If anyone has ever handed you a bowl of soup when you were feeling run down, you already know a little of how Chinese medicine thinks about food. In the Chinese tradition, what you eat has always been part of looking after yourself, never something separate from it.
None of what follows is a diet plan, and it's no substitute for advice from your GP or a registered dietitian. Think of it instead as a different lens for looking at the meals you already cook.
Food and medicine from the same root
An old idea in Chinese medicine holds that food and medicine grow from the same root. A 2018 review of Chinese food therapy in Clinical Nutrition Experimental describes a diet-based approach in which "medicine can be used as food and food can be combined with medicine."
In practice, ordinary kitchen ingredients were thought about in much the same terms as medicines. Each one had its own character, and the skill lay in choosing foods to suit the person and the season.
Warming and cooling foods
Traditionally, every food is given a "nature": hot, warm, neutral, cool or cold. That has nothing to do with how hot it is on your plate. It's about the effect the food was believed to have on the body.
- Warm and hot foods such as oats, garlic, onion, chicken, ginger, cinnamon and lamb were said to warm the body, and to suit people who tend to feel the cold.
- Cool and cold foods such as pears, tomatoes, tofu, mung beans and watermelon were said to "clear heat", and to suit people who tend to run hot.
- Neutral foods, including rice, sweetcorn, apples, peas and mushrooms, were thought fine to eat all year round.
In the tradition's own terms, the aim was balance between yin and yang, with not too much of any one kind and each meal shaped to the person eating it.
The five flavours
Chinese medicine also sorts foods into five flavours, which are sour, bitter, sweet, pungent (spicy) and salty. The classical texts link each flavour with an organ, and through that organ with one of the Five Elements. Sour belongs with the Liver and Wood, bitter with the Heart and Fire, sweet with the Spleen and Earth, pungent with the Lungs and Metal, and salty with the Kidneys and Water.
The traditional advice was to have a little of each and not to lean too hard on any one of them. It's a nice thought to bring to your cooking, even if you only take it as a way to make a meal more interesting.
Eating with the seasons
The Five Elements tradition ties each element to a season, so it feels natural to let the time of year shape what you cook. As a Five Element practitioner, I might suggest thinking about it like this:
- In winter (Water), slow-cooked stews, soups and warming spices.
- In spring (Wood), lighter meals with fresh greens and shoots.
- In summer (Fire), more raw and cooling foods, salads and fruit.
- In late summer (Earth), sweet, golden foods like squash, sweetcorn and carrots.
- In autumn (Metal), a return to cooked, grounding meals as the weather turns.
Most of this matches what you'll find in season at a British greengrocer anyway, so it's easy to try.
Where modern nutrition comes in
Chinese food therapy is a tradition, not a set of proven treatments, so it makes sense to pair it with current evidence-based advice. The NHS Eatwell Guide recommends at least five portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables a day, meals based on potatoes, bread, rice, pasta or other starchy carbohydrates, and 6 to 8 cups or glasses of fluid a day.
The two sit together happily. You can follow the Eatwell Guide and still enjoy a warming ginger soup in January or a crisp cucumber salad in July. If you have a medical condition or a food allergy, or you're thinking about a big change to how you eat, please talk to your GP or a registered dietitian first.
A small experiment for this week
Next time you plan a meal, ask yourself the two questions the tradition would ask. What's the weather doing? And how am I feeling, a bit cold and flat or warm and wound up? Let the answers nudge what you cook. It's a simple way to eat a little more mindfully and to enjoy what's in season.
If you'd like to see which season and element you're in right now, take a look at my Five Element seasonal calendar.