Illustration: Peter C. Espina/GT

 

Hearing my Chinese husband talk about sandwiches, you would think he had been to war.

"We were traveling down the Rhine River on a cloudy day. The cold air whipped around us as my companion, a kind-hearted German woman with dry, strong hands, reached deep into her bag and fished out two cheese sandwiches. Exhausted and famished, I sunk my teeth into the sandwich. But as I took a bite, a cold gust of wind seeped into my mouth and filled my stomach."

If you let him, the longest version of this story takes more than 30 minutes to hear. He regales his kind audience with the tale of searching for a bowl of soup on that fateful autumn day. But if you think that is too much, try spending a solid three days driving through the great sandwich-eating Midwest US with him.

"Jennifer, this sandwich is too cold!"

"Jen, do you think they will have hot water for tea?" 

"Jen, where do you think we can get some hot water?"

His concern over intestinal, internal temperate is endless, despite my husband being a worldly traveler universally known as an easygoing, adventurous guy.

So, what's the fuss about? Well, according to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), all foods need to be balanced according to their temperature. We're not talking physically hot and cold, but their inherent yin and yang qualities.

Women, who are inherently yin, are advised to eat slightly "warming foods," such as dates, ginger and brown sugar. Anyone can eat anything as long as it's in balance.

The Western diet of cold sandwiches, cold drinks and raw veggies are akin to TCM suicide. But why should those who dismiss TCM as nonsense care about some ancient medical system that remains scientifically unverified?

Apparently, constant exposure to cold fluids, foods and air are also the reason that Westerners are so flabby. My friend Xiao Bao, a medical student at the China Beijing International Acupuncture Training Center, said that obesity is actually easy to treat in Americans; all one has to do is drive out the cold air that has accumulated in their bodies.

"It's kind of like deflating a balloon," she said, adding that this process is much harder for Chinese who tend to be legitimately fat.

Given the Chinese ability to survive and thrive in even the harshest of environments, you have to admit that the Chinese have a certain robustness to them that certainly does not come from a long tradition of physical exercise, a love of nature, or even psychological and spiritual awareness which we so adore in the West.

Who knows? Perhaps the key to optimum health is staying away from cheese sandwiches.