The Magical Disappearing Act of the Watermelon
So lately I've been quite "eat hay" (that's my attempt at canto-romanization.) If you're Chinese you know what I mean. Literally "eat hay" translates to "hot air." The Chinese believe that certain types of food have either a high "heat" content or high "cool" content and that a balance between the two is important in order to maintain good health. If you have too many foods of one over the other, then you'll experience certain symptoms due to the imbalance.
For example, eating too many foods that are considered to have a high "heat" content will lead to breakouts, bad breath, mouth sores, nose bleeds and/or a sore throat. Having too many foods that have a high "cool" content will bring about dizziness, paleness and/or weakness.
Wikipedia explains this very well:
The ideas of yin and yang are used in the sphere of food and cooking. Yang foods are believed to increase the body's heat (eg. raise the metabolism), while Yin foods are believed to decrease the body's heat (eg. lower the metabolism). As a generalization, Yang foods tend to be dense in food energy, especially energy from fat, while Yin foods tend to have high water content. The Chinese ideal is to eat both types of food to keep the body in balance. A person eating too much Yang food might suffer from acne and bad breath while a person lacking Yang food might be lethargic or anemic.
Wikipedia also has a helpful table of the foods that fall in either category that you can check out here.
Some people may think this is a bunch of hooey, but from my personal experience I find this to be true. The saying, "you are what you eat" can be considered a more general interpretation of this concept.
Without realizing I had eaten lots of food with a high "heat" content, I began to experience the symptoms of being "eat hay." To counterbalance it, I drank lots of chrysanthemum tea and ate lots of watermelon. Now I feel much better and back to normal!
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I've had lengthy discussions about this in the past with my husband to gain a better understanding of Chinese medicine. He says it's far more complex than that. What you say is true but there is more. I'll share what he said.
Think of it as two bars, one for heat and one for cool, on a graph. If you are at equilibrium, both bars are at zero. As you eat more "eat hay" foods, the heat bar goes up. And if you try to balance the heat by eating cool foods, the cool bar goes up as well. So now, you are not at equilibrium but instead, both bars are raised significantly above zero. At this point, your body is too "eat hay" and too "tai learng" at the same time. This is not considered equilibrium until both bars are somehow brought down to zero. Your body may feel like it's at equilibrium, but some parts will feet hot while other parts feel cold or symptoms associated with both. And it's still far more complex than this. It's beyond the scope of what my husband can explain to me. Hope this helps. :)
Interesting. I wonder, how do you maintain equilibrium then?