More than a hundred years ago, when people didn't find nutritional vitamins. Portuguese da Gama opened up new routes to Europe and Asia. On the way back from India, about 160 crew members died of scurvy. When Magellan sailed around the world, more than 70 people died of scurvy. However, Zheng He and other 27,000 sailors went to the Western Ocean seven times, but there was never an accident of massive death due to septicemia. European sailors suffered from septicemia because they could not eat vegetables for a long time and could not supplement vitamin C in time.
Zheng He's crew took beans to soak bean sprouts on the boat before sailing, and supplemented vitamins and other trace elements in time. In addition, many sailors of Zheng He's fleet in the Ming Dynasty were from Jiangnan, such as Yangzhou, where locals liked to drink green tea. Green tea is a highly soluble soaking tea. A cup of green tea contains 3 ~ 5 mg of vitamin C, and the daily demand of normal people is about 60 mg. Therefore, a few cups of tea can solve the problem of vitamin C supplementation.
Zheng He was from Jinning, Yunnan, and most of the sailors were from Yangzhou. Their main food is rice. Rice can be preserved and will deteriorate in a few days at high temperature, so Zheng He's fleet brought rice. Due to the limitation of processing conditions on board, they can only eat brown rice, which is rich in nutrition. If they eat polished rice, most of them will suffer from beriberi (vitamin B 1 deficiency) after one year. Zheng He's fleet carries a large number of beans that are easy to store and can be eaten as vegetables at any time. This is also an important reason why China people defeated septicemia in the voyage.
Therefore, there is no disease caused by vitamin deficiency, which has attracted the attention of medicine and nutrition. Vitamins are found to be indispensable micronutrients. Modern nutrition also believes that glucose is the fastest energy nutrient absorbed by the human body because it is directly supplied to the brain. The food we eat is eventually converted into glucose, so Chinese medicine emphasizes "five grains for nourishment" and staple food is the main food. Therefore, it is unscientific for some people not to eat staple food in order to lose weight, which not only violates the ancient way of TCM health preservation, but also violates modern nutrition.