Warm meal: How often should you eat warm?

A warm meal can be very soothing. However, is it healthier or more digestible than cold food? You can find out here what role it plays for your body, whether and how often you eat warm.

There are a few rumors and assumptions surrounding hot meals: Is one hot meal a day “obligatory” from a health perspective? And are warm meals healthier overall? In Ayurvedic nutrition and traditional Chinese medicine, warm meals are even one of the basics.

One thing in advance: Whether warm or not – a healthy diet depends on the choice of food. Finally, a currywurst with fries and mayo can also be a warm daily meal.

It is important to know that the chewed food has been heated to body temperature or cooled down by the time it reaches your stomach. From then on, the temperature on the plate no longer makes any difference to digestion. However, heating can have an impact on the food itself.

Benefits of a hot meal

Heating meals has the following benefits that you can take advantage of:

• More diverse food choices: Cooking gives you the opportunity to incorporate more foods into your diet that are either harmful or at least less edible when raw. These include, for example, potatoes, rice, legumes, cabbage, eggs or quinces.

• Certain nutrients are more available by heating food. For example, cooked tomatoes have significantly more of the antioxidant lycopene, and we can better absorb the beta-carotene in carrots when they are cooked or heated with oil.

• Better digestibility: Food changes its structure when heated and cooked. This makes them easier to digest.

• Lower germ load in heated foods: This particularly applies to animal foods such as meat, eggs or raw milk.

• Feeling full: You may take more time to eat a hot or warm meal than a cold meal. In this case, you will get full more quickly from the warm dish and feel better after eating. Warm meals could also prevent sudden cravings.

Conclusion: Hot meals are not a must

Basically, there is no rule that says how often and at what time you should eat warm food. Warm meals are still useful as part of a balanced diet. However, that doesn’t mean you have to eat a hot meal every day to eat healthily.

It is also important to maintain a balance between raw and cooked foods. Finally, some nutrients are not heat stable and are destroyed during cooking.

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Edited by Luise Rau

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