Flu Fighting Foods

It's a good idea to tweak your diet to resist viral infections. Through some common and not so common ingredients, you can help to protect your family or at least minimize the damage and stave off secondary infections.

To begin with, I cannot stress enough, the importance of soup.  Soup is a warm meal that you can make ahead and freeze.  Eating soup regularly during the winter helps you stay hydrated and steams your sinuses.  It's like a saline solution but much tastier than the hospital version.

Winter soups should have more garlic and parsley than usual.  These two in combination have been known to strengthen one's resistance since ancient times.

 Onions, leeks, garlic, and wild or spring onions have lots of nutritional benefits.  What is in them that helps fight the flu are the flavonoids.  The particular combinations in onions and like plants help cells to keep viruses out.

To get the best of them though, try to remove only the outer dried layer, and after chopping them, let them sit out for 15 minutes or more.  This helps to activate the quercetin, which is one of the best for helping you to resist viruses and it helps your cells live longer in general.  Better yet, if you don't mind the texture, just wash them well and leave the skins on.

It's not a citrus fruit, but it does have lots of vitamin C.  It also helps to trigger your cells to clean themselves.  Even better, if you make it into saurkraut through lactofermentation, it has a bonus of probiotics which help to keep away strange "stomach bugs" than tend to hit people in the winter.  If you actually get the flu, then maintenance of healthy intenstinal balance sure makes life less unpleasant.

 Pomegranate is another one that is well known to be healthy, but recently it's been shown to help improve oxygen transfer.  So if you tend to get chest congestion in the winter, try it.  It can't hurt.  From my own experience, it helped me to recover that time I had the "grippa" and could barely breathe even though they told me my lungs were clear.

Besides being an excellent sweetener, it's also antimicrobial. Steviosides have thusfar, been scientifically proven to inhibit the growth of hostile bacteria and fungus. So it's a great addition to your tea. It also balances the blood sugar, which is crucial for maintaining a strong immune system.

It hasn't yet been scientifically proven, but central and South American herbalists say that it also helps to keep the skin clear, and the stomach calm. It's said to prevent and cure ulcers, which are caused by helicobacter pylori. Somehow, it kills the bad bacteria, but not too many of the good.

Something to be aware of though, is that stevia is a plant that is native to the Americas.  Some people, especially of European descent, have noted bad side effects such as it tasting spicy to them, or stomach pain.  These things would mean that one is allergic.  It is possible to be allergic to just about anything that hasn't been tested through your ancestry over time, so if you have any tingling when you use it, that isn't the stevia working.  That's an allergy.

You may want to try a different plant with very similar properties that is native to Africa, called oubli berries.  They are hard to find, but they are also high in antioxidants, but the molecule that their sweetness comes from is a protein.

 Have another bowl of gumbo, because aside of the good steam, the vegetable itself will help to keep your lungs strong and clear.  How it works is that the fatty acids in the seeds help the lungs and the blood to transfer oxygen.

The problem many people have with okra is the slime, but there are ways to either minimize it or make it part of the sauce of the dish.

Hawayj (also spelled hawaj, hawayiji, or hawaji) is a sort of curry mixture.  Soup hawayj in particular is an excellent flu remedy.  You can usually find this in middle eastern stores, or have a friend in the know, mix you up a batch.