Interview:

“In both TCM and ayurvedic practices there is the notion of hot and cold foods. Not to do with temperature In real life, they loosely map to inflammatory/heavy and anti-inflammatory/light foods,

hot: deep fried foods, avocado, chocolate, meat
warm: rice, corn, bread
cool: onion, mushroom, cheese
cold: watermelon, mango, bok choy (typically watery foods)

In cold weather you wanna eat hot/warm foods, in hot weather cold/cool.

When i was sick my parents would make the most gnarly combo of cool/cold foods to make me feel better. One called Halluchila, hallu=turmeric, chi=hot, la=water. It would be turmeric water with salt, black pepper, ginger, honey, garlic, sometimes onion, and some other stuff. It was genuinely awful but unfortunately it did make me feel better”

context: The informant is a 23 year old friend attending USC. They are Nepali, and grew up in the DMV area, specifically Maryland. When interviewed they gave this interesting home remedy for sickness.

Analysis: This Folk Medicine is a remedy that is learned within the informant’s family, and use ingredients that are commonly associated with “healing” across a lot of other cultures. It is a form of family folklore, since it was specifically passed down from the informant’s parents to the informant. It also demonstrates how a medical understanding of the body isn’t only demonstrated in western medicine, but has been demonstrated through these traditional remedies that have been passed down multiple generations over a long period of time. This specific remedy is also, in a way, a reinforcement of the informant’s Nepali cultural identity, since Ayurveda is so embedded in Nepali culture. This is also an example of social norms within a Folk group, like specific foods being associated with hot and cold, even if the food items themselves aren’t typically served hot or cold.