I’m lying on the couch with an ice cream of my favorite flavor, listening to one of Calvin Harris’s songs which are no longer free because he is in a relationship with Taylor Swift… “Less ice cream!” a strong male voice arises. My father is a physician director and he would repeat this sentence every time I have ice cream. However, like never asking Sheldon why he only sits in his spot, never ask my dad why is it better to have less ice cream. Though doctors’  remarks sometimes make us impatient, they are in fact of great use and will benefit us to a large extent. The points of my dad’s theory are cold foods like ice cream are harmful to our stomach, especially on hot days, and can give rise to diseases. Also, they weaken our capacity to digest foods, especially after meals. You may say, “I know ice cream is bad, because it contains a lot of fat.”(Actually when doing research, I found that our school did a study about ice cream fat.) However, my points here focus on “cold foods” and I’m trying to persuade you to consume less cold foods. (Ice cream serves as an intriguing instance in this case.)

From traditional Chinese medical perspectives, cold foods tend to cause diarrhea, especially to people who have a vulnerable stomach. (Like ulcers, gastritis… ) Sometimes after having icy drinks, we may need to go to the bathroom; that’s because our stomach are provoked by “the cold ones”. Actually our inside body environment always maintains at a range of temperatures that are almost equate with the outside surroundings, so when it is summer, our body is in fact hot inside and when winter comes, we turn cold. In this way, as cold foods meet with our relatively hot bodies, they give our stomachs a huge discomfort, which leads to diarrhea. Want more information? See here~

Now let’s see why cold foods like yummy ice cream weaken our capacity of digestion. First it comes a physics principal: objects will swell under high temperature while constrict under low temperature. So when cold things come into our body, our vessels will contract, which means fewer blood flows for digestion process to complete. Thus, it’s healthy for us to consume less cold foods especially after meals when it’s the high time for our digestive system to function efficiently.

I actually searched hard hoping to find a study or research conducted regarding my points. However, there are no such experiments about cold foods, and they are almost all illustrating how much fat does ice cream has. Maybe I’ll just try to design a condense experiment myself here. Randomly allocating 1000 (as many samples as possible) mice of various ages, sexes, etc, (try to decrease the influence of third variables) to two groups. Serve one of the two groups one course of cold food at scheduled time every day while the other group with same course of warm food at the same time. Control all of their other foods and drinks exactly the same. Track them for a period of time, and keep observing their stomachs and digestive systems. Plus, record their catch of diseases. (Because the study may be bad for people’s health, it’s unethical to conduct experiments on humans. P.S. It’s merely a brief illustration of experiment)

So the takeaways are cold foods do harm to our stomach, particularly on hot days, and can cause diseases. Plus, they prevent us from digestion effectively, particularly after meals.

Are you clear about what’s wrong with cold foods? As it is summer now, the beautiful season for ice cream, and Penn State offers them in dining commons, Berkey Creamery… it becomes quite easy for us to have a lot of these sweet dessert even we are not aware ourselves. However, please take control! Watch out for the amount of your consume! (Actually it’s stated in philosophic thinking that too much of anything is not a good way to go.)