"Food is the top priority for the people" is a timeless classic topic, especially in modern times where people are increasingly concerned about the quality of their diet and the scientific ratio of three meals a day. Reducing oil, salt, and sugar has become basic health knowledge.
These concepts shape people's healthy eating habits and beliefs. But there is heaven and earth in food, and the attributes are divided into yin and yang. If you eat wrong, it will also reduce your health score.
01 Yin and Yang are "multidimensional" and "flexible"
To understand the yin and yang attributes of food, one must first understand its basic concepts.
Yin and Yang are two opposing categories in ancient Chinese philosophy, and ancient people used the principle of mutual change to explain the movement of the material world. Influenced by this, ancient Chinese medical practitioners applied the concept of "yin and yang" to explain the physiological mechanisms, pathological changes, treatment methods, and drug properties of the human body.
Generally speaking, "yang" represents that things have dynamic, active, and strong attributes, such as upward movement, outward expansion, positivity, brightness, heat, growth, invisibility, and life activities; "Yin" represents things with attributes such as stillness, dullness, and softness, such as sinking, introversion, negativity, inhibition, coldness, reduction, tangibility, and stillness of life.
How to divide food yin and yang?
Traditional Chinese medicine has always had the saying of "medicine and food have the same origin". Food, like medicine, also has four properties: cold, hot, warm, and cool. It has five flavors: sour, bitter, sweet, spicy, and salty, as well as attributes such as rising, falling, floating, and sinking.
Generally speaking, cold, cool, sour, bitter, salty, descending, and sinking belong to yin; Heat, warmth, spiciness, sweetness, rising and floating belong to yang. Therefore, dietary adjustments must be based on the physical condition of the population and the nature of the disease, selecting foods with different flavors for pairing, so as to balance cold and heat, and harmonize the five flavors.
Food grown underground and underwater is mostly negative, while food grown above ground and water is mostly positive; Food grown in areas with a sunny or damp background is mostly negative, while food grown in areas with a sunny or dry background is mostly positive.
Most vegetables and fruits with high moisture content are negative, such as cabbage, radish, pear, sugarcane, etc; Plants that grow towards the sun are mostly positive, such as sunflower seeds.
For meat, organisms that grow underground or underwater are mostly negative, such as fish, turtles, and earth dragons; Animals that grow on the ground, in the air, and in males are mostly positive, such as pigeons and roosters.
Although food temperature has a certain influence on its yin and yang attributes, it is not a decisive factor; The determining factor is the effect of food intake on the body, such as the warm white fungus and mung bean soup still being considered negative food.
03 Most of the daily food consumed is plain food
"Flat food" refers to food with mild attributes, and its cold and hot properties are not obvious.
Most of the ingredients people consume in their daily lives are plain foods, including rice, corn, barley, taro, lotus seeds, shiitake mushrooms, potatoes, oats, soybeans, lentils, eggs, hens, pork, water buffalo, milk, honey, yellow croaker, carp, crucian carp, apples, grapes, plums, dragon fruit, figs, etc.
It must be emphasized that different cooking methods have a significant impact on flat foods, and can even completely change their yin and yang attributes, which should be taken seriously.