What's the point of drinking porridge on Laba Festival?

People have the custom of eating Laba porridge on Laba Festival. Laba porridge is also called "seven treasures and five flavors porridge", "Buddha porridge" and "everyone's meal". It is a kind of porridge made of various ingredients. The traditional ingredients of Laba porridge are rice, millet, corn, coix seed, red dates, lotus seeds, peanuts, longan and various beans (such as red beans and kidney beans).

Although the ingredients of Laba porridge in different regions are different, they basically include cereals such as rice, millet, glutinous rice, sorghum rice, purple rice and coix seed, beans such as soybeans, red beans and mung beans, and dried fruits such as red dates, peanuts, lotus seeds and medlar.

Laba porridge is not only a seasonal food, but also a good health care product, especially suitable for maintaining the spleen and stomach in cold weather.