Origin of eight-treasure porridge: The eighth day of the twelfth lunar month is a traditional festival in China. There is a custom of eating "Laba porridge". In the Han Dynasty, the third day to the day after beginning of winter was called "La Ri". In the Southern and Northern Dynasties, it was changed to the eighth day of1February, which was called "Laba Festival". People hold sacrificial activities on this day to pray for good harvest and good luck.

Laba Festival is also a Buddhist festival "Taoist Festival". According to legend, when Sakyamuni was in distress near the Nilian River in Bihar, he was rescued by a shepherdess and became a Buddha under a bodhi tree. Since then, Buddhist disciples have promoted chanting activities on Laba Festival. And cooked with dried fruits and miscellaneous grains into "Laba porridge".

Later, people rushed to follow suit, get together to eat and feed their relatives and friends. Today, people in most parts of the north and parts of the south of the Yangtze River, especially in the south of Dongting Lake, still keep the custom of celebrating Laba Festival and eating Laba porridge. Although there are some changes in raw materials, the concept of nutrition and fitness is more and more popular.

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Health-preserving effect of eight-treasure porridge: Li Shizhen, a great doctor in Ming Dynasty, said in Compendium of Materia Medica that porridge is "extremely soft and greasy, compatible with the stomach and intestines, and a recipe for diet". Lu You, a famous poet in the Song Dynasty, even thought that eating porridge could prolong life. It is recognized by the medical profession that porridge can tonify yin, promote the growth of gastric juice, strengthen the spleen and stomach, and tonify deficiency, which is most suitable for nourishing people.

After the porridge is cooked, there is a delicate, sticky and ointment-like substance floating on it, which is called "rice oil" in Chinese medicine, commonly known as porridge oil. Many people disagree. In fact, it has a strong nourishing effect, comparable to ginseng chicken soup.

Porridge oil is usually made from millet or rice porridge. Wang Mengying, a medical scientist in Qing Dynasty, thought with interest in his diet spectrum that "rice oil can replace ginseng soup" because it has the same function as ginseng.

Baidu encyclopedia-Babao porridge