Food is the most important thing for people, and diet plays a very important role in maintaining life, promoting health and prolonging life. On the basis of rich dietary practice and constant theoretical exploration, the ancients in China formed a profound theory and culture of dietary health preservation, which still has important guiding significance for our dietary life today.
1. Diet is very important for human health.
Li Shizhen, a medical scientist in the Ming Dynasty, said: "Eating and drinking is also the lifeblood of people." . The ancients believed that diet could nourish people's qi and blood. After the human body ingests food, the essence of grains will be sufficient, the blood will be vigorous, and the bones and muscles will be strong.
2. Medicine and food are homologous, and medicine and food are combined.
The homology of medicine and food is a remarkable feature of China's health culture. China has had the saying of "eating, nourishing, dietotherapy and taboo" since ancient times. Huangdi Neijing, the first summative classic of TCM, has already discussed that "beautiful diet" and "moderate diet" can prevent diseases and prolong life. In this paper, "tonifying deficiency, removing medicine, eating with food" and "exhausting all grains and vegetables" especially point out that the coordination of diet is an indispensable aspect in the treatment process, and the treatment with medicine is closely combined with the recuperation with food.
3. Food structure of nourishing, helping, benefiting and supplementing
The literature on the concepts of nourishing, helping, benefiting and supplementing was first found in the twenty-second chapter of the Yellow Emperor's Internal Classic of Su Wen, The Method of Dirty Qi: "Five grains are nourishing, five fruits are helping, five livestock are benefiting, and five vegetables are supplementing. The smell combines with it to supplement the essence. These five kinds are bitter, bitter and salty, each with its own merits.
Whether it is scattered or closed, whether it is slow or urgent, whether it is firm or soft, it is appropriate for the five internal organs at all times. "In essence, this kind of" nourishing, helping and benefiting "is about the traditional food structure of China people. The scientific nature of this food structure lies in that it conforms to the overall nutritional requirements of China people for health and fitness, and also conforms to the theory of modern nutrition, that is, no single food can maintain human health. Frankly speaking, the food structure of nourishing, helping, benefiting and supplementing is a reasonable dietary structure. People are encouraged to omnivore cereals and take them as their staple food. Five animals are beneficial, five vegetables are filling, five fruits are helping, the main and non-staple foods complement each other, and dialectical feeding can get comprehensive and balanced nutrition.
4. Eat more, eat less and eat more, and oppose overeating.
China's health experts all attached great importance to "moderate diet". Sun Simiao warned in "A Thousand Daughters Should Be Prescribed": "Don't eat if you don't want to be extremely hungry, and don't eat too much; Drink if you don't want to be extremely thirsty, and don't drink too much; Eating too much will accumulate; Too much thirst leads to too much phlegm. People who are good at nourishing nature eat first when they are hungry and drink first when they are thirsty: if they eat less, they don't want to eat more-it's hard to disappear; I often want to be hungry, and I am hungry. " People who are good at nourishing nature should be moderately hungry, eat when hungry, drink when thirsty, eat more but eat less. We should be satisfied with hunger and hungry. Eating too much increases the burden on the gastrointestinal tract, which is not conducive to digestion, especially before going to bed. Too much energy can lead to obesity and many diseases.
5. Pay attention to the five flavors and don't overdo it.
Huangdi Neijing said: "Heaven eats people with five flavors, and the earth eats people with five flavors". Food has five flavors: sweet, sour, bitter, spicy and salty. The ancients advocated that the five flavors of diet should be properly matched. Proper consumption of the five flavors can nourish the five internal organs, increase appetite and be beneficial to health; But it is too wide, the related organs are overwhelmed and easy to get sick. The essence of the theory of five flavors is to teach people to grasp the word "appropriate" in diet. In other words, eating too little of the five flavors will lead to nutritional deficiency, and eating too much will also lead to diseases, but it is balanced.
Appropriate can be beneficial to health. To put it bluntly, we should pay attention to the dosage of sour and spicy condiments and the dosage of edible sugar and salt.
6. Pay attention to meat hygiene and eat less meat.
Health experts in China have always advocated that the diet should be light and avoid heavy taste and fat. Hu Sihui said in Eat and Drink: "carrion is not edible" and "pigs and sheep are not edible when they are infected". Obviously unclean, spoiled and infected meat can't be eaten, so needless to say. But not everyone knows the truth of eating less meat and eating lightly. Light is relative to heavy and greasy. First, the five flavors should be eaten in moderation, and the taste should not be too heavy. Second, it is advisable to eat nutritious and easily absorbed foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables and miscellaneous grains. It is important to eat less meat and more vegetables, fruits and other beneficial foods. Eating more meat, especially fat meat, is easy to cause cardiovascular diseases. Therefore, it is more reasonable to give priority to vegetarian food, supplemented by meat, and accept both vegetarian and vegetarian food.
7. Eat at the right time and pay attention to the season.
Adapting to nature and adapting to nature is one of the pillars of China's traditional health preserving theory. To reconcile the taste of diet, we should not only conform to the time sequence, pay attention to the seasons, treat diseases with diet, but also conform to the laws of nature and the principle of adjusting seasons. "Book of Rites" said: "Where there is harmony, spring is sour, summer is bitter and autumn is salty, so it is sweet." Because the climate of the four seasons has the characteristics of spring temperature, hot summer, hot summer, cool autumn and cold winter, the physiological and pathological process of human body is affected by climate change, so we should pay attention to making the choice of food adapt to it.
8. Be cheerful when eating, don't be depressed, don't be angry.
A calm and happy mood is conducive to normal digestive function, and it is of great significance to maintain this mood before and during meals.