All posts by john@acupressure.com.au

The Five Elements of Eating

Digestion, Five Flavours, Food, Nei Jing, Taste, , , ,

As a child I learned the importance of good food from my parents. While we didn’t have spare cash for holidays, flash clothes, or even schoolbooks,  good food was always  the highest priority, and I never suffered from going hungry. As a latchkey teenager, it became my responsibility to prepare dinner when my mother was working, and I built up a list of simple recipes, mostly one-pot meals in the trusty Sunbeam frypan. Things like spaghetti bolognaise, Mexican rice and curry. This early training engendered a love of a facility for cooking. And eating!

When I encountered the Five Element model of Chinese medicine, it was natural to bring this paradigm into the kitchen. In 1991 I joined a training in the Five Elements known as the Sophia Program of the Traditional Acupuncture Institute in Maryland, USA. This showed me a way of living that is in harmony with the seasons of nature. Each year since then I have chosen a theme  to act as a framework for keeping in touch with the changing energies of the seasons and their corresponding Elements. My blogs over the past 11 years have reflected these choices.

Last month, after I’d penned the final in the series on the pathogenic factors and was casting about for a subject for the coming year, a friend gave me a lovely gift of Zoey Xinyi Gong’s new book, “The Five Elements Cookbook” which inspired the theme for the coming year.

What follows here is an introduction to the theme. Later articles will address each Element in its own season, showing how we can utilise Five Element principles to inform our cooking and eating choices to be in harmony with this fundamental rhythm.

Eating fresh, nourishing, tasty food that is artfully presented is one of the joys of living a human life. It stimulates the appetite, appeals to the senses and nourishes body and soul. It needs not only to taste good but smell good and look good. These qualities are reflected in some of the key resonances of the Five Elements.

The five flavours and their respective Elements are salty (Water), sour (Wood), bitter (Fire), sweet (Earth), and pungent (Metal). Not all dishes will have all five flavours, but a meal should include all representations for balance.

A balance of the five colours is similarly important. A variety of blue/black, green, red, yellow and white colours is appealing. Again, while not all colours need appear in a dish, some variety is important. Imagine how visually unappealing would be a meal of chicken, cauliflower and potato all smothered in a white sauce. Some salad greens or a spoon of a red condiment, for example, would temper the whiteness.

The Five Element model also provides us with information on how to choose foods that are in harmony with the season. It is natural that we are drawn to cool foods in hot weather and warm foods in cold weather.  But we can also make choices as to colour and flavour to support the energy of the season. For example, eating more green and sour foods in spring; more yellow and sweet foods in the late summer.

A fun use of the five flavours in cooking is the principle that the flavour of one Element controls the flavour of its grandson Element. Thus salt (Water) will control bitter (Fire); bitter will control pungent (Metal); pungent will control sour (Wood); sour will control sweet (Earth); and sweet will control salty. If you’ve made a dish that is too salty, try adding something sweet to balance the flavours. Too sweet? Add something sour. It can be fun to play with this. For more detail on this, see previous blog A Taste of Earth.

The five flavours can also be used medicinally to treat certain conditions. Each flavour benefits its corresponding yin organ: salt benefits the kidneys, sour benefits the liver, bitter benefits the heart, sweet benefits the spleen and pungent benefits the lung.

However, overindulgence of these flavours will not only injure the corresponding organ, but also the tissues associated with the grandson Element. For example, too much salt damages the blood vessels, as we know from western dietary models. Too much sweet damages the bones

Another resonance to consider is that of the climatic factors which we explored over the last year: Cold (Water), Wind (Wood), Heat (Fire), Damp (Earth) and Dryness (Metal). When there is weakness in an Element, the corresponding climatic factor can invade the body and become a pathogenic factor. We tend to be susceptible to the climate of the season, but we can succumb to any in any season. When this happens, we can turn to food to help combat the invaders.

This knowledge is ancient, well tried over millennia. The Huang Di Nei Jing, or Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, was compiled about 2,300 years ago, and reflects countless prior centuries of understanding. This classic is replete with references to food and its use in medicine, and I will be drawing from that ancient text over the coming year. I will also include recipes that can support us in the season we are traversing.

Look out soon for the first tasty instalment in our southern hemispheric season of winter.

Huang Di Nei Jing

DRYNESS

Asthma, Dryness, LU 6, Metal Element, Respiratory, Throat, , , ,

It is said that South Australia is the driest state in the driest continent. This year it is living up to the cliché as we shrivel through the driest drought conditions in 33 years. We are parched, withered, desiccated. Water tanks and dams are empty. Walking on my lawn sounds like someone is eating potato chips. Shrubs are dying. Gum trees drop crushing limbs. Throats are dry, coughs abound. My voice sounds to myself hollow and rasping.

As with the other climatic factors we have studied (cold, wind, heat and damp), dryness has a greater impact on those who are already dry within: those of a Metal constitution; those with existing imbalance in the organs of Metal, Lung and Large Intestine; and those in the Metal phase of life, the elderly.

The Chinese character for dryness is zao, comprising the radicals huo, meaning fire, and tsao, representing three birds singing in a tree. It seems to me they’re not singing, but rather panting with thirst, beaks open on a hot, dry day.

In northern China where the Five Element model was conceived, autumn is a dry season, as it is where I live. But that is not true of all locations. Just ask the folk in SE Queensland and northern New South Wales who have just suffered through a once in a generation cyclone. They received more rain in three days than we’ve had in 12 months. Nonetheless, most places experience dryness at some time of the year, and the pathogenic factor can also be experienced in overheated houses and workplaces, such as often occurs in Britain. The use of combustion stoves for heating also dries the air significantly. The resulting ills are the same as for nature’s dry.

The main symptoms of dryness are dry nose, throat and skin, all structures that are resonances of the Metal Element. These can appear as sinusitis, psoriasis, eczema, hoarse voice, thirst and a dry mouth. Respiratory illnesses such as asthma and bronchitis, fever and aversion to cold can also present. There is a corresponding deficiency of body fluids.

Coping with the effects of external dryness revolves around reversing the dry condition. Drink more water, of course, but do so in frequent, small sips. Bring more moisture into the air via a swamp cooler (evaporative) rather than an air conditioner, or a pan of water on a low stove. Dietarily, pears are good for moistening the lungs and happily are plentiful in autumn. Also good are apples, Asian pears, grapes and honey. A delicious, lung-moistening dessert is stewed pear and apple with honey. Soups are good for hydration. Walnuts, chestnuts, almonds and pine nuts in small quantities moisten the lungs. Stews of root vegetables such as sweet potato, parsnip, turnip, carrot are also beneficial.

Foods to avoid are those which are warming: coffee, ginger, garlic, cinnamon, alcohol and anything that is diuretic.

Acupressure Points to treat dryness of the lungs

Lung 9. The source point of Lung directly treats the organ and any lung condition. Located on the front of the wrist crease in a hollow below the thumb.

Lung 6. The xi-cleft point of Lung clears heat and moistens the lungs. Located on the forearm 7/12 of the distance between Lung 9 and the elbow crease.

Bladder 13. The shu point of Lung also harmonises the lungs. It is located in the upper back, two fingers width to the side of the spine at the level of the junction of 3rd & 4th thoracic vertebrae.

Large Intestine 11. Large Intestine is partner to Lung and this Earth point of the channel is famous for clearing heat from the body. Located in the large hollow at the outer end of the elbow crease.

I wish you well in the remaining weeks of autumn and as we drop down into the winter season.

This completes the cycle of articles on the climatic factors, and the 11th year of articles of this blog. In the winter I will begin another series about food, cooking and the Five Elements. Catch you then.

View of dry paddocks from Piney Ridge Road, Nairne in the Adelaide Hills