What All Foods Must Be Avoided In Winters?

While soup can help soothe an aching throat or a blocked nose, cream soups can actually cause more trouble. Cream-based soups can thicken your mucus and exaggerate the cold and flu symptoms. Also, cream soups tend to have a much higher salt and saturated fat content which is detrimental to your health. The option in this regard is thus to have vegetable stews and soups without creams or other additives and lightly garnished with ingredients and spices such as salt and pepper.

While spicy foods do clear out sinuses, they are detrimental to the health of your stomach. If you have a cold or flu, spicy foods will make it worse. Avoid red peppers and red chili powder especially, as these can exacerbate health problems during dry winters.

Any beverage that contains copious amounts of caffeine tends to act like a diuretic. A diuretic is a substance that tends to cause excessive urination and thus may dehydrate your body. This problem becomes greater during winters due to lack of thirst and thus an already dehydrated body will loose water even more. This will result in the formation of thicker mucus, resulting in colds taking longer to heal.

When you are suffering from cold, consuming milk or any other dairy-based product will thicken your mucus. This will result in a much longer healing period. While milk is considered to be a good thing to drink when you are fit, it is a completely different story if you are already fighting an infection. It is thus best to avoid milk or milk-based products when you have a cold or flu.