Setareh Kiumarsi
When someone wants to lose weight or have a good bowel movement, keeps on including different types of salads in his diet! Even if he doesn’t like salad, he forces himself to have a plate of salad for at least one meal per day.
most of the time You can find Bitter gourd, Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Cabbage (Red and White), Cauliflower, Celery, Cilantro, Endive, Green beans, Green peas, Kale, Lettuce, Mint, Peppermint and Potato in most popular salads, which are all in cold and dry vegetables category.
As a result, when you consume them raw, by their own, and without their antidote, they dry up the mucus membrane of you GI tract and make the digestive tube extremely dry.
For example, think of eating a plate of salad full of raw cauliflower, broccoli, celery, lettuce or kale. since these vegetables are full of fiber, they will help the stool to move through the colon easier.
Nevertheless, when you routinely eat them raw, it is like putting a sponge in a bowl of water; the sponge absorbs all the mucus membrane of the GI tract and makes it too dry.
Because of this dryness, even the smoothest foods like marshmallow can’t move through the digestive tube easily. In addition, a lot of air enters the stomach and intestines as you eat, and Vata gets aggravated. In this situation, one will suffer from different physical and mental Vata imbalances such as gas, bloating, burping, chronic constipation, anxiety, fear, stress and insomnia.
The coldness of these foods blows out the digestive fire like a cold wind and makes the metabolism slow and the thyroid hypo. For this reason, most of the foods in this category are considered great remedies for hyperthyroidism. When you eat these vegetables raw every day, they might decrease your appetite (because they decrease the fire element in your GI tract), but simultaneously, they will lower your metabolic rate and make you gain more weight!
Cook these foods with appropriate oils (such as ghee, coconut oil, sunflower oil, olive oil or canola oil) and balance spices; do not consume them raw. In your cooking, use 3 parts of tridoshic heating spices (such as fennel, turmeric, cardamom, cinnamon, cumin, saffron, basil, fresh ginger, oregano, rosemary, black seeds, etc.) and 1 part of cooling spices (such as coriander, rose, sumac, mint).
When you cook these vegetables with natural oils, you reduce their dryness! When you add spices to them, it is like kindling a fire underneath them and reducing their coldness!
Instead of eating salads that are full of cold and dry vegetables (such as Caesar salad, lettuce or kale salad), eat salads that are mostly comprised of raw heating vegetables (such as carrot, parsley, basil, spinach, etc.) and cooked and spiced cold vegetables, like our digestive salad! You can find the recipe in Ayurvedic Persian Cooking posts.