The Chinese Diet: The Path to Harmony and Good Health

1 The Chinese diet : The path to Harmony and Good Healthby Martin Inn , about everyone has an idea of what kinds of food constitute a healthy theories of what defines a healthy meal are as varied and different asthere are cultures and people in the world. Each year more diet books andtheories appear on the market only to change our minds and befuddle our belliesas we continually seek out the perfect diet . Some diets target specific diseases tocure, such as heart disease or cancer, and some diets appeal to our egos bytelling us how to loose that extra inch or pound so that we may become morebeautiful. From Macrobiotics to "The Zone" diets have become this country selixir to good Health , youth and beauty. How can "we have our cake and eat ittoo?" In this generation we want it all: we want to enjoy our food, we want ourfood to make us more vital, healthier and younger looking. Why can t we have itall and still have fun?

2 Is this generation of fad diets full of promises that neverdeliver or are there diets that can truly give us good Health , longevity, andvitality? How do we separate the true from the hype? What is real and what isjust another fad?From the past to the present, the criteria used to judge whether a diet or foodplan is good or bad is based on the nutritional content of the foods and theirbiochemical make-up. However, with the development of modern agriculture andfood processing our food has become less nutritional and our Health fertilizers and pesticides have allowed inferior crops to come to market,food processing has taken away the nutrients and vitality from our food, andoverly busy lifestyles leave many opting for fast food. The United States, with allof its wonderful technology has created a society of overfed, malnourished, andoverweight people. In a recent study by Ruben Rumbaut, a sociologist whosework was cited in the study by the National Research Council and the Institute ofMedicine, it was discovered that despite generally higher poverty rates,immigrant children from the developing countries had better Health than childrenin the United States, but the longer they remained in the US their healthdeteriorated to the level of US children.

3 As they assimilate, immigrant children sdiets and eating habits deteriorate, thus causing a decline in Health . Their nativefood and habits left behind were far better than those of the average US /Yang and the Five ElementsEvery aspect of Chinese culture is based on the principles of the ancientphilosophy of Yin and Yang and the Five Elements. This philosophy was writtenin the first classic of Chinese philosophy called the I Ching or the Book ofChanges, which is over three thousand years old. Taoism, Confucianism, Chinese medicine, Chinese landscape painting, geomancy, Feng Shui, theinternal and external martial arts, dance, music, and cooking all have theirfoundation in these principles of contrast, balance, Harmony , and change. InChinese medicine the five tsang or solid organs are correlated to the fiveelements and the five tastes. Bitter is correlated to the heart and is the element offire, sweet to the spleen and is the element of earth, sour to the liver and is theelement of wood, spicy to the lungs and is the element of metal, and salty to thekidneys and is the element of water.

4 A healthy meal should incorporate all ofthese tastes, which stimulates each one of these corresponding organs. It isbelieved that over stimulation of anyone of these organs or a lack of stimulationmay lead to an imbalance in the relationship of these internal organs. Thisimbalance can eventually lead to a disease. A typical imbalance that a Chinesedoctor often sees is wood overcoming earth. This means the Qi of the liver isstronger than the Qi of the spleen and upsetting the healthy balance between thetwo organs. This manifests with the symptoms of having poor digestion, an easilyupset stomach, poor appetite, gas, a burning sensation in the stomach,nervousness, easy anger, stomach acidity, stomach pains, nausea, ulcers, andperhaps a hiatal hernia. A dietary solution to this problem would be to eat lesssour foods such as pickles, citrus, wine, vinegar and tomatoes because sourfoods over-stimulate the liver thus causing a greater imbalance between liver andstomach/spleen, wood and earth.

5 One the other hand this doesn t mean that oneshould eat more and Raw Foods Toxins and FastingAnother dietary prohibition is the eating of cold and raw foods. The image of thedigestive system in Chinese medicine is that the stomach is like a large caldronand the lower abdomen is the fire which cooks the food in the cauldron. Thedigestion of food is the cooking of food in the stomach, which breaks down thefood to make it more easily, digestible. If the food is raw the stomach must cookit. If the food is already cooked then the food is more easily digested andassimilated into the body. If the food is cold, the body must first heat up the foodin order to cook it. This creates more work for the digestive system and ultimatelytaxes the stomach qi so that it becomes deficient. The habitual eating of cold andraw food puts out the lower abdominal fire and the food in the stomach is leftundigested and unprocessed.

6 It passes on to the next organ which can notabsorb any of the nutrients present in the food because it was not broken downinto a form that can be utilized. Without any nutrition good blood and qi can notbe made for the body and all the other organs and systems of the body arethrown out of balance. The body is basically starved even though good food waseaten. As a doctor of Chinese medicine I have observed that my patients withdigestive disorders often have very cold abdomens while the rest of the body isrelatively I was much younger, before I became a Chinese doctor, I experimentedwith many different diets and foods. I was a vegetarian for 15 years, I atemacrobiotically for several years, and I tried an all-raw diet for several months. Ialso fasted on water, was on a mono diet of brown rice or at other times justjuice. I was curious to know more about my body and how it changed andreacted to different foods, different amounts of foods, and different diets.

7 I alsowanted to know about the body s ability or need to cleanse itself of toxins or howmuch energy it could develop with these different diets. My experiences led meto conclude that the most healthy diet and way of eating/cooking lay in thebalance of food that gave the body the best opportunity to digest and absorb allthe nutrients I ate. When I ate concentrated or very rich foods I could not digestthem. When I fasted it threw my body out of balance and damaged my I ate an all-vegetarian or raw diet my spleen became deficient to the pointthat I became seriously ill. My immune system was so weakened that I wasgetting a cold every two weeks. At this time my allergies were the worse they hadever been. Eating a more balanced diet over a period of time brought my bodyback into Harmony and my Health returned with a stronger immune system. Manypeople are obsessed with the idea of cleansing the body as a means of obtaininggood Health .

8 The idea behind this outlook is that poisons from the food or thebody are obstructing the path to good Health , thus the best way to cleanse thebody is to drink tremendous amounts of water, fast, or take colonics. This maywork temporarily but if the body needs to purge any unwanted substances ortoxins, it can easily do so if it is in balance since toxins will not build up in thebody if the body is in Harmony . The body has a wisdom which can easily becorrupted by the mind. If we can learn to listen to the body and not to the mind, inthese instances we will make the right choices in eating. If we are out of balancethen we will crave our poisons and our addictions. Any one food can become apoison if we eat too much of it. It will over stimulate those internal organs that it iscorrelated to and destroy the synergistic balance of the other of FoodsBefore we can discuss what a balanced diet may be we have to know how foodsare classified.

9 Like all herbs in Chinese Medicine foods have certain propertiesand actions upon the body. Foods can be classified by their taste: sweet, sour,bitter, spicy, salty; the organs or meridians they affect: spleen, lungs, kidney,liver, heart; their energetic properties: cold, cool, neutral, warm, hot; specificactions: diuretic, tonifying qi, tonifying blood, astringing, cooling, stops general, the foods that we eat are not as strong as Chinese herbs. A good dietacts as a general mechanism to maintain balance in the body whereas herbswork more specifically to heal an ailment. Therefore, overdosing on a particularfood probably won t cause irreparable harm to the body. However, eating theproper food when we are out of balance or have a specific Health condition canenhance and help heal the vegetables tend to be cool or cold in nature. Since they have no mobilityand are not animals they have a cooling affect upon the body.

10 Grains tend to beneutral or cool. Fruits tend to be cold or cool. Since they normally are in seasonduring the spring and Summer times they often cool off the body when thetemperature is warm or hot. Fruits that are from the tropics tend to be morecooling than fruits from colder regions. In general it is best to eat fruits in seasonindigenous to the region that you are living , with the convenience of better transportation it is now easy and cheapto get foods that are not only from other parts of the world but foods that are outof season. In other words you can get fruits from the tropics during the may seem to be a wonderful twist from nature but it may be a disaster toyour Health because you are fueling your body with foods from one season whenit is functioning in tends to be cool and neutral in energy. Although they are living creatureswith blood, the environment from which fish come is cold.