Vitamin Agent The Health & Naturalistic Source
There is nothing more fundamental to general health than healthy eating. Unfortunately there is so much confusing information available, that it is really difficult to choose the right one. The objective is to provide some basic principles of Chinese Nutrition that anyone can follow without changing what they eat.
Chinese diet can be very complicated and some aspects even require diagnosis before recommending a specific diet. Here I would like to set some basic rules that anyone can incorporate into their daily habits.
There are three components to any good diet according to Chinese medicine:
- Basic body constitution
- Environment
- Current state of health
All of these need to be taken into consideration at all times. That is why Chinese medicine does not recognize good food or bad food, only food.
Chinese medicine is all about Qi (or Chi) and it must flow freely at all times. If it does not, that is when we get all kinds of diseases. That is the sole purpose of Qi Gong, Acupuncture and even Chinese herbs.
As for food, according to Chinese medicine, our body subtracts Qi from food through various steps, until there is no more left, and can be excreted at urine and stool. For this reason, the primary purpose of Chinese medicine is to strengthen the body so that it is able to utilize Qi that is in the food as opposed to western nutrition which focuses on supplementing nutrients.
1. Basic constitution:
Everyone has a basic constitution. Usually people prefer hot or cold climate. Some people like hot drinks like tea, other prefer cold drinks such as a coke. Yes, seasons do play a role in it and the other question to ask is if someone prefers summer or winter.
2. Environment:
It is important to include the environmental factors. That is what I see missing entirely from the western diet: since foods can be cold, neutral or warm, it does make a bid difference if certain kind of food is eaten at a certain season. For example a lot of people told me, that they could not continue raw food diet in the winter. Of course they cannot, as raw food is cold in nature, and in the winter the environment is cold, and that is just too much cold for the body to handle. It is of course not a problem in the summer as cold food balances the warm environment.
3. Current state of health:
It has to be taken into consideration too. If someone is Qi deficient for example, those people always feel cold, and if they eat lots of salad, or eat their morning cereal with cold milk from the fridge, it will make their Qi deficiency even worse.
Chinese medicine categorizes foods into: cold, cool, neutral, warm and hot. On top of that any food can be altered by cooking.
In general the following items are in these categories:
Hot: meat products: got, lamb, beef, alcohol
Warm: coffee, red wine, duck, goose, pork, onion
Neutral: most staple products: rice, potato, wheat,
Cold: seafood, milk products (except butter, which is warm), most vegetables
Cool: Yogurt, cucumber, sprouts, sour cream
How cooking method changes food: the higher the cooking temperature, the more Yang energy is supplied to the food. Boiling or steaming is very gentle while deep frying or barbecuing adds a substantial amount of Yang energy.
So how to combine all these principles?
People with cold constitution should lean towards cooked food especially in the winter, and especially when they feel tired or have cold hands and feet.
People with warm constitution should lean toward more gentle cooking methods especially in the summer and should stay away from spices.
In general everyone should eat more uncooked fruits and vegetables in the summer, and more cooked ones in the fall and winter (how about a cinnamon apple pie in the winter).
Each meal should be balanced. For example fish and chips should be eaten with coleslaw or a barbecued steak should be eaten with steamed vegetables instead of French fries.
One word of warning here: ice cold drinks will NOT balance hot food. It should never be consumed in general and during meal especially. Stomach in Chinese medicine likes warm and moist environment, and dislikes cold. Even from a western chemistry point of view it is a bad idea, as at lower temperature all chemical processes (such as digestion) slow down.
Why do people in the East like stir frying? Because it is the perfect food: short high temperature cooking gives food Yang energy, while the core is partially cooked more and more Yin resulting in a perfectly balanced meal.
One last word: food processing depletes Qi in food, and for that reason highly processed food (such as hot dogs, canned soup) has hardly any Qi left in them. Processed food should be avoided as much as possible for that reason. Best is to use fresh, local food (so that it does not have to stay in containers for weeks) and eat the food of the season. Some Chinese doctors go as far as to say, that the worst invention for mankind is the refrigerator, as people now hardly eat fresh food.
If just some of these very basic principles are observed, it can do a lot for your health.
Source by Attila Gruber
