About Chinese Dietary Therapy

The earliest Chinese text on Shiliao (Dietary Therapy) still in existence is a chapter of Sun Simiao’s Qianjin Fang, prescriptions Worth a Thousand Gold.

It contains 154 entries in Four sections. Fruits, cereals, vegetables and meat.

He includes concepts integrated from the Chinese Medicine Canon

Huang Di Nei Jing, 475 B.C.

These include the correspondences of the Five elements, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and the Five Flavors of sour, Bitter, Sweet, Pungent and Salty.

Foods are also categorized into categories of heating and cooling.

Heating foods are higher calorie, cooked with high heat, spicy and often red or orange in color such as red meat, organ meat as well a baked and deep fried foods. Cooling foods are more watery, lighter in color such as rice porridge. Cooling foods are blander in taste which also include green vegetables.

Cooling foods are prescribed for treating hot and red conditions such as skin redness, fevers, migraines and rheumatoid arthritis. Heating foods are prescribed for treating cold conditions such as arthritis which is made worse by cold, certain types of diarrhea and bloating.

Chinese herbs may be combined in cooking as well such as Gou Qi Zi (Lycii) and Dang Gui (Angelica) for tonifying or building blood and Ren Shen (Ginseng) and Dang Shen (Codonopsis) for tonifying Qi or Energy.