EASTERN NUTRITION

 

 

  • Prepare and enjoy food
    that is healthy for you
  • From millenia of Chinese
    dietary experience

 

 

  • Food as your Medicine
  • Dirty Dozen
  • Warming & Cooling Foods
  • Food Plans

 

"Let Food be your Medicine and Medicine your Food".
Hypocrates

 

Modern nutrition is still evolving, it is not a mature discipline yet.

It also offers a fragmented view of food, focusing on seperate nutrients rather than whole foods and often fails to help balancing entire meals and days of food planning.

 

That's why it is so challenging to navigate the complexities of information we are bombarded with. Should I take 1000 or 4000 IU of Vitamin D? Is soy good or bad for me? New diets with fancy names and paramount health benefits are presented to us constantly, which one should I try? New research contradicts previous studies, who should I believe?

 

Rather than focusing on weight loss, calory intake, food groups (carbs, lipids, proteins) or vitamins, the Chinese diet focuses on how food tangibly affects us. The most simple and effective way to look at how foods affect us is their warming or cooling quality. Obviously, chili pepper, even frozen, is going to burn our mouth and make us sweat. Chili pepper is a warming food, together with mustard, curry, but also chicken, onion, garlic etc. So if you tend to feel cold, you will do better with warming foods in general, and especially during the cold season. Conversely, there are cooling foods and if you tend to always be hot and sweat profusely you will do better with more cooling foods such as watermelon but also apples, celery, peppermint etc. Here is a very effective and simple way to balance your diet: pick more warming or more cooling foods, depending on your tendency to feel hot or cold. A list of cooling, neutral and warming foods is provided under the "Warming & Cooling Foods" tab.

 

Chinese Medicine is a mature health system that evolved over the past two millenia (and even longer). It was not designed with the rigor and technology precision of modern Western medicine, but grew empirically from clinical observation and patiently recording what works and what does not work. Amongst such observations were the warming and cooling quality of various foods. A Chinese doctor will first try to help his patient get better using food / drinks. If that is not enough, she/he will resort to acupuncture, and herbs.

 

Eastern Nutrition provides a very refined way to optimize food and drink to a person's health condition, both short term (e.g. how to fight a common cold) and long term (e.g. how to deal with a chronic health imbalance). It is not a one size fits all. An Eastern nutritionist carefully analyzes the person's constitution and current health condition, and customizes their diet accordingly.

 

In addition to warming and cooling qualities, foods have many other properties that can be used in Eastern Nutrition.

In these pages, we will focus on what is the most frequently encountered in our latitudes and with our modern Western lifestyle.

 

Click on the tab "Dirty Dozen", Warming & Cooling Foods", "Food Plans" to read more on the subject of healthy nutrition.