When the family meal is prepared in China, it is planned with the principal that balance needs to be achieved in order to gain maximum benefits from the meal. Each ingredient is chosen for its medicinal quality but also for its synergistic effect on the accompanying ingredients. This meal is cooked by a method that will nourish and maintain health, or help treat an illness.
According to the theory of Traditional Chinese Medicine, nutrition, diet, food has its own classification and qualities as well as properties, depending on their effect on the body. For example, Yin foods have a property that is cool or cold, a yang food are warm or hot, and food can also be neutral. Food can also be categorised according to the seasons and each season corresponds to a particular flavour and that food can have a certain relationship to a specific part of the body.
Western diet tends to break every food down into smaller and smaller parts, nutrients for example such as carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals. An apple according to Western medical nutritional science has 13 vitamins, 12 minerals and 386 other phyto-nutrients.
Even though both traditions have a different understanding of the benefits of an apple, both agree that apples are good for you. When combined Western and Chinese knowledge can provide a substantial therapy and advise that is probably the dominant complementary medicine to prevent and treat disease.
