelon, it naturally refreshes your warm body on such a hot day. Cold energy foods refresh our body because they have water already within them that aids in their digestion. Fruits and vegetables are readily processed by the body because they don’t require extra energy nor water to process. These foods are kinder to our GI system. The cold energy foods may have loads of fiber and protein, and they move through our body easier than hot energy foods with the same. A cucumber is processed better than a piece of steak. Both get processed and digested, but one requires less from the body and is easier on the system than the other.
It’s interesting to note that many of the hot energy foods that are challenging for the body to process are the ones that we crave the most. The added sugars, salts, spices, and other additives in hot energy foods contribute to the complexity of processing those foods. We may have witnessed sugar be added to a cup of water. When the water is saturated with sugar, the extra sugar granules fall to the bottom. They are not able to be fully dissolved in the water because the water has reached its maximum threshold. Foods with additives require our bodies to give up more and more of its water to process. Fresh fruit also has sugar, but the fruit itself holds water which lessens the amount of water that the body must give up to help offset the solute imbalance.
Cold energy foods tend to be those that have their own balanced water content. These foods are predominantly fruits and vegetables. The fact that they bring additional water into our bodies when consumed, allows them to be processed and digested easier. Hot energy foods require our bodies to use up extra energy and to give up water reserves to be processed through our system. Our liver has a tougher job to do when processing a hamburger than a peach. When it comes to energy and hydration, the hamburger is taxing on our system while the peach is facilitating its own transport. The hamburger may offer some nutrition to our body, but it can also be providing needless sugars, salts, carbohydrates, and calories. The peach is also offering its own vitamins and minerals, along with its own sugars and calories. The main difference is that the hamburger requires way more water from our body than a peach does to pass through our GI system from beginning to end. Think of biting into a hamburger, our mouth needs quite a bit of saliva to get that bite chewed up and moist enough to get down our throat. In fact, we may need to drink something in order to swallow the bite of hamburger well. On the other hand, biting into a peach doesn’t require our mouth to produce so much saliva nor do we need to drink something to swallow that piece of fruit.
Many of us have noticed that after we eat a large meal, generally heavy on the hot energy foods, we tend to get sleepy. The logic is that our body has focused its energy on processing and digesting our meal. We also may have noticed that after we eat, our hands and/or feet may get cold to the touch. Again, this is due to the fact that our body is focusing its energy and resources on processing and digesting our food. The more energy that is required to process the meal ingested, the more intense our sleepiness and cold extremities become.
The age-old advice to increase our fruit and vegetable intake, while limiting all other types of food, still prevails. We can be kind to our body by feeding it nutrition filled fruits and vegetables. Not only are they highly nutritious, but they help hydrate us as well. They also, by their very nature, help us process and digest them. Hot energy foods can also be consumed, but in much smaller portions and quantities. Limiting foods and substances that take water from us instead of contributing water to us is important. This includes candy! Candy tastes great, but it is only in our mouth for a brief moment. Once the candy gets beyond our mouth, then it can cause “chaos” within the body…potentially triggering our body to give up water, contributing sugars that may get stored as fat reserves, and adding extra calories that we may not necessarily need. The next time that you are making a meal or snack selection, be sure to choose cold energy foods that truly contribute valuable nutrition and aid in self processing throughout the body.