#Food Compatibility
There is a thing called food compatibility in Korea. #Balance and digestion of nutrients through a diet composition or recipe that harmonizes #foods with a cold nature and #foods with a warm nature. The purpose is to increase the absorption rate and form a healthy diet. For example, few people know that most Koreans eat bossam with pickled shrimp. Koreans make and store large amounts of kimchi to be eaten throughout the winter between late autumn and early winter in preparation for the winter before the cold winter arrives. This is called kimjang-season. Bossam is one of the dishes that cannot be missed in this kimchi season. When making kimchi, the whole family is mobilized, and mothers prepare this bossam while putting stuffing in cabbage pickled with seasoning prepared by other family members. Bossam is a dish of boiled pork wrapped in freshly made kimchi. When kimchi is finished, as a celebration, freshly made kimchi and boiled pork are eaten together with rice, encouraging each other's hard work. It's kind of like a small celebration. At this time, it is pickled shrimp that is served together without missing it. The harmony of these two foods is because pickled shrimp helps the digestion of pork. Pickled shrimp is also one of the seasoning ingredient for kimchi. Like this, Koreans like to apply various food compatibility to their diet. And the traditional Korean table consists of examples of such food compatibility. This logic stems from not only the compatibility of nutrients, but also the belief that if you eat too much cold foods, your body will lose heat, and if you eat too much warm foods, your body heat will rise, so it is not beneficial to health to lose the balance of body temperature. In other words, it is the logic that a person with a heat constitution cools their body heat with cold food, and a person with a cold constitution raises their body heat with warm food to maintain the balance of body heat. Koreans regard maintaining an appropriate body temperature as the basis of health and believe that food is the best medicine. And they enjoy expressing their health philosophy through Korean dining tables. A TV program in Korea is one of the longevity programs that air cases cured by such food and present the scientific basis of those cases. In fact, Korean food philosophy is based on Korean traditional medicine, so it is quite complicated and difficult for me to explain in more detail. Below, I have roughly divided the types of food known as cold food and warm food. I think it will be a fun experience and challenge to apply to your diet.
| #food with cold properties | #food with warm properties |
Meat and Fish | Pork, duck, mackerel, herring, salmon, tuna, squid, octopus, shellfish, shrimp, abalone, etc. | Beef, chicken, goat beef, eel, anchovies, early fish, loach, etc. |
| food with cold properties | food with warm properties |
Vege and Fruits | Aloe, lettuce, cucumber, celery, green pepper, sweet potato, bean sprout, eggplant, spinach, sesame leaf, broccoli, kale, parsley, eggplant, cabbage, Chinese cabbage, pineapple, grape, kiwi, pear, etc. | Onion, garlic, leek, taro, potato, sweet potato, yacon, pumpkin, carrot, red pepper, citron, tangerine, orange, apple, peach, pomegranate, lemon, apricot, plum, peach, jujube, etc. |
| food with cold properties | food with warm properties |
Grains | Buckwheat, red bean, barley, rye, perilla, mung bean, black bean, black sesame, etc. | Glutinous rice, millet, adlay, etc. |
| cold character of food | food with warm properties |
Other than tea | green tea, olive oil | Ginseng, honey, cinnamon, ginger, ginkgo biloba, seaweed, seaweed, kelp, antler, royal jelly, tofu, mustard, most dairy products and spices, etc. |
Vitamin | vitamin C | vitamin A, B, E, D |