The Language of Food Energetics
In the west, food is described as containing certain amounts of protein, fat, minerals, vitamins and so on. This information is obtained by laboratory analysis which separates food into its basic ingredients. The nutritional value of a food is a statement of the sum total of its chemical ingredients before they enter the body.
When we look at food in this way we are subscribing to the mechanistic world view. What this view says is that if we can break down food to its fundamental constituents then we can recreate food out of its basic building blocks. In other words food is something that can be synthesised in a laboratory.
In the east, food is described as possessing certain qualities such as a warming or cooling nature, possessing certain flavours such as pungent or sweet, or acting on our body in a specific way. This information is obtained by observing the behaviour of the body after a food has been consumed. The nutritional value of a food is stated as a set of energetic properties which describe the actions a food has on the human body.
Whereas our western view is based on chemistry, the eastern view of nutrition more resembles alchemy, concerned not so much with ingredients but with latent energetic properties that are released in the human body through digestion. The subtle essences of food have movements and actions that have been traced and mapped in the same way as the pathways of qi: through direct observation of experience.
The Temperatures of Food
The single most important category in oriental medicine is the energetic temperature of a food. According to oriental medicine a food may be either hot, warm, neutral, cool or cold. Oats, chicken and onions, for example, are warming; barley, rabbit and lettuce are cooling. This is not a measure of how hot or cold a food is to the taste. The temperature of a food is a measure of its effect on the body after digestion. Simply, does it warm us up or cool us down?
Cooling foods tend to direct energy inwards and downwards, cooling the upper and outer parts of the body first. Warming foods move energy upwards and outwards from the core,warming us from the inside out. Very hot foods such as chilli peppers heat us up intensely then cool us down through sweating. Warmer foods speed us up, cooler foods slow us down.
A knowledge of the temperatures of foods is intrinsic to all traditional cooking. A warming curry is balanced by cooling cucumber and yoghurt; hot lamb is balanced by cooling mint sauce; root vegetable soups warm us in winter, salads cool us in summer. There are no absolute rules that govern whether a food will be warn-dng or cooling. However, the following general guidelines are fairly reliable:
- Plants which take longer to grow (e.g. root vegetables, ginger) tend to be warmer than fast-growing foods (e.g. lettuce, courgette).
- Foods with a high water content tend to be more cooling (e.g. melon, cucumber, marrow).
- Dried foods tend to be more warming than their fresh counterparts.
- Chemically fertilised foods which are forced to grow quickly tend to be cooler than their naturally grown counterparts.
- Some chemicals added to foods may produce heat reactions as may artificially ripened foods.
- The temperature of food will also be influenced by the cooking or preparation method.
The effects of the various methods are as follows:
- Raw Cooling
- Steamed Cooling/neutral
- Boiled Neutral
- Stir-fried Mildly warming
- Stewed Warming
- Baked More warming
- Deep-fried Heating
- Barbecued More heating
- Grilled More heating
- Roasted Most heating
Longer and slower methods will also produce more warming effects than quicker methods i.e. a stew will be more warming if it is cooked slowly than if it is cooked quickly. Microwaved food, incidentally, does not alter the energetic temperature of a food as no external heat is added. Recent research has also revealed that n-dcrowaved food suffers severe molecular damage and when eaten causes abnormal changes in human blood and immune systems (see Notes). My own observation is that regular microwave users almost invariably show signs of blood deficiency.
Knowing the temperatures of foods helps us to balance the overall effect of a meal to suit our body’s needs. Those with cold constitutions or conditions need to eat more warming diets and vice-versa.
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