Balancing Diet With The Fall Season

In nature, fall is a time when everything begins to slow down, and the expansive energies of summer begin to contract inward and downward. Leaves fall, grasses dry, and the sap of the trees go into the roots. Similarly, we can often feel in our own lives that it is time to organize the scattered patterns of summer and create new rituals that will best support us through the slower winter months. Fall provides us with the process of cooling and slowing down. 

While nature may be slowing down, our schedules often don’t allow us to do the same. We must take extra care to be sure not to fall out of sync with the natural cycle around us.

All foods and flavors have different effects in the body. Some foods are warming while others cool the body’s thermal temperature. Here in New England, the vegetables that grow in the summer cool our bodies during the hot and humid season. In the fall the vegetables growing have a more warming, dense and stable effect. When we eat seasonal, local foods, we receive the energies that naturally balance out the seasonal shifts that occur within our bodies. 

The way we prepare our food plays a role in the effect it has on our body. Rather than keeping to the raw foods and grilling methods of summer cooking, which keep the cooling properties, fall and winter are about meals that are cooked on a lower heat for a longer period of time. This releases the more warming qualities of our food and provides a settling affect which in turn helps internalize one’s focus. 

Baked foods, sautéed foods, heartier foods, and root vegetables all contribute towards the thickening of the blood. If one lives in a cold climate, it is necessary that the blood gets thicker as the weather grows colder.

Traditional Chinese Medicine suggests that we can use different flavors to synchronize the body’s energy with the seasons. During summer, pungent, spicy foods may have served a purpose as they provide an outwardly expansive energy; causing us to break into a sweat. Since fall is a process of contracting our energy inwards, we want to incorporate sour flavors as they have a similar effect. Sour foods include sauerkraut, olives, pickles, vinegar, leeks, adzuki beans, yogurt, lemons, limes, sour apples and sourdough bread. Extremely sour foods should be used in very small amounts as they have a strong effect.(*1)   As we move further into winter, the salty flavor will be of value for its contractive benefits. Wholesome salts are found in foods such as unrefined sea salt, seaweeds, barley, millet, soy sauce, miso, or pickles that are prepared in salt water.(*2)

*1 Caution: Minimize sour foods when feeling a “heavy mind or body” or constipation. 

*2 Caution: Minimize salt in conditions of over weight, edema, lethargy, or high blood pressure.