To think cold food is just as nutritious and filling as hot?

[TropicofCapricorn]

People seem to think that hot food for meals is inherently better than cold?

If I served my daughter cold chicken pesto pasta and some salad for dinner, some people look at me "aren't you giving her a proper meal?". Bit of id given her the pasta hit and with peas or something, they wouldn't bat an eyelid.

You see it on MN too, somehow people think a hot meal is more filling?

Is there any truth in that?

I'm of the opinion a cheese sandwich is the same nutritionally and as filling as a cheese toastie.

Hot vs cold never even occurred to me until a friend said she didn't 'do' cold food and has to have three hot meals a day. A hot breakfast isn't appealing to me at all, I'm not sure I've recovered from the memory of being served hot shredded wheat.

To about 2 billion people who believe in Ayurvada and TCM, food is medicine and they eschew even drinking cold water. I dont believe that TCM or ayurveda is evidence based medicine but I think that these ideas as long as they pertain to food are harmless and even promote mindfulness when it comes to a healthy diet.

Yes - we need to know, are you feeding your daughter in front of an observation gallery with an open polling platform going?

Pre-refrigeration, cooking and thus still hot food was a better guarantor of healthy food with less bacteria. This still holds true when you are travelling through poorer parts of the world. We hold on to a lot of habits because they were crucial to our safety in the past.

It warms you up!

Yes, yes I am, they have scored board and everything marking me out of 10. It's like the Olympics and I get gold every day, because I am perfect.

I don't think it does 🤣

I’ve never understood the hot meal thing. I like most of my food at room temp. Even things like spaghetti Bol or curry.
I make up for it with litres of scalding tea.

Mountain Rescue Teams use warm drinks to gradually warm up bodies of people with hypothermia. Doctors tell freezing pensioners who can’t afford heat to have regular hot drinks.

People drink iced drinks in the heat to cool them down.

But hey…

However of course cold food is as nutritious as hot and a perfectly good meal for people in normal conditions.

If I have a hot drink, I'm normally taking a layer off within 5 minutes as I've warmed up.

Hot drinks are recommended to raise core temperatures after cold water swimming and stop the after drop. A cold drink of squash won't have the same effect as a hot drink of squash but the nutrition content is the same.

Hot food has the same effect.

I tend to have 3 hot meals (or some components of e.g. cooked fish served hot with salad) most days. Eggs are quick, light and a great way to start the day.

My house is warm, i am able to comfortably afford the heating so I don't have a need for a hot meal to warm me up. From a scientific perspective i do not believe cooked food has any more nutrients in it. If anything less as i think cooking can denature some vitamins etc

However, i think possibly cooking food makes it easier to chew and digest and thus access what nutrient it has? If that is true, possibly you may use less energy digesting well cooked food. Heating milk for example can make it more easily digested. So if you are trying to maximise energy yield cooking food might do that.

You're confusing the OP with a reptile.

That's hot drinks... We're talking about food.

But isn’t satisfaction something you aim for when feeding people you love? As well as nutrition, obviously.

They’ve asserted it’s more satisfying. Not that it’s more nutritious.

So why is it that you say it’s more satisfying? Because you agreed it was earlier.

Cold pasta actually might be more healthy, something to do with insulin resistance.

Why would you think hot food would be different? What about soup? Why wouldn’t a nit steak be as warming as a hot tea?

I agree that there's probably not much nutritional difference between the same food served hot or cold.

But personally I find hot food more comforting. I don't like the texture of cold rice or pasta. Slimy and weird!

Food isn't just about nutrition.

Because I don't think it's as quickly absorbed so the temperature goes down quicker than tea for example.

I'm just saying it not intrinsically better than cold food. I definitely prefer it,but it's not superior in any nutritional way.

It’s not the absorption that warms you up though. It’s warm substances in your stomach.

I couldn’t come in from a long day at work and eat cold pasta. Errrggghh

I don't see a nutritional difference.

On cold days I'll often have hot food for all three meals; conversely on hot days I'll eat three cold meals.

A tv show tested this theory years ago! I can’t remember it exactly but it was two teams of people on a hike. One team’s lunch was something like hot rice, chicken & veggies and the others was exactly the same ingredients but as a cold rice salad. The hot lunch team felt more satisfied and ‘won’. They didn’t know the experiment was the food.