Many Chinese believe winter is a good time to gain some weight, but summer is when to lose it. Hot and humid weather naturally inhibits the appetite. But humidity can also stimulate the growth of micro bacteria, which makes food easily go bad and endanger people's health. So although young women want to be slimmer, it's also important to eat healthy. Here are some ways to help you eat more healthy in summer.

Open up the appetite

Heat and humidity can be natural inhibitors to your appetite. To stimulate it, try the following tips below.

Have a glass of water an hour before meals, which prevents your stomach from becoming dehydrated and stimulates your stomach for upcoming meals.

Make colorful dishes. Green peppers, red tomatoes and yellow pineapples can stimulate your appetite. Try avoiding eating too much ice cream. Cold ice cream makes the stomach contract, resulting in less blood flow as well as less oxygen supply to the digestive system. Combined together, these effects on your body can slow down your digestive system, which gives people the feeling of always having a full stomach.

Try eating fresh radishes, which taste spicy and have a minty flavor, stimulating your appetite. You can mix radishes with other cooling vegetables, like asparagus, silk squash, and pumpkin, to make salad. Or you can have radish paste mixed with some sugar and vinegar, it can taste pretty good.

Have a cooling soup after your meal. Option one is green bean soup, a traditional recipe and easy to prepare. Option two is to mix yam, Chinese red dates, white fungus and lotus seeds together in a sweet soup. Once done, leave it in a fridge to cool down, then add some rock sugar.

Eat the clean food

People tend to drink more water in summer. This dilutes gastric juices in the stomach, weakening its ability in killing harmful micro bacteria. So here are some tips to stay healthy:

Wash fresh fruits and melons carefully before eating them. Rinse them thoroughly under tap water first, then put them in hot water for two to three minutes. Hot water kills most of the micro bacteria.

Make sure your chopping board is clean. Have separate chopping boards for raw and cooked food. Clean the boards not only with tap water, but also dish soap and brushes. Pay special attention to the corners and cutting marks while cleaning. The keep the board upright and let it dry naturally.

Also, experts believe garlic is a natural antibiotic and can combat against bacteria, including influenza and diarrhea. So you may consider eating more cloves of garlic.

Have special diet care in summer

To survive the hot weather, your body needs to make a lot of adjustments. The blood circulation, digestive and urinary systems all go through significant changes. And to help with the body's adjustments, a boosted metabolism is ideal to increase consumption of nourishment in the body. As a result, it's necessary to take special tonics in the summer to have more protein, vitamins, salt as well as water in your diet. Here are two recipes.

Straw mushroom lettuce soup

Straw mushroom is a cooling vegetable that's rich in protein, fat, sugar, coarse fiber, calcium, iron and vitamin B1, B2 and C.

Ingredients:

200 grams of fresh straw mushrooms

300 grams of asparagus lettuce

10 grams of ginger

two preserved chilli peppers

salt for taste.

Method:

1 Wash the straw mushrooms, cut off their roots and then dice; peel the asparagus lettuce, cut it into slices and then wash them.

2 Stir-fry asparagus lettuce and straw mushroom together. Add ginger slices, salt and preserved chilli peppers as well as 700 grams of water into the pot. Cook them until the lettuce slices soften.

3 Take the ginger slices and chilli peppers out. The soup is done.

Colorful bean porridge

This dish stimulates the appetite and beans are good for your digestive system.

Ingredients:

1 gram of red beans, green beans, black beans, yellow beans

1 slice of orange peel

Some rice.

Method:

1 Put all beans, rice and orange peel in water and soak 4 hours.

2 Rinse them again before putting them all in a pot with clean water and let it boil.

3 When it begins to boil, transfer the porridge into an electric pot and let it simmer.

4 When it's done, add some rock candy. Then you can have a pot of delicious sticky and soft porridge.

(China Daily August 21, 2007)