Pear is one of the beneficial fruits to eat especially during Aug to Oct of every year.
I will share what are the benefits of pears from the TCM perspective and what are the types of people who are suitable (and not suitable) for eating pears. I will also share the difference between raw and cooked pears for benefits. Read on to find out more.
There are many kinds of pears that you can choose from in the market and their beneficial properties are quite similar so you do not need to worry about which types to buy, but rather, the way that you eat it (raw or cooked) is more important (will explain more below)
The thermal nature of the pear is cooling. So it is a good fruit to eat when the weather is warm and dry.
Main Property of Pear
The main healing property of a pear is that it can moisturize our lungs (润肺). Thus, the pear makes the number one choice in fruits when we are in the drier months like Aug, Sep, Oct (and early Nov sometimes).
When the lungs are dry, they will get irritated easily and this will lead to coughing. This is the reason why in drier months, you will see more people coughing. This is known as a dry cough. One of the effective food (or fruit) remedies is to eat the pear to moisturize the lungs. An important note here is not to wait till the cough happens and then start to consume pear. it is a good habit to eat some pears when you notice that the weather is dry.
People Who Are Not Suitable to Eat Pear
Most people are suitable to eat pear except those who have weak spleen (have diarrhea easily or always need to visit the toilet immediately after eating cold stuff). If you are not suitable to eat pear because of this reason, then having the pear cooked might suit you better.
Benefits of Cooked Pear
Pears, when cooked, they are less likely to increase the burden of the spleen. In fact, cooked pear can help to improve digestion (relieve indigestion).
Cooked pears can also nourish the yin of a person. This means people who are yin deficient are suitable to eat cooked pears. And most importantly, it retains the main property of moisturizing the lungs.
Cooked pears are more gentle to the digestive system and also the spleen. Hence, most people should have no issues eating cooked pears.
However, rarely would people just cook the pear alone and eat. Most often, pears are combined with other ingredients to cook as a dessert.
There is a popular recipe for pear soup (小吊梨汤) in the past that many people drink to get the lungs’ moisturizing effect. It also has the effect of relieving dry coughs. The following video shows how you can make this pear soup at home (you can enable the English subtitles if you cannot understand Chinese).
Hope you have found this post useful!