It has been an old tradition for Chinese families, particularly in the north, to eat a big meal of meat on the first day of autumn.

The tradition continues. In major meat stores in Beijing last Monday, the supply of pork leg and head meat could not meet the demand. Many restaurants also served their signature meat dishes to customers.

In the past when people were poorer and malnourished, they tried to store more fuel in their body to get through the coming harsh winter.

"But nowadays, when people's life is much better off, the meat eating tradition is more symbolic of people's wishes for a good health during a seasonal shift," said Wang Yi, director of Nutrition Department with Guang'anmen Hospital affiliated to the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). " In fact, through choosing a proper diet, instead of eating a lot of meat, people can keep healthy all year around."

According to TCM, people are inseparable from the nature and are influenced by changes in weather. Autumn is cold and dry and if people cannot adapt to the environmental changes they get sick. Dryness is the main climate feature of autumn as bright sunny days dominate in the season. Click to learn Chinese herb Radix Euphorbiae Kansui (Gansui).

TCM believes that autumn dryness depletes the body of fluids, such as saliva, stomach fluids, and tissue fluids, so people tend to experience dryness in the mouth and throat, they cough, get rougher skin, develop nasal congestion, and even get constipation.

Dryness also attacks the lungs, which deserves a special care. Click to learn Chinese herb Radix Euphorbiae Pekinensis (Daji).

TCM doctors suggest people should nourish their bodies in autumn through proper diet.

According to Wang, people should eat more food with sour or sweet flavour in autumn to promote the secretion of body fluid.

For lung nourishment, as she suggested, one should eat food like sesame, almond, peanuts, goose, duck, loach, partridge eggs, yam, white fungus, grape, lily, milk, sugar candy, honey, carrot and agarics.

And to moisturize the internal dryness, people should eat food like radish, spinach, bamboo shoot, loquat fruit, cabbage, grapefruit, and orange, which commonly have a sweet and cool taste.

According to Wang, there are no special requirements for the cooking methods. For example, people can put yam or lily together with rice to prepare porridge. Or they can fry tower guard with eggs. Or they can even make sesame and yam wine. Click to learn Chinese herb Aloe (Luhui).

People should reduce the intake of alcohol, pungent, greasy and fried food in autumn, which Wang warned will dry up the body fluid.

Article source: chinadaily