In the long lasting development process of the traditional Chinese medical science, the traditional Chinese physicians have ever come up with the idea of curing diseases by using different types of food, which was called “Diet Therapy” today. Those who learn Chinese in China can feel that more and more Chinese people attaché greater importance to build the body by keeping a healthy diet.

There were many Chinese medical documents ever recorded the healthy diet, which was called “prescription” sometimes. Those who study Chinese in China may have heard from the teachers who teach Chinese culture that the earliest medical book was “Shen Nong’s Herbal Classic” written about 200BC. In this book, it records the important functions of the sesame, jujube, Chinese yam, ginger, grape and lily to the diet therapy.

Zhang Zhongjing was an outstanding physician in Han Dynasty. When foreigners study Mandarin in China, they may have known much about him. But they may don’t know that he ever recorded a diet therapy prescription to cure the pyreticosis and other miscellaneous diseases. It was a kind of soup combined with Chinese angelica, ginger and mutton. The people that students may know when they learn Chinese in China may be Li Shizhen who wrote the book “Compendium of Materia Medica”. In his book, he recorded many diet therapy prescriptions to cure dieses.

We can see from the above introduction that each dynasty in ancient China regarded diet therapy as an important Chinese Medicine Therapy. All westerners who study Chinese in China all know that Chinese people express the two opposing principles in nature with “Yin” and “Yang”. Among so many kinds of food, we also can classify the nature of food with “Yin” and “Yang”.

The food of “Yin” nature includes all foods that are cold and cool. Those we often see are cucumber, pear, watermelon, green bean and chrysanthemum and so on. All of this type of foods has the function of clearing heat, discharging fire and remove the blood heat as well as elimination of toxicant. They can be used to cure the fever syndrome. The point that students who study Mandarin in China should pay attention is that even the fruits like banana and apple are still listed as the food of “Yin” nature even they are not so cool food.
On the contrary, the warm and hot nature foods all belong to the food of “Yang” nature. What we often eat may be pepper, onion, scallion, ginger, button, red jujube and walnut kernel and so on. When those foods are used to do diet therapy, they can help warm the body and eliminate the coldness. Some foreigners who learn Chinese in China may also be told that some of foods like peach and cheery are not so hot foods, but they still belong to the “Yang” nature food.

Besides the two types, a third kind of food is the neutral foods. Those foods can be strawberry and lemon. The characteristic of this type of food is that it has no influence to the symptoms of both cold and heat. Therefore, if you get sick when you study Chinese in China, you can eat the neutral foods if you don’t know what kind of symptom you are.

As we all know, different foods have different tastes. In traditional Chinese medical science, the five common tastes are closely related to the five internal organs, namely, heart, liver, spleen, lungs and kidneys. When foreigners study Mandarin in China, teachers may tell them that the tastes of foods not only affect the organic functions but also the certain organs. That’s why the diet therapy is so important to health.

The followings are the relations between the organs and the food tastes provided for those who learn Chinese in China. The sour food like dark plum functions the liver. The bitter taste food such as balsam pear is beneficial for heart, clearing the heat. The pungent food like pimiento has strong pungency to help promote the gas circulation.

The salty food like seaweed is good for the kidneys and promotes the subsidence of a swelling. For the sweetish taste food like honey, it brings great benefit to spleen such as nutrition and energy gaining. The light flavored food is beneficial to the stomach. After knowing this, students who study Chinese in China can decide what food should be ate in the diet therapy.

All in all, the diet therapy is important in traditional Chinese medical science. In order to gain a better diet therapy, we should know the nature of the food so that we can know what to eat to keep healthy.