For really healthy recipes, go chinese!

But I am not talking about just going to your chinese restaurant, although as far as eating out goes, chinese can a lot healthier than other options.

And I am not talking about "westernized chinese" either, battered and deep fried chicken or pork in a sweet sauce is not part of the anti candida diet!

But in traditional chinese cuisine, meat is not eaten to excess, it was a luxury and was made a centre piece of the dinner, but the main foods that people filled up on were vegetables and rice.

And the method of cooking the vegetables, soups, stir frying, light steaming, are excellent ways to cook the vegetables, and get maximum nutrition from them (according to chinese medicine, warm or lightly cooked vegetables are take less energy to eat than cold vegetables, which the body has to heat before it can digest, and so warm veggies are better for stressed bodies).

Notice also the absence of fatty sauces in traditional chinese cooking. Instead they use a lot of spices and herbs which not only impart flavour, but have great health benefits themselves.

For example, consider ginger, it is meant to be good for everything.

For one thing it is a sialagogue, or stimulator of saliva. This makes it useful in the digestive process. Ginger tea taken before meals stimulates the saliva, which prepares the stomach for the arrival of food, promoting better digestion and absorption of nutrients. Ginger in the food would serve much the same purpose.

Ginger is reputed to do the following; be useful in calming motion sickness and nausea (although there is some dispute as to whether pregnant women should use it, as it may have mutagenic properties), others use it to treat or ward off colds, join pain from arthiritis, and to thin blood or lower cholesterole.

Ginger contains gingerol as an active ingredient which is known to have analgesic, sedative, antipyretic, antibacterial and GI tract motility effects.

(It can interfere with other drugs, such as warfarin, particularly when taken in large doses.)

Chinese cooking contains lots of ginger, garlic, liquorice (an ingredient in chinese five spice) chilli, etc etc. Many spices and herbs have great nutrients for our bodies, that often we lack.

I have been thinking about this recently, as I was talking to a friend the other day who has been put on a no sugar, no dairy, no fish diet. Sound familiar?

She was trying to decide where we could go with a group of friends for lunch. Our choice of chinese restaurant was a success, we were able to have healthy meals rich in steamed vegetables, rice and with appropriate meat choices alongside. So go chinese!