Differences between Chinese and Western Dietary Therapy

There are two basic differences between Chinese and Western diets:

1. Western diet focuses almost exclusively on a diet for weight loss. Chinese diet is designed not only to help you lose weight, but also to treat many other disorders, including:

• Hypertension
• Diabetes
• Common cold
• Gastrointestinal disease
• Cough
• Skin disease and so on
2. In the Western diet, foods are considered for their proteins, calories, carbohydrates, vitamins, and other nutritional content. In the Chinese diet, foods are considered for their energies, five flavors, 12 acupuncture meridians, relationship to the Five Elements, Yin/Yang balance, common clinical use and contra-indications.

What is a balanced diet?

Chinese medicine recognizes that food is an important healing force. Chinese dietary therapy describes the medicinal qualities of foods exactly as they would the medicinal qualities of herbs. In other words, there is a very fine line between foods and herbs.

The balanced diet in Chinese dietary therapy means that people should eat foods of various flavors, energies, and organic actions rather than concentrate on a single flavor or energy. It is also very important to select foods according to the four seasons and physical constitution. The foods we enjoy most and eat most frequently are sweet foods, followed by salty foods. But in order to eat a more balanced diet, we need to eat more pungent, sour, and bitter foods.

Treatments include food recommendations and special dietary changes to relieve and cure many disorders.