• Dietary Wisdom According to TCM

• Classification of Body Constitutions

• Western Dietary Supplements

• Western and Chinese Balanced Diet Approaches

• The Concept of Yin and Yang Foods

• The Five Element Flavors

* The Tao of Healthy Eating

Balance and Harmony are pivotal points in the Taoist way of life. Health and longevity depend upon the optimum balance between the human body and its natural environment.

The way to balance and harmony is to live in accord with nature rather than against it. We can use food to balance our body according to the body’s constitution, the natural environments, and the seasons.

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* Dietary Wisdom According to TCM

The basic principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) dietary therapy are relatively simple: Foods are selected to help enhance patient's overall health based on their patterns of disharmony.

A person should eat those foods which lead the body back to balance and avoid foods that aggravate the person’s imbalance.

• Eat mostly vegetables and grains with small amounts of everything else.
• Eat mostly cooked warm food which is not too sweet and not too greasy or oily.
• Eat moderately and chew well.

Your dietary habits will determine how well you feel, how clearly you think, and how successfully you adapt to your internal and external environments. Familiarize yourself with the pharmaco-dynamics of food chemistry. Learn how to combine foods properly at meals, and apply the Tao of Diet to eat your way to health and happiness.

Taoist diets are formulated in order to achieve an optimum balance between the various types of energy that foods release when digested and metabolized. Thousands of years ago, master healers in China perceived a way to classify foods and diseases according to simple and easily observed patterns.

One eats cooling foods for over heated conditions, and warming foods are best for people who feel too cold. Detoxifying foods are for those who carry excess toxins; building foods are good for deficient persons, and so on.

According to TCM, everyone has a different body constitution. Everyone’s constitution, temperament and health condition changes at different ages.

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* Classification of Body Constitutions

• Excess: A robust person with strong voice and pulses, thick tongue coating, extroverted personality and reddish complexion. This person does best with grains that reduce excess, such as amaranth, rye, whole barley (not pearled), and wild rice.

• Deficiency: A frail person with weakness and low energy weak voice and thin or no tongue coating, introverted personality, and sallow or pale complexion. Most grains are appropriate; with rice, wheat, barley (pan-roast before cooking), spelt, well-cooked oats, and quinoa are most beneficial.

• Heat: A person feels too hot, thirsts for large amounts of cold liquid, has red signs such as bright- or deep-red tongue, red face or eyes, yellow tongue coating, yellowing and scanty mucus. Use cooling grains: millet, wheat, amaranth, wild rice, blue corn and whole barley.

• Cold: A person feels cold, likes warm food and beverages, has pale complexion, dress too warmly for the temperature or climate, is contracted and can’t bend back, or may have pain “frozen” (fixed) in one place. Use warming grains: oats, spelt, sweet rice, quinoa (pronounced keen wa), and basmati rice. Neutral gains are also useful: rice, rye, corn and buckwheat.

• Damp: A person feels sluggish and has pathogenic moisture such as edema, obesity, chronic mucus and phlegm problems, cysts, and tumors. The grains which dry dampness are amaranth, buckwheat, unrefined barley, corn, rye, wild rice, basmati rice (in small amounts), and dry roasted oats.

• Dry: A thin person with dry mouth, nostrils, lips, skin, and stools. The best grains to use are: wheat, rice, sweet rice, quinoa, millet, barley (pan-roasted), spelt, and well-cooked oats.

• Wind: A nervous person with instability and symptoms that move around, come and go such as spasms, cramps, and moving pain. Certain relatively static conditions such as numbness, paralysis, and strokes are also often wind-induced. Grains that help calm wind: quinoa, cooked oats, and wheat; avoid buckwheat.

• Summer Heat: A person with high fever, sweating, exhaustion, and fluid depletion. Roasted barley tea or drinks quell the effects of summer heat; brown rice, especially the long-grain variety, helps reduce irritability which often accompanies summer heat.

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* Western Dietary Supplements

TCM and Western concepts of what constitutes a healthy “balanced diet” differ greatly, and so do their approaches to dietary supplements.

In Western practice, refined nutritional supplements such as vitamins and minerals are prescribed to provide various nutrients that are missing or insufficient in one’s diet. Such dietary deficiencies are often caused by modern farming and food-processing methods.

Balancing the relaxing and energizing qualities of food can attune one to nature’s cycles and spark immediate changes, especially in children.

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The conventional Western notion of a balanced diet is to combine all major food groups at every meal, such as proteins and carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables. This approach violates the rules of trophology (the science of food combining) and can lead to digestive disaster, poor assimilation and chronic constipation.

• Western Balanced Diet

Western Food Pyramid: slide25

Vegetarian Food Pyramid: slide26

• Chinese Balanced Diet

We will discuss on traditional Taoist and holistic Western concepts of how to select and balance foods for optimum health according to the types of energy they release in the body.

TCM Food Pyramid: slide28

• Bioenergies of Foods

* The Concept of Yin and Yang Foods

Like all energies, good energies are polar, therefore they are categorized primarily in terms of yin and yang.

Yin foods have a cooling, calming effect on human energy.
Yang foods are warming and stimulating.

When selecting foods according to their yin and yang energies, you should seek balance not only among the foods selected, but also seek balance between the foods and the prevailing energy conditions inside and outside your body.

For example: If your internal energy is in a state of extreme yin (tired, sluggish, depressed), you can balance and correct that condition by consuming yang foods, which will stimulate, warm and elevate your energy. If the external environment is extremely yin (cold, damp, overcast), you can resist the intrusion of these external “evil energies” into your own system by consuming some warming, drying yang foods.

Until the recent advent of Western-style supermarkets and fast-food chains in the Far East, Chinese families routinely balanced their meals in this traditional manner. Even in the West, before the 20th century, people automatically ate more meat, butter, and other warming foods in the cold of winter, when fresh produce was scarce. They consumed more cooling fruits and vegetables in summer, when fresh produce was cheap and plentiful and live stock was still being fattened for winter.

Thanks to refrigerators, supermarkets, and long-distance transport, people now eat apples and oranges in midwinter and fatty meats in midsummer. This cause all sorts of disease and distress and playing havoc with their internal energies.

• Typical Yin-Yang Qualities of Human Personality and Physiology