Garam and Thanda Foods: The Unani and Ayurvedic Logic Explained

“Don’t give him mangoes, it’s June, they’re too garam.” If you grew up in a desi home, you’ve heard some version of that sentence a hundred times, usually from someone who could not tell you where the rule came from but was absolutely certain of it.

The rule does come from somewhere. Behind every “this is garam, that is thanda” sits a very old medical philosophy, carried from Greek physicians into Persian and Arabic texts, refined by Unani hakeems in Delhi and Lucknow, and blended over centuries with Ayurvedic ideas that grew up in the same kitchens. This piece untangles the two systems, lists which foods usually get which label, shows how families actually use the idea through the year, and is honest about where modern nutrition agrees and where it simply has nothing to say.

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Temperature is not the point

A glass of hot milk is, in most Unani reckoning, not especially heating. A chilled glass of mango shake is. That sounds absurd until you understand that garam and thanda describe what a food is believed to do after you eat it. Does it make you feel flushed, thirsty, restless, prone to pimples or loose stools? Garam. Does it settle you, make you feel heavy, slow, perhaps a little congested? Thanda.

Your nani was not measuring anything. She was reading effects, over years, across a whole family. That’s worth respecting even when the explanation she inherited doesn’t match modern physiology.

The Unani framework: four qualities, four temperaments

Unani Tibb takes its name from Yunan, Greece. Its backbone is the humoral theory associated with Hippocrates and Galen, later organised by Ibn Sina in his Canon of Medicine. Every substance, and every person, is described through two pairs of qualities: hot or cold, and wet or dry.

Combine them and you get four temperaments, each linked to one of the four humours (akhlat):

Foods and herbs are then graded by degree, usually from first to fourth. Something “hot in the first degree” is gently warming. Something “hot in the fourth degree” is strong enough that the old books treat it with caution. A hakeem would look at a person’s natural mizaj, the season, their age and their current complaint, then pick foods that pull them back toward balance (itidal).

So a naturally hot-dry, wiry person in a Multan summer would be steered away from extra dates and dry fruit and toward cucumbers, lassi and barley water. Same logic, reversed, for a cold-wet grandfather in a Murree winter.

The Ayurvedic side: virya and the seasons

Ayurveda arrives at a similar kitchen rule by a different road. Each food has a rasa (taste), a virya (potency, heating or cooling) and a vipaka (post-digestive effect). Virya is the part that maps most closely onto garam and thanda. Pungent, sour and salty tastes are generally described as heating. Sweet, bitter and astringent tastes are generally cooling.

Ayurveda also layers in the doshas. Pitta, the fiery principle, is said to be aggravated by heating foods and by summer. That’s why ritucharya, the practice of adjusting habits to the season, recommends cooling, sweet and slightly bitter foods in the hot months and warming, grounding foods once the cold arrives. Daily routine (dinacharya) adds timing: heavier food at midday when digestion is traditionally considered strongest, lighter food at night.

In a real Lahore or Lucknow kitchen, nobody separates the two systems. Grandmothers quote both without noticing.

Which foods get which label

Lists vary between families, regions and texts. Some foods even swap sides depending on how they’re prepared. Treat this as the common household consensus, not a fixed chart.

Usually called garam

• Mangoes, especially ripe and in quantity
• Dates, raisins, almonds, walnuts, pistachios, chilgoza
• Gur (jaggery), honey, and jaggery-based sweets
• Eggs, red meat, fish, particularly fried fish
• Ginger, garlic, black pepper, cloves, cinnamon, dried red chilli
• Til (sesame), mustard oil, ajwain
• Papaya, pineapple, and in many homes, brinjal
• Gond and panjiri, both built on ghee and warming nuts

Usually called thanda

• Dahi, lassi, chaach and fresh paneer
• Cucumber, lauki (bottle gourd), tori, kheera, mint
• Watermelon, falsa, musk melon, pomegranate, banana
• Saunf, sabja or tukh malanga seeds, gond katira
• Barley (jau) and sattu
• Coconut water, rose sharbat, imli water, kanji
• Coriander leaves and dhania seed water

The confusing middle

Ghee is described as warming by some and balancing by others. Milk depends on who you ask and whether it’s boiled with spices. Rice is often called mildly cooling, wheat mildly warming. Moong dal sits close to neutral, which is part of why khichdi is the sick-day default in so many homes.

How families use it through the year

Very few households actually forbid foods. They pair them, time them, and adjust quantities.

1. Soak mangoes before eating. The common summer habit is to put mangoes in a bucket of plain water for 1 to 2 hours before cutting. The traditional explanation is that it “removes the garmi”. The practical effect is that it rinses off sap and surface residue near the stem, which can irritate lips and skin.
2. Follow garam with thanda. A plate of mangoes might be followed by a glass of lassi (roughly 200 ml dahi whisked with 100 ml cold water and a pinch of salt or 1 teaspoon sugar).
3. Cool the summer glass. Soak 1 teaspoon of sabja seeds in 250 ml water for 15 minutes, add to rose sharbat or lemon water. Or make a gond katira sharbat.
4. Warm the winter plate. A tablespoon of panjiri with morning tea, a few soaked almonds, gur after dinner, more ginger and black pepper in the dal.
5. Balance spices in heavy dishes. Raita alongside biryani, mint chutney next to kebabs, a cucumber salad with nihari.
6. Watch the individual. If a child breaks out in small boils every mango season, families quietly reduce the mangoes for that child. That’s the temperament idea in action.

What modern nutrition can and can’t say

Honestly? There’s no nutritional unit called “garmi”. A mango doesn’t raise core body temperature in any way you’d pick up on a thermometer. The four humours were abandoned as a model of physiology in Europe centuries ago. So the explanation doesn’t hold up.

But some of the observations behind it do make sense on their own terms:

• Protein-rich and heavy meals take more energy to digest, which some people genuinely feel as warmth. Meat and eggs sit on the garam list.
• Chillies, ginger and pepper contain compounds that trigger heat and sweating sensations. Calling them heating isn’t wrong as a description of experience.
• Watery foods like cucumber, watermelon and lauki contribute fluid in hot weather. Calling them cooling is practical advice for a 45°C afternoon.
• Very sweet, very rich foods in large amounts can upset some stomachs, and eating ten mangoes in an afternoon is excessive by any modern standard.
• Summer boils and “garmi dane” are usually heat rash (sweat trapped under skin) or skin infections. Less sweat and cooler clothes matter far more than cutting mangoes.

What nutrition can’t do is confirm that a person has a fixed hot or cold temperament, or that dates and dahi need to be matched gram for gram. Those are traditions, and they’re best treated as a gentle framework for eating seasonally and moderately.

Using the idea sensibly

The kindest way to hold garam and thanda is as a vocabulary for noticing. Eat with the seasons. Drink more and eat lighter in the heat. Lean on warming spices and denser foods in the cold. Pair rich dishes with something fresh. Pay attention to how your own body responds, because that’s exactly what the hakeems were doing.

If you want to go further into individual ingredients, the Desi Remedies section covers the spices one by one, from saunf after meals to warming adrak and sonth.