According to China Highlights, Chinese food has five key flavors that must be balanced due to traditional Chinese medicine: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and spicy. Let’s look at how food and medicine connect in the Chinese culture.

Chinese Medicine

Chinese medicine has been long revered as one of the most thorough and comprehensive types of alternative treatment on the planet. According to Northwestern Medicine, for over 5,000 years, these practices have helped adherents promote wellness and longevity. Chinese medicine addresses the whole person, not just a set of symptoms. It aims to harmonize the mind, body, and spirit. The body is viewed as a mini-universe with every system and part affecting every other system and part.

Because the human body must ingest food on a regular, daily basis, food is considered to be one of the most dramatic influences on health and wellness. Fusion Medicine reports that, in Chinese medicine, the five major flavors of food correspond to the five elements of the planet.

The Five Major Flavors

Cherry Blossom Healing Arts cites that sour corresponds with wood and is related to the liver, gallbladder, eyes, and tendons. Bitter matches with fires and is connected with the heart, small intestine, tongue, and vessels. Sweet relates to the earth, the spleen, the stomach, the mouth, and muscles. Pungent, also known as spicy, connects with metal and the lungs, large intestine, nose, and skin. Salty taste relates to water in the kidneys, bladder, ears, and bones.

Chinese Seasons

According to Eating For You, foods are also connected with seasons in Chinese food and medicine. Sour is spring; summer is bitter; sweet is summer; pungent is fall; and salty is winter. Chinese food and medicine are all about balance, as nothing should be taken to extremes. Chinese food medicine also recommends that people eat produce while it's in season. This is when the vitamins and nutrients present are the most beneficial to the body. It's also why produce is so popular among Chinese food dishes at restaurants!

As you can see, in Chinese culture, food and traditional medicine are deeply connected. If you're interested in ordering high-quality Chinese food from a restaurant you can trust, turn to Kiki's Chinese Food. Place an order today!