:Chinese food therapy

A number of ancient Chinese cookbooks and treatises on food (now lost) display an early Chinese interest in food, but no known focus on its medical value.{{sfn|Engelhardt|2001|p=174–175}} The literature on "nourishing life" ({{zh|s=养生|t=養生|p=yǎngshēng|labels=no}}) integrated advice on food within broader advice on how to attain immortality. Such books, however, are only precursors of "dietary therapy", because they did not systematically describe the effect of individual food items.{{sfn|Engelhardt|2001|p=175–176}} In the volume on "Fermentations and Food Science" of Joseph Needham's Science and Civilization in China, H. T. Huang considers the Recipes for Fifty-Two Ailments (c. 200 BCE) and the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon as 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.{{sfn|Huang|2000|pp=120–21}} The materia medica literature, exemplified by the Shennong Bencao Jing (1st century CE), also discussed food products, but without specializing on them.{{sfn|Huang|2000|p=134}}

file:Recherches pour servir à l'histoire naturelle des mammifères (Pl. 80) (6947132294).jpg could be used therapeutically. Boar gallstones, powdered and decocted, could cure epidemics. Boar teeth, burnt to ashes and ingested, could alleviate the symptoms of snakebites. And refined boar fat taken with cereal wine could help nursing women produce more milk.{{sfn|Tsang|1996|p=54}}]]

The earliest extant Chinese dietary text is a chapter of Sun Simiao's Prescriptions Worth a Thousand Gold ({{zh|c=千金方|p=qiānjīn fāng|labels=no}}), which was completed in the 650s during the Tang dynasty.{{sfn|Engelhardt|2001|p=176}} Sun's work contains the earliest known use of the term "food (or dietary) therapy" (shiliao).{{sfn|Engelhardt|2001|p=173}} 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.{{sfn|Engelhardt|2001|p=177}} 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 the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon: qi, the viscera, and vital essence ({{zh|c=精|p=jīng|labels=no}}), as well as correspondences between the Five Phases, the "five flavors" (sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, and salty), and the five grains.{{sfn|Engelhardt|2001|pp=178–181}} He also set a large number of "dietary interdictions" ({{zh|c=食禁|p=shíjìn|labels=no}}), some based on calendrical notions (no water chestnuts in the 7th month), others on purported interactions between foods (no clear wine with horse meat) or between different flavors.{{sfn|Engelhardt|2001|pp=181–183}}

Sun Simiao's disciple Meng Shen ({{zh|s=孟诜|t=孟詵|labels=no}}; 621–713) compiled the first work entirely devoted to the therapeutic value of food: the Materia Dietetica ({{zh|s=食疗本草|t=食療本草|p=Shíliáo běncǎo|labels=no|l=food therapy materia medica}}).{{sfn|Engelhardt|2001|p=184}} This work has not survived, but it was quoted in later texts – like the 10th-century Japanese text Ishinpō – and a fragment of it has been found among the Dunhuang manuscripts.{{sfnm|Engelhardt|2001|1p=185 (not extant, origin of fragments)|Huang|2000|2p=136 ("first bencao compilation devoted to diet therapy")}} 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.{{sfn|Engelhardt|2001|pp=184–187}} The works of Sun Simiao and Meng Shen established the genre of materia dietetica and shaped its development in the following centuries.{{sfn|Engelhardt|2001|p=187}}

An abundant literature developed in China around the medicinal uses of food. A mid-ninth-century work, now lost, called Candid Views of a Nutritionist-Physician ({{zh|s=食医心鉴|t=食醫心鑑|shí yī xīn jiàn}}) discussed how food could treat various disorders, while several works from the Song dynasty (960–1279) explained how to feed the elderly to extend their life.{{sfn|Huang|2000|p=137}}

In the early 14th century, Hu Sihui, who served as Grand Dietician ({{zh|s=饮膳太医|t=飲膳太醫|p=yǐnshàn tàiyī}}) at the court of the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1260–1368), compiled a treatise called Yinshan zhengyao, or Proper and Essential Things for the Emperor's Food and Drink ({{zh|c=饮膳正要|p=yǐnshàn zhèngyào}}), which is still recognized in China as a classic of both materia medica and materia dietetica.{{sfn|Buell|Anderson|2010|pp=3 (date and translation) and 141 (later reception)}} 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 the five phases that had recently been systematized by northern Chinese medical writers of the Jin dynasty (1115–1234) and Yuan eras.{{sfn|Buell|Anderson|2010|pp=113–46}} Before that period, food materials had not yet been comprehensively assigned to the five flavors systematically correlated with specific internal organs and therapeutic effects.{{sfnm|Lo|2005|1p=164 ("it wasn't until the late medieval herbals and dietaries that we have good evidence that individual foods and medicines were comprehensively assigned medical properties")|2a1=Buell|2a2=Anderson|2y=2010|2p=139}}

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 the Joseon period (1392–1897).{{sfn|Ro|2016|pp=133 and 137–38}} In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the imperial court of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) ordered several works on Chinese food therapy translated into Manchu.{{sfn|Hanson|2003|p=114–15}}

The concept entered Japan in 1972 as ishokudōgen.{{Cite web |url=http://www.betterhome.jp/book/isyoku/interview.php |title=【特別インタビュー】「21世紀の医食同源」刊行にあたって |access-date=2022-11-19 |archive-date=2022-11-19 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221119025941/https://www.betterhome.jp/book/isyoku/interview.php |url-status=live}} {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221119025941/http://www.betterhome.jp/book/isyoku/interview.php}} By the late 1990s, the {{lang|ja|藥膳}} (yakuzen) diet evolved into a simplified version where herbs are added to relatively balanced meals.

{{Cite journal

|author = 真柳誠

|title = 医食同源の思想-成立と展開|trans-title=Ishokudōgen the idea: its establishment and development

|journal = しにか

|volume = 9

|issue = 10

|publisher = 大修館書店

|date = October 1998

|pages = 72-77

|url=https://square.umin.ac.jp/mayanagi/paper04/sinica98_10.htm

}}

Although the precepts of Chinese food therapy are neither systematic nor identical in all times and places, some basic concepts can be isolated.{{sfn|Anderson|2013|pp=259–260}} 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.{{sfn|Huang|2000|p=571}} Like medicinal drugs, food items are classified as "heating" ({{zh|s=热|t=熱|p=rè|labels=no}}) or "cooling" ({{zh|s=凉|t=涼|p=liáng|labels=no}}).{{sfn|Anderson|2013|p=259}} In popular understanding, "heating"{{Cite news|url=https://tnp.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/health/keep-cool-avoiding-heaty-foods|title=Keep cool by avoiding 'heaty' foods|newspaper=The New Paper|date=8 July 2019}} 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.{{sfn|Anderson|2013|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=dtsYe0ZFORcC&q=heat 259–260]}} 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, including anemia. 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.{{sfn|Anderson|2013|pp=259–260}}

In more systematic understandings, each medicine or food item has one of five flavors: sour, sweet, bitter, pungent (or "acrid"), and salty.{{sfn|Buell|Anderson|2010|p=139}} Besides describing the taste of food, each of these "flavors" purportedly has specific effects on particular viscera. 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" ({{zh|s=药食同源|p=yàoshí tóngyuān}}; Japanese: {{Nihongo krt||医食同源|ishokudōgen}}), where certain food items are given medicinal properties, and where certain herbal medicines are deemed acceptable in food.{{cite journal |last1=三成 |first1=由美 |last2=徳井 |first2=教孝 |last3=朱 |first3=根勝 |last4=郭 |first4=忻 |title=中国医学と薬膳 |journal=日本食生活学会誌 |date=2001 |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=109–114 |doi=10.2740/jisdh.12.109 |url=https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jisdh1994/12/2/12_2_109/_article/-char/ja/ |trans-title=Chinese medicine and Chinese medicated diet |language=ja}}

{{See also|Traditional Chinese medicine#Critique}}

Historically, there have been few studies in English literature about the practice of Chinese food therapy.{{cite journal|pmid=27852126|year=2016|last1=Zou|first1=P|title=Traditional Chinese Medicine, Food Therapy, and Hypertension Control: A Narrative Review of Chinese Literature|journal=The American Journal of Chinese Medicine|volume=44|issue=8|pages=1579–1594|doi=10.1142/S0192415X16500889}}

• Qiu Li Gao is a pear syrup or paste used to treat lung ailments.{{Cite book |last=Zhu |first=Chun-Han |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CIP3stlW3CsC&dq=Qiu+Li+Gao&pg=PA90 |title=Clinical Handbook of Chinese Prepared Medicines |publisher=Paradigm Publications |year=1989 |isbn=978-0-912111-43-8 |pages=90–91 |language=en}}

The Chinese government has approved a number of herbs as food ingredients using the "Traditionally Both Food and Chinese Medicinal Materials" ({{lang|zh|按照传统既是食物又是中药材}}) lists.{{cite web |last1=食品安全标准与监测评估司 |title=关于印发《按照传统既是食品又是中药材的物质目录管理规定》的通知 |url=http://www.nhc.gov.cn/sps/s7892/202111/1b3e18ba75f142f99a4a15ce0d1660f3.shtml |website=www.nhc.gov.cn |language=zh|trans-title=Notice on Issuing the "Regulations on the Management of the Catalogue of Substances that are Traditionally Both Food and Chinese Medicinal Materials"}} These are colloquially known as the Yàoshí Tóngyuān Catalog ({{lang|zh|药食同源目录}}) in Chinese.{{cite web |title=药食同源目录及普通/非普通食品原料目录(2024最新版) – 中国食品工业协会特种食品工作委员会 |url=https://www.sfoods.cn/guanyuwomen/liaojieteshi/yao-shi-tong-yuan-mu-lu-ji-pu-tong-fei-pu-tong-shi-pin-yuan/ |language=zh-Hans}} In addition, farm-grown ginseng and Cordyceps militaris, two herbs known from TCM, are considered novel food ingredients.{{cite web |last1=Beijing Zhongjian Tianxing Medical Technology |title=【收藏】国家卫健委新食品原料名单最全汇总（截止2023年12月）_公告_杆菌_资源 |url=https://www.sohu.com/a/745287432_120007881 |website=www.sohu.com |language=zh |trans-title=Compilation of Novel Food notifications by the National Health Commission (ending at Dec 2023)}}

{{Portal|China|Taiwan|Food}}

• Bencao Gangmu, a materia medica compiled by Li Shizhen during the Ming dynasty.
• Ch'ang Ming, a series of dietary and lifestyle recommendations adapted to Western eating habits
• Macrobiotic diet
• Taoist diet
• Yangsheng, a method of "nourishing life"

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Category:Traditional Chinese medicine

Category:Chinese cuisine

Category:Diets

Category:Biologically based therapies

Category:Chinese folk religion