Thai food not only has naturally beautiful colors but it also has combinations of sweet, sour, salty, and spicy flavors. These are its special qualifications, which can give your body all the nutritious values and medical and herbal properties to prevent health problems and sometimes even help relieve problems.

Furthermore, Thai food is a way for families to keep their relationship healthy, and it is a sign of social status as well as a medium for beliefs and rites.

The culture of food decoration with fruit and vegetable carving shows the care that of Thai people take regarding food, and it also reflects the dimension of the cultural arts in local communities. So Thai food is a unique feature of Thai society and it is known worldwide.

Thai wisdom in terms of knowledge and a full understanding of the value of plants and their proper use in many ways, particularly in cooking, is a priceless heritage that belongs not only to Thai people but also to the world.


Herbs in the Thai Kitchen

tom kha kai

Thai food has strong points in the diversity and dimensions of nutrition science, the fine arts and liberal arts, and even the social sciences. One of its strong points is the balance of the nutrients that are found in Thai cuisine.

The harmonization of tastes, the diversity of Thai food, and the hundreds of possible ingredients, obtained through Thai wisdom and from the fertile ground and the waters of Thailand, are recognized and confirmed by modern medical sciences as being highly appropriate for keeping people healthy.

Thai-style eating provides you with protein from several sources such as eggs, chicken, pork, beef, fish, and other creatures from the deep. It also provides you with protein from plants, vegetables, and grains such as rice and several kinds of beans. Furthermore, you can find the little bit of fat we all need from the meat and the oil used in cooking some dishes. Because most Thai food - whether it is soup, curry, steamed food, grilled food, or Thai paste sauce - gets some fat from several kinds of meats, the food puts emphasis on the liberal use of vegetables.

Local vegetables are the main ingredients in Thai food. They have not only the necessary vitamins and minerals but also special herbal and medicinal properties useful for the promotion of strong health. And another important consideration is that many of the local vegetables are free of toxic substances because they are naturally grown with organic fertilizer.

The value and usefulness of Thai food can be divided into three categories. The first one is the nutritional value, the energy we get from the vitamins, minerals, and the many other nutrients. The second is the medical and herbal value of each ingredient, and the last is the wisdom and the cultural arts value.

kaeng khiao wan

A full traditional Thai meal is composed of several kinds of food cooked in different ways. There would very likely be a clear soup ( tom chuet), a salty soup ( tom khem), a spicy shrimp soup ( tom yam kung), a green curry ( kaeng khiao wan), a spicy chicken curry in coconut milk ( tom kha kai), and a curry without coconut milk ( kaeng pa), which taken all together have a balanced composition of meat and vegetables, as well as special ingredients to add taste, color, and aroma to the food. Some of the ingredients help digestion, get rid of flatulence, and drive away gas in the abdomen.

Apart from soup and curry, there are at least one or two other kinds of food in a meal. There is steamed and grilled food, as well as Thai paste sauce for dipping vegetables, such as shrimp paste sauce ( nam phrik kapi), salted soya beans ( lon tao jiao), northern Thai spicy pork tomato paste ( nam phrik ong), northern Thai spicy paste sauce ( nam phrik num), grilled shrimp paste sauce ( nam phrik kung siab), and grilled fish paste sauce ( nam phrik pla yang). These Thai paste sauces can be eaten with fresh, steamed, and boiled vegetables, and with meats, such as grilled, steamed, or roasted fish and roasted shrimps or even the small fried fish called "pla thu," full of protein and calcium.

It is even believed that the raw materials used for cooking food, especially vegetables, have medical properties for helping cure particular diseases. And whenever several kinds of vegetables are combined in one dish, you can obtain a lot of nutrients from it. So today, Thai food is accepted as a newly discovered "food for health."


Eating Food in Accordance with the Changing Seasons

tom yam kung

The question of whether the nutrients in the food we eat will be there in their full amount is a question of how fresh the vegetables and fruit are. As their freshness fades, their nutritional value also diminishes.

Local Thai wisdom has found a way of selecting food and dividing the smart ways of cooking into three seasons, as you will see below.

In the summer, you should eat food with low calories. Such food includes vegetables and fruit. You should also avoid eating meat and food with fat. You should find protein from vegetables rather than meat; some good choices are beans, fish, seafood, and eggs, but refrain from eating food with coconut milk. It would be better to replace coconut milk curries with spicy sour soup ( kaeng som), hot and sour shrimp soup ( tom yam kung), clear soup ( kaeng chuet), or spicy mixed vegetable soup ( kaeng liang). Also, you should refrain from eating any kind of heavy, sweet dessert; instead you had better eat fresh fruit.

In the cool season, you might need more energy than in the summer. So you should eat food high in calories such as meat and food with some fat in order to help keep the body warm.

When the weather turns very hot, you should not eat spicy and oily food because it will increase your body temperature. It is better for you to eat easy-to-cook food with a lot of vegetables.

In the rainy season, the way people eat is similar to that in the summer. You should eat more vegetables and fruits, particularly the food high in vitamin C, to help prevent flu.


Herbal Drinks for Good Health

According to a dictionary published by the Royal Institute in 1982, an herb is a natural product from plants that can be mixed with other substances and used as medicine for medical treatment and toning up the body. So herbal drinks are beverages made from herbs, vegetables, and fruits, as well as other parts of the plant such as the bark, leaves, flowers, fruit, seeds, and roots, because with some kinds of plants, various parts can be cooked and used as medicine. Herbal drinks, processed from natural products, possess great nutritional value and medicinal properties.

Herbal drinks have in them the taste of nature, and they are very useful, thanks to all the vitamins and minerals in them, such as anti-oxidants to help prevent wrinkles, freckles, heart disease, blood clotting, arthritis, paralysis, cataracts, and a host of other health problems. What is more, the juice can improve your appetite, make your skin shine, and even make your hair look healthy. It also helps control fats in the system, so your body functions more efficiently, because nutrients in the herbal juice can help regulate the functions of the body and they help support the other nutrients that the body needs. Many of the drinks have fiber, too, which is good for the digestion.

When making herbal drinks, you should choose fresh ingredients, and with no bruises, because the freshness reflects the quality of the drink. As for fruits, they should be ripe and not pulpy. An important point to remember is that there is no need to peel the fruit or vegetables, because much of the valuable and highdensity nutrition is concentrated in the skin, especially in plants such as carrots, beetroot, and apples. These kinds of fruits are very appropriate for making juice. But of course, don't forget that all fruits and vegetables must be cleaned before you turn them into juice.


Three Easy Ways to Concoct Drinks from Herbs, Vegetables, and Fruit

There are several proven ways to get all the necessary goodness and flavor from different kinds of plants:

   - Squeezing: You can make a delicious drink by squeezing orange, lemon, and sugarcane or other plants containing lots of water.
   - Crushing: You can mix crushed fruits and vegetables with boiled water in order to reduce the concentration. Suitable fruits and vegetables for this method include Thai celery ( khuenchai), cucumbers, corn, Thai melon ( taeng thai), guava, carrots, and bitter cucumbers ( mara).
   - Boiling: When you boil certain plants and vegetables, you can extract their color, their smell, and their nutrients. Plants suited for boiling include lemongrass, bael fruit, water chestnut, and roselle.

The nutritional value of fresh natural products is highly sensitive to change and will gradually deteriorate as soon as they react with fresh air. So you should drink the juice as soon as you finish making it, and you should make only enough for drinking in one day. Besides being made for drinking in the home, herbal drinks are now becoming an industry in the form of the One Tambon, One Product (OTOP) campaign, and they are exported worldwide. Some popular products are made from lemongrass, carrots, tamarind, tiger herb ( bua bok), black wild ginger, roselle, the noni fruit ( luk yo), and chrysanthemum.

Some of the five-star products under OTOP include pasteurized sugarcane juice from Grab Yai village, Ban Pong district, in Ratchaburi province; aloe juice made by the Ban Kasetpatthana Women's Cooperative Group of Ban Phaeo district in Samut Sakhon province; Indian gooseberry and bael fruit juice from Chaopraya Apaipubet Hospital in Prachin Buri province; juice that combines luk yo and wild honey from Muang district in Phitsanulok province; guava from the Green Friend Housewives Group of Talad Yai district in Phuket province; black wild ginger juice made by the Black Wild Ginger Juice Group of Lom Kao district in Phetchabun province; and grape and sugarcane juice from the Grape Juice Production Group of Wang Nam Khiao district in Nakhon Ratchasima province.