The chicken broth which is the most effective, the soups – freshly made and even more so if reheated – citrus fruits, honey. These are the foods that rightfully enter the menu that helps us face the cold, also supporting our body's defenses against winter viruses and bacteria in a period in which the flu, between 2023 and 2024, will put thousands of people to bed Italians. The list of foods to prefer when the temperature drops is drawn up for Adnkronos Salute by Ciro Vestita, a nutritionist and phytotherapist who underlines how a diet that acts as a shield for our immune system has “roots in tradition” and is “low cost”.
On cold days a good chicken brothin addition to being 'comforting', “is helpful in defending oneself from the viral forms in circulation. Tradition tells us this and science confirms it. In fact, good quantities of natural antibiotics have been isolated from the skin of free-range chickens, useful therefore to combat seasonal bacterial ailments. The parts richest in these molecules are also the cheapest ones such as wings and wattles”.
Benefits in this period are “citrus fruits, from the classic orange to the more 'powerful' grapefruit which, thanks to the important presence of the naringenin molecule, has the ability to help us fight viruses”: green light therefore for juices for breakfast or as a snack. “All citrus fruits are good, in particular I remember the Chinese mandarin which can be eaten with the peel, allowing us to also take the essential oils”. Against the “cold-related pathologies, garlic is also less attractive but still effective which can also be used in the form of a decoction together with sage”, adds Vestita.
In the list of useful foods in winter “the various seasonal fruits must be added. In particular the apple, which is very rich, especially in the peel, in malic acid, a natural antiviral”. As regards soups, legumes or vegetables, “the curiosity is that the anti-waste habit of grandmothers of reheating the soup left over the day before has also been promoted by science. It has in fact been demonstrated – explains Ciro Vestita – that if If we keep the soup from the day before in the pan, there is a greater extraction of active ingredients. So eating the soup from the day before is even better on a nutritional level.”
The best known among anti-cold foods is honey which “is the processing that bees make of the pollen they eat, providing us who consume it with beneficial substances against viruses and bacteria”. A food of great value that gives particular relief “in herbal teas, perfect for this period, especially if you use mallow which has a purifying, detoxifying, mildly laxative power, useful for eliminating toxins and can only do us good”, he concludes.
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