Chinese Medicated Cuisine
Energy drinks and teas for digestion, stress, the immune system, etc, are now common place on grocery store shelves. Most people will agree that what we eat affects our health. The Chinese, however, take this one step further. Chinese medicated cuisine for health and prevention of disease has a history dating back to 1000 BCE. Sun Simiao, a doctor in the Tang Dynasty, listed treatments combining TCM with food in his book Prescriptions worth a Thousand Gold for Emergencies. Medicinal foods recorded were great in number and variety ranging from the more familiar, such as yam, lotus seed and walnut, to the more obscure, such as sparrow, air bladder of shark and ambergris. All Chinese medicated cuisine adheres to the following principles:
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| photo courtesy of Hunangov |
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The whole person is considered in prescribing a medicated cuisine. Current condition of mental and physical health, geographical location and environmental factors, season of the year, habits and lifestyle are all taken into account.
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The diet not only treats illness but also prevents it. For example, children are given “eight delicious foods” for 30 days to increase appetite and to grow faster.
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The meals must be convenient and easy to eat. Unlike medicine, which has a bitter taste, medicated cuisine is a careful balance of medicine and food, and different cooking techniques are used to give it a delicious and appealing flavor.
Each meal is prepared according to its energetic properties (cold, hot, warm and cool) and the five tastes (sour, sweet, salty, bitter, spicy) of TCM. Almost all food ingredients are used along with some medical herbs. Typical meals include Ginger and Mutton Soup, Soup of Chinese Angelica Root, Pork Simmered with Lotus Seed and Lily, Baby Pigeon stewed with Gouqi (medlar) and Huangqi (Membranous Milk Vetch), and Pig Kidney Stewed with Eucommia Bark. The following recipe prescription is for liver wind and relief of spasms and pain:
chicken, gastrodia elata (tian ma), ham, rice wine, mushroom, scallion, winter bamboo shoots, ginger, chicken consommé, salt and pepper.
As an old Chinese saying goes: Medicine and food come from the same origin.
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