Get Started With The Best Breakfast

If you eat the blood-sugar slamming foods that Americans prefer for breakfast, you can expect to be besieged by all kinds of painful sensations and illness. Instead, you can take a lesson from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and start your day with a natural health-boosting food that’s filling and good for you.

American Standard

The standard American diet is an abomination. Especially what’s for breakfast: Cereals made from genetically modified grains. Simple carbohydrates loaded with sugar or corn syrup. Greasy bacon, ham, sausages, pancakes, toast, muffins and sticky buns that make your blood sugar go up and down like a roller coaster.

It’s no wonder that office workers endure sugar crashes around 11 a.m. when they reach for strong coffee and maybe another carb-booster for enough energy to hold on until lunch.

Oatmeal seems to be a good choice. Yet many people eat the instant variety, which instigates a blood sugar nightmare. And let’s not forget the havoc donuts, coffee cakes, orange juice, jellies and syrups play on health. Hypoglycemia, diabetes, nausea and pain result from our poor breakfast choices that stress the adrenal glands, weaken the immune system and induce the stress response.

Breakfast Lifeline

The first thing to realize about wellness is that it begins with diet and lifestyle choices. Breakfast starts the day with a clean slate, yet many tarnish the day early with poor eating habits. TCM advocates for a bland (non-spicy) breakfast of stomach-nourishing porridge, known as congee or jook. In TCM, food is a form of medicine. Indeed, many Chinese herbals are from food sources like roots, barks, fruits, seeds, flowers and tubers. Jook serves not only as a wellness-stabilizing breakfast but also as a medicinal porridge when certain herbs are added to it.

Jook is found in Chinese restaurants that serve dim-sum, or the Chinese brunch. You can also make it yourself. It’s simple. Almost any grain or bean can be used as the base, like red beans, mung beans, aduki beans, millet, wheat, barley, corn or long-grain rice. The most common base, though, is polished white rice. It acts as a blank canvas for what may be added to it, like soy sauce, a poached egg, scallions, seafood, etc.

The basic jook preparation is made in a ratio of one part grain to between five and eight parts water. More water makes the porridge thinner and more liquid; less water makes it thicker and heartier. You can make your first batch with six parts water to one of grain and see how you like it. Generally, if you are cooking something else with the grain, then more water is added. Jook can be cooked by simmering the rice on the stove for two hours or overnight in a slow cooker.

Plain jook with added egg or chicken strips, soy sauce, bok choy or other veggies makes a terrific breakfast. However, the power of jook is in its use as a medicinal porridge. This is done by adding herbs, fruits, roots or other ingredients to the base jook. While it is best to consult with an herbalist trained in TCM for the specific herbs you may individually require, here are a few basic recipes that can introduce you to jook.

Jook For Cold And Flu

There are quite a few jook recipes for common cold and flu. Choose one to prepare depending on your signs and symptoms. When you feel achy pain at the beginning of a cold and want to warm up and stay under the covers, try this:

Cook 100 grams of glutinous rice (about half a cup) in 600 grams of water (about three cups). Mash up 15 grams of fresh ginger (about a 2-inch piece) with five whole scallions. When the porridge is cooked, add in the mashed ginger and scallions. Simmer until the ginger and scallion merge well. Eat two bowls per day to induce sweating and remove cold symptoms.

If your cold is accompanied by a sore, swollen throat, cough with phlegm, rash and/or constipation, then try this jook:

Boil a half-ounce of burdock seeds in a cup of water until only half the water remains in the pot. Use a slotted strainer to remove the burdock dregs, and retain the liquid. Add this liquid to two cups of fresh water, then add 50 grams of polished white rice (a quarter cup) and a tablespoon of granulated sugar and cook as indicated above. Note, the sugar releases the throat but also improves the taste. Use only enough to make this jook palatable. Eat two warm bowls per day until your symptoms are resolved.

Jook For Vomiting

Dry heaves, nausea and vomiting are generally caused by too much greasy, sugary or fatty foods, in addition to toxins, motion, pregnancy, gastritis and other reasons. If you are experiencing vomiting during pregnancy or after a prolonged illness, try this jook:

Cook 50 grams of polished white rice (about a quarter of a cup) in 400ml of water (two cups) to make porridge as indicated above. Boil 15 grams of bamboo shoots (a half-ounce) in 200ml (half a cup) of water until only 50 percent of the water remains in the pot. Use a slotted strainer to remove the bamboo dregs, and retain the liquid. When the porridge is ready, add the bamboo water (100g should be left) along with two slices of fresh ginger root. Bring the jook to a boil. Eat two warm bowls per day until symptoms reside.

Try this jook if your nausea is accompanied with abdominal, epigastric or intestinal pain; chronic gastritis; testicular swelling; or poor appetite:

First, make the base porridge by cooking 50g (a quarter cup) of polished white rice in 400ml (two cups) of water, as noted above. Stir fry 30g (an ounce) of fennel until it turns into a burnt yellow color and is dry. Remove from pan and grind fennel into a fine powder. When the porridge is ready, add the fennel powder and a tablespoon of brown sugar to it. Simmer until all the ingredients meld well together; eat once per day for five days.

There are many jook recipes for internal medicine, gynecology, pediatrics, dermatology, cold and flu, pain and inflammation, nausea and vomiting, meningitis, diabetes, obesity, incontinence, anemia, high cholesterol, coronary heart disease, and other ailments. Many require the use of specific herbs that are not easily found in local supermarkets. However, they are readily found in Asian supermarkets and many health food and supplement shops. Doing an online search should provide information on ordering these ingredients.

If you want to learn more about ancient Chinese jook porridges, there are many books available as well as local TCM practitioners you can call. The Internet is also a fabulous place to begin your search to know more about this ancient tradition that’s not just for breakfast anymore.