The Energy of Your Food

Over the past decade, more and more people realize that food is more than just carbohydrates, proteins, fats, water, vitamins and salts. Every food has a certain energy. Wild plants have a lot of it, highly processed foods very little. A living raw food diet has a lot, foods from the magnetron hardly any. In Eastern philosophy this is a well known fact. This energy is at least as important to us as the nutrients in the food.

In Chinese Medicine there is lot of knowledge about this.
Foods can be categorized in:

Yin or yang
Warm or cold
Taste: sweet, sour, pungent, salt or bitter
Movements: inward, outward, upward, downward
Working on specific meridians and organs

Depending on a your condition or constitution, you can choose the food that's most appropriate for you. If you are always cold, you have a cold condition, if you are always warm, you have a warm condition.

A banana for instance has a very cold energy, cayenne a hot energy. If you are warm by nature and living in a warm climate in summer, bananas are fine. In that case, be careful with a lot of cayenne.
If you are cold by nature and live in a cold climate in winter, be careful with bananas. You would be better off eating warm foods, like soups from vegetables that are in season, warm drinks, dried fruits, and hot spices like cayenne and ginger.
If you have a weak digestion, this means that you don't have enough digestive fire. In this case avoid cold foods and take the more warming foods. Don't eat anything straight from the fridge or icecream.
Children have a weaker digestion than adults and need more warmth to grow. Be careful with cold foods like bananas .... which they often love. Porridge used to be a basic food for kids and there is a definite reason for this, it's nourishing and warming.

By the way, raw food is not the same as cold food. This is a big mistake many people make. More on this subject soon.