Overall recommendations for healthy eating in the spring focus on releasing yang heat. You should ideally eat foods warm in energetic nature, such as onions, ginger, garlic, alfalfa, and mustard greens. You should also eat more yellow and green foods, such as fresh beans, peas, and vegetable sprouts. These will help your yang energy rise and spread to the surface of the body.
Garlic
At the same time, you should also consume less food cold in energetic nature, such as melons, celery, apples, bananas, cucumber, flax seed oil, lemon/citrus, and mung beans. Cold foods cause yang energy to sink down into the body. This sinking action can weaken your immune system, making you vulnerable to flus, colds, and hay fever.
Eggs, dairy, and animal proteins drive yang energy deep into the body. They are great for winter, but in the spring, you should add plant proteins, for example dried or fresh beans and sprouts.
If you live somewhere with a hotter climate, it is necessary to prevent the yang energy from rising too much. If it rises too much, you could develop Qi and blood stagnation and excess heat in your body. To prevent this, you should eat more light vegetables and sweet fruits that are lightly cooked.
Eating warm food that is sweet in energetic nature will help you maintain a healthy liver that won't disrupt digestive functions. If the liver gets too hot, you can develop a condition called "liver invading the spleen." What this means in general terms is that your spleen and stomach cannot draw enough nutrients out of the food to keep you healthy.
Foods that support healthy liver functioning during the spring include amaranth, collard greens, dandelion greens, plantains, and spring bamboo shoots. Eating these foods will also help prevent the flu, spring dermatitis, and canker sores.
Collard greens
Summary of Quick Tips for Eating Healthy in the Spring
- Cooking methods: Steam, quick stir-fry on high heat, and poach foods in the spring. If you are under 50, you can start introducing small amounts of raw food. Avoid greasy, oily, baked, stewed, and roasted foods.
- Foods to eat: Reduce salty and bitter foods, they sink your energy down and in. Eat less meat, eggs, seeds, and nuts, because they also sink energy.
- Add pungent foods: Pungent foods help your energy rise up. Examples are onions, leeks, chives, scallions, mustard greens, Chinese yam, dates, cilantro, fennel, oregano, rosemary, caraway, bay leaf, mint, black pepper, ginger, horseradish, mushrooms, carrots, green peas, mung beans, sweet potatoes, spinach, bamboo shoots, and green-leafy vegetables.