Here in Central Alberta, morning has broken but not dawn yet. Sunrise is at 8:25 am today and sunset is 5:20 pm, which equates to 15 hours and 5 minutes of darkness. No wonder most of us are a bit more tired than on those beautiful summer days with 15 hours of daylight.
Bears hibernate in winter; most of us don’t have that option. So where are we supposed to get our extra energy from? Sugar and Energy drinks give us quick energy, but we pay for it later. Coffee is amazing in small doses, but it has side effects. When coffee is not used at the right times, we get an energy crash around 2 in the afternoon.
The answer to this energy crisis that jumps to mind is food. Stews, soups, and stir-fries have the advantage of being easy on the digestive system and providing us with energy. It is more than just healthy eating. By eating raw vegetables and salads in the winter might be adding to the problem. Let’s explore why by looking closer at the digestive system.
The digestive system breaks down food and helps us get the nutrients from what we eat and drink. The digestive system is complicated but when all its parts are running efficiently, it purrs along better than a fine-tuned Audi. Understanding how it works will help us choose how to eat healthy in the winter months, so let's break down the digestive system into manageable parts.
First, we have the mouth. Saliva breaks down and moistens the food as you chew it. This grinds up and breaks down the food so it makes the next job of breaking down the food easier to do. People who have tight jaws, TMJ, or are just in a rush have a hard time getting this job done well which means the next process has to work harder.
The esophagus moves the food to the stomach where the acid and enzymes break down the food further. If the food has already been broken down well this job should go fairly smoothly. If not, your body is going to have to work extra hard to provide the materials for extra acid and enzymes. If you lack the resources to make more acid and plan on a good sleep, you might have to make other plans. Your body will likely be too busy for a reasonable bedtime tonight.
The pancreas, liver, and gallbladder provide chemicals to the small intestine to help it do its jobs.
One of the small intestines' jobs is to turn semisolid food into fluid and then absorb the nutrients from it. The less work your body spends getting to this point the more energy left over for you to use on the things you love to do.
The last part of the process is some reabsorption of water by the large intestine, turn the rest into poop and get rid of it from the body.
If our bodies are using energy to keep us warm in winter, we can use this basic knowledge of digestion to save some extra energy.
Our choices in soups, stews, and stir fries provides partially broken-down food that can really help saliva, the stomach, and the small intestine to do their respective jobs. Foods in this category are already semi-solid making it easier on your digestive system. This type of food will save us energy.
Your body will always try to balance itself, so the heat will naturally gravitate to where it is needed, for example where something is colder than the rest of the body. There is no need to spend energy to bring warm foods like soup and stew up to body temperature as they are already warm.
Traditionally, people in harsh environments had to be aware of what they ate in order to ensure they would stay healthy and warm. Eating an abundance of salads provide us with the nutrition we need during the warm days of spring and summer but they are not easy to breakdown. Meals like stew, soup, and stir fry give us the nutrients from the vegetables but also have partially broken down the food making it easier to digest.
Here is to delicious meals and more energy!
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