Top 5 Summer Foods To Beat The Heat
Blog
Cooling Foods For the Indian Summer and Foods to Avoid in Summer
Have you ever pondered during your childhood days why long vacations were always during summer? Can you name the top 5 summer foods that you had especially only in summer? Did you find your answer?
While you try to answer the same, read on to know more about enduring this hot season using simple yet compelling food remedies to beat the summer heat. Explore the top 5 cooling foods for Indian summer and the foods to avoid.
Importance of Summer
The seasonal cycles are tuned to help living beings thrive on this beautiful planet. And no matter how much you hate it, summers are vital to striking the right seasonal balance to ensure the survival of the living race on earth.
The soaring temperatures cause water from the waterbodies to evaporate and rise into the atmosphere. The evaporated water forms a cloud over a long period. Thus, summer heat not only vaporizes water by heating waterbodies, but it also heats the land mass. The differential atmospheric pressure between the land and the water bodies spanning two months is vital to bring rain to the earth. Without the rainy season, collecting potable water – much needed for survival becomes tedious.
Since the summers are essential to strike a natural balance, we must do our bit to adapt to the season. One of the easiest ways to do so is to consume summer-appropriate food.
Summer Food for Your Thoughts
Every season brings along certain fruits and vegetables that are best consumed during the season. Summer is no exception to this rule.
The king of fruits – mangoes, jackfruit, watermelon, muskmelon, tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, guards, and other fruits and vegetables grows abundantly during this season. If you carefully notice, all the fruits and vegetables grown during this season are rich in water. It is nature’s way of indicating that you must consume food rich in antioxidants and electrolytes to beat the summer heat.
Cooling Foods for The Indian Summer
Being in the Equatorial region, Indian summers are surely hard-hitting. On top of this, climate change worsens the matter. So it becomes all the more imperative to stay hydrated while supplementing your body with vital nutrients to maintain energy and keep your memory sharp during summer.
Let us discover the health benefits of 5 prominent summer foods that store the secrets of beating the summer heat.
Mangoes
When one thinks of summer, without a doubt, relishing the sweet ripened mangoes comes to mind. This seasonal fruit has plenty of water to help you stay hydrated. Loaded with iron, eating mangoes is also a perfect way to enhance your calcium levels.
The king of fruits is also rich in vitamins A & C, essential to boost your immune system for the rainy season that follows summer. So if you are not counting calories, don’t shy from including this incredible fruit in your diet.
Melons
Summers are incomplete without consuming watermelon and muskmelon. As a rich source of fiber, these melons contain enough water to regulate your body temperature, add glow to your skin, and keep your memory sharp. They are also an excellent food source for people looking to shed extra calories in the summer.
Sweet corn
Keeping your eyes open when you step out in the summer sun is challenging. You feel shades are a must. While the sunglasses protect your eyes from the outside, one of the most underrated summer foods – sweet corn, acts as natural sunglasses from within.
Consuming sweet corn rich in antioxidants – zeaxanthin and lutein generates macular pigment that filters out harmful sun rays. These antioxidants also lower the risk of macular degeneration, thus protecting your eyesight.
Salads
Salads are one of the best summer foods rich in fiber and water content. Including cucumbers, onions, and green leaves like lettuce in the salads helps protect the skin from UV rays, keeps you hydrated, tastes delicious, and helps you shed weight. While cucumbers keep constipation at bay, onions help you prevent heat stroke. The beauty of salads is that you can make them with almost anything and everything. So, make your salads just how you like them to stay full and healthy during summer.
Fish
While the above four food options are universal, this is exclusively for meat lovers. Doctors and dietitians usually advise people to avoid red meat and chicken during summer as they increase body temperature. Fish – lean meat, is low in cholesterol, and is an excellent replacement for red meat for non-vegetarians. If cooked well, freshwater fish are easily digestible and stay light on your stomach.
The above list is not exhaustive. Berries – rich in flavonoids, citrus fruits – rich in vitamin C and help flush toxins out of your body, and iced lemon tea – rich in antioxidants are also great additions to your summer diet.
Foods to Avoid in Summer
While the last section gave you a curated list from the desk of our experts of what to eat, this section tells you what to avoid eating during summer.
Our experts say avoiding high-protein foods, excess salt, caffeinated drinks, alcohol, dark chocolates, spicy food, and oily food during the summer is a perfect way to help your body deal with the heat.
- High protein food like red meat consumes more water for metabolism making the cells lose water and leaving you dehydrated.
- Consuming food with excess salt and increased caffeine intake increases the blood flow to the kidneys leading to frequent urination and excess water loss from the body.
- Alcohols are known to increase the core body temperature. The body instinctively uses more water to cool down and regulate body temperature leading to water loss.
- Food filled with spices and oil is heavy on the stomach and requires more water for digestion.
In all the above cases, inadequate compensation for water loss can lead to dehydration, leaving you exhausted. Hence, this summer, make a thumb rule to avoid consuming food that causes dehydration and increases the body’s core temperature.
Finally, here’s the answer to the question we started our blog with.
The season is a blessing in this regard as the markets overflow with abundant fresh produce with multiple health benefits. So, having time off to relish the fresh produce and prepare your body’s immune system to combat the seasonal changes for the rest of the year, you have long summer holidays.
If your answer is different, leave a note in the comment section below and also mention the top 5 summer foods that you used to have during childhood. As always, we would love to know what you think.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Which food is good for health in summer?
Ans: An antioxidant and electrolyte-rich food is really good for enduring Indian summer. The top five summer foods for beating Indian heat are Mango, Melons, Sweet corn, Salads, and Fish. Conversely, the foods to avoid during Indian Summer are high protein, excess salt, caffeinated drinks, alcohol, dark chocolates, and spicy and oily foods.
- Which vegetables to eat in summer?
Ans: Some of the top vegetables to eat in summer are: kale, zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, shallots, bell peppers, basil, and garlic. Consuming these vegetables helps in maintaining proper and great health.
- Which fruit is best in summer?
Ans: The best summer foods for summer include the summer special fruits like mango – the king of fruits, watermelon, lychee, musk melon, papaya, jackfruit, limes fruit, etc. These are the special seasonal summer fruits that have high water content and are the best for keeping the body hydrated.
