| Types of cough |
Recommended foods |
Foods to avoid |
| Cold cough
(Coughing with thin and white phlegm) |
Pungent and warming foods help promote the dispersing of coldness, reduce secretion and relieve coughing: ginger, onion, green onion, coriander, radish (cooked), pumpkin, apricot, tangerine, garlic, cinnamon, vinegar brewed with herbs, pig's lung, carp and chub. |
Food has a cold property, and frozen, raw, greasy or difficult to digest foods usually don't favor the healing process, and should be limited. Foods with cold properties include banana, plum, fresh melons, peppermint, calm and crab. |
| Heat cough
(Coughing with yellow and thick phlegm) |
Foods with a cooling effect and help dissolve phlegm include fresh radish, fresh lotus root, bean curd, coix seed, green bean, wheat, pear, arhat fruit, persimmon, loquat fruit, fig, olive, water chestnut, apple, strawberry, pineapple, coconut, star fruit, melons, bamboo shoot, celery, bean sprouts, chrysanthemum, peppermint, kelp, seaweed and duck meat. |
Hot and greasy food can easily accumulate heat, and thus make the phlegm thick and difficult to expectorate. Such foods include ginseng, mutton, pepper, ginger, fennel, nutmeg, cinnamon, longan fruit, litchi and red dates. |
| Dry cough / Chronic persistent cough |
Since the lungs are either too dry or suffered from certain degree of damage, foods that can nourish the lungs or promote the tissue repairing are beneficial, such as lily bulb, sugarcane, soybean milk, honey, maltose, white fungus, pine nut, olive, Chinese torreya, sesame, dried persimmon, almond, pear, tomato, mulberry, milk, loquat fruit, fig, duck meat, carp, pig's skin and lung. |
Those with an irritated throat should avoid eating hot and spicy foods; while those with a long-term persistent cough should limited the amount of frozen or greasy foods they consume. |
