Chinese food therapy

Chinese food therapy(simplified Chinese:食疗;traditional Chinese:食療;pinyin:shíliáo;lit.'food therapy', also callednutrition therapyanddietary therapy) is a mode of dieting rooted inChinese beliefsconcerning the effects of food on the human organism,and centered on concepts such as seasonal eating and in moderation.Its basic precepts are a mix ofTaoistWuxingandeight principletheory that are concepts drawn from the modern representation oftraditional Chinese medicine. Food that conform to the mode are calledyaoshan(simplified Chinese:药膳;traditional Chinese:藥膳;pinyin:yàoshàn;lit.'drug-food').
Food therapy has long been a common approach to health amongChinese peopleboth inChinaandoverseas, and was popularized for western readers in the 1990s with the publication of books likeThe Tao of Healthy Eating(Flaws 1995a) andThe Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen(Young 1999).
A number of ancient Chinesecookbooksand treatises on food (now lost) display an early Chinese interest in food, but no known focus on its medical value.The literature on "nourishing life" (养生;養生;yǎngshēng) integrated advice on food within broader advice on how to attainimmortality. Such books, however, are only precursors of "dietary therapy", because they did not systematically describe the effect of individual food items.In the volume on "Fermentations and Food Science" ofJoseph Needham'sScience and Civilization in China, H. T. Huang considers theRecipes for Fifty-Two Ailments(c. 200 BCE) and theYellow Emperor's Inner Canonas precursors of the "dietary therapy" tradition, the former because it recommends food products as remedies for various illnesses, the latter because it discusses the impact of food on health.Themateria medicaliterature, exemplified by theShennong Bencao Jing(1st century CE), also discussed food products, but without specializing on them.
The earliest extant Chinese dietary text is a chapter ofSun Simiao'sPrescriptions Worth a Thousand Gold(千金方;qiānjīn fāng), which was completed in the 650s during theTang dynasty.Sun's work contains the earliest known use of the term "food (or dietary) therapy" (shiliao).Sun stated that he wanted to present current knowledge about food so that people would first turn to food rather than drugs when suffering from an ailment.His chapter contains 154 entries divided into four sections – on fruits, vegetables, cereals, and meat – in which Sun explains the properties of individual foodstuffs with concepts borrowed from theYellow Emperor's Inner Canon:qi, theviscera, and vital essence (精;jīng), as well as correspondences between theFive Phases, the "five flavors" (sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, and salty), and the five grains.He also set a large number of "dietary interdictions" (食禁;shíjìn), some based oncalendrical notions(nowater chestnutsin the 7th month), others on purported interactions between foods (no clear wine with horse meat) or between different flavors.
Sun Simiao's disciple Meng Shen (孟诜;孟詵; 621–713) compiled the first work entirely devoted to the therapeutic value of food: theMateria Dietetica(食疗本草;食療本草;Shíliáo běncǎo; 'food therapy materia medica').This work has not survived, but it was quoted in later texts – like the 10th-century Japanese textIshinpō– and a fragment of it has been found among theDunhuang manuscripts.Surviving excerpts show that Meng gave less importance to dietary prohibitions than Sun, and that he provided information on how to prepare foodstuffs rather than just describe their properties.The works of Sun Simiao and Meng Shen established the genre ofmateria dieteticaand shaped its development in the following centuries.
An abundant literature developed in China around the medicinal uses of food. A mid-ninth-century work, now lost, calledCandid Views of a Nutritionist-Physician(simplified Chinese:食医心鉴;traditional Chinese:食醫心鑑) discussed how food could treat various disorders, while several works from theSong dynasty(960–1279) explained how to feed the elderly to extend their life.
In the early 14th century,Hu Sihui, who served as Grand Dietician (simplified Chinese:饮膳太医;traditional Chinese:飲膳太醫;pinyin:yǐnshàn tàiyī) at the court of the MongolYuan dynasty(1260–1368), compiled a treatise calledYinshan zhengyao, orProper and Essential Things for the Emperor's Food and Drink(Chinese:饮膳正要;pinyin:yǐnshàn zhèngyào), which is still recognized in China as a classic of bothmateria medicaandmateria dietetica.Influenced by the culinary and medical traditions of the Turko-Islamic world and integrating Mongol food stuffs like mutton into its recipes, Hu's treatise interpreted the effects of food according to the scheme of correspondences between thefive phasesthat had recently been systematized by northern Chinese medical writers of theJin dynasty (1115–1234)and Yuan eras.Before that period, food materials had not yet been comprehensively assigned to the five flavors systematically correlated with specific internal organs and therapeutic effects.
Chinese understandings of the therapeutic effects of food were influential in East Asia. Cited in Japanese works as early as the 10th century, Chinese dietary works shaped Korean literature on food well into theJoseon period(1392–1897).In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the imperial court of theQing dynasty(1644–1912) ordered several works on Chinese food therapy translated intoManchu.
The concept entered Japan in 1972 asishokudōgen.By the late 1990s, the藥膳(yakuzen) diet evolved into a simplified version where herbs are added to relatively balanced meals.
Although the precepts of Chinese food therapy are neither systematic nor identical in all times and places, some basic concepts can be isolated.One central tenet is that "medicine and food share a common origin", and that food materials can therefore be used to prevent or treat medical disorders.Like medicinal drugs, food items are classified as "heating" (热;熱;rè) or "cooling" (凉;涼;liáng).In popular understanding, "heating"food is typically "high-calorie, subjected to high heat in cooking, spicy or bitter, or 'hot' in color (red, orange)", and includes red meat, innards, baked and deep-fried goods, and alcohol.They are to be avoided in the summer and can be used to treat "cold" illnesses like excessive pallor, watery feces, fatigue, chills, and low body temperature caused by a number of possible causes, includinganemia. Green vegetables are the most typical "cooling" or "cold" food, which is "low-calorie, watery, soothing or sour in taste, or 'cool' in color (whitish, green)". They are recommended for "hot" conditions: rashes, dryness or redness of skin, heartburns, and other "symptoms similar to those of a burn", but also sore throat, swollen gums, and constipation.
In more systematic understandings, each medicine or food item has one of five flavors: sour, sweet, bitter, pungent (or "acrid"), and salty.Besides describing the taste of food, each of these "flavors" purportedly has specific effects on particularviscera. The sour flavor, for instance, has "constriction and emollient effects" and "can emolliate the liver and control diarrhea and perspiration", whereas "bitter" food can "purge the heart 'fire', reduce excessive fluids, induce diarrhea, and reinforce the heart 'Yin'".
One common saying among proponents of Chinese food therapy is "medicine and food, same origin" (Chinese:药食同源;pinyin:yàoshí tóngyuān;Japanese:医食同源(ishokudōgen)), where certain food items are given medicinal properties, and where certain herbal medicines are deemed acceptable in food.
Historically, there have been few studies in English literature about the practice of Chinese food therapy.
The Chinese government has approved a number of herbs as food ingredients using the "Traditionally Both Food and Chinese Medicinal Materials" (按照传统既是食物又是中药材) lists.These are colloquially known as theYàoshí Tóngyuān Catalog(药食同源目录) in Chinese.In addition, farm-grownginsengandCordyceps militaris, two herbs known from TCM, are considerednovel foodingredients.