Confucius said, "Eat without words, sleep without words." Confucianism advocates paying attention to hygiene, nutrition collocation, using diet to conserve human nature and using food to improve people's character cultivation, which has a great influence on China's food culture.
Secondly, after Buddhism was introduced into China, the feudal rulers gradually believed in and advocated Buddhism, which reached its peak in the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
Du Mu, a great poet in the Tang Dynasty, even lamented in "Spring in the South of the Yangtze River" that "there were 480 temples in the Southern Dynasties and many pagodas in the misty rain". Thus, the grand occasion of Buddhism in the Northern and Southern Dynasties.
In Buddhism, the monk's diet was originally alms, and there were no rules for eating. Later, temples began to cook their own food. At that time, it was called "Ji Xiang Rice". During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Liang Wudi advocated vegetarianism, and the food in the temples began to change to vegetarianism in an all-round way, and finally became vegetarian.
Due to the advocacy of the upper rulers, Buddhism began to be vegetarian in an all-round way. This kind of diet has gradually influenced the folk dietary customs and its status has been continuously improved. Now we have all heard of Laba Festival. In Buddhism, Laba Festival is the day when Sakyamuni gives lectures, so the temple sacrifices Buddha with various fragrant fruits to commemorate Sakyamuni.
With the passage of time, it gradually evolved into the folk custom of eating Laba porridge on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month.