Some may be unfamiliar with okra. It's actually an edible vegetable with numerous health benefits. But are you aware of its dietary restrictions? What should not be consumed alongside okra? Let's explore below!
Okra is commonly served as a vegetable on the dinner table. Since okra is highly cooling, it's best paired with warming staple foods. Combining okra with warming staples can help balance its cooling nature and prevent spleen-stomach deficiency cold.
Warming staple foods include: millet, wheat, barley, buckwheat, coix seed, mung beans.
Okra is inherently cold and classified as a cooling food. Therefore, it should not be cooked or consumed alongside other cold or cooling meats, as this may lead to spleen and stomach deficiency-cold, causing discomfort such as diarrhea.
Cool-natured meats: water buffalo meat, duck meat, rabbit meat, mare's milk, frog meat (field frog), fish, abalone.
Cold-natured meats: duck eggs (slightly cold), horse meat, otter meat, crab, sea crab, clams (sand clam, sea clam, razor clam),oysters, snails, earthworms, river snails (extremely cold), freshwater snails, clams, river clams (river mussels), blackfish, octopus. Okra itself is a cold-natured food, so it's best not to consume other cool or cold-natured vegetables when eating okra.
Cooling vegetables: Tomatoes (slightly cooling), celery, water celery, eggplant, rapeseed greens, Chinese cabbage, water bamboo shoots, amaranth, wild chrysanthemum, chrysanthemum greens, spinach, daylily buds (daylily flowers),lettuce (Chinese lettuce), cauliflower, goji berry shoots, water dropwort, tofu (tofu skin, dried tofu, fermented tofu), gluten, lotus root, winter melon, sweet potato, loofah, cucumber, sea celery (wakame), mushrooms, enoki mushrooms.
Cold-natured vegetables: Arrowhead (slightly cold), purslane, water spinach, watercress, spinach, hair moss, shepherd's purse, bamboo shoots (slightly cold), bottle gourd, cucumber, kelp, laver, seaweed, wood ear fungus, straw mushrooms, bitter melon, water chestnuts.
After consuming okra, the stomach often enters a state of deficiency-cold. At this time, it is inadvisable to eat cold or cooling fruits, as this may lead to indigestion and diarrhea.