The topic of healthy diet was frequently brought up when I dined with Italian friends, probably because I illustrated one of my father’s dietetic books on eating to prevent cancer. This last time a friend told me several of her friends were diagnosed cancer recently, and she became very vigilant about food that she ate. “How is Chinese cuisine different from Italian cuisine?” She asked me.
I think I didn’t explain myself well while having my mouth full during dinner, so I decided to write this article to share with more friends.
To properly explain healthy Chinese cuisine to Europeans we would probably need more than one book because we would have to talk about traditional Chinese medicine, which derived its philosophical framework from Chinese esoteric tradition. Here I will try to focus mostly on the practical aspect that I can think of.
Usually Chinese eat a balanced combination of meat, vegetable and staple food at every meal. And most of the time “vegetable” really means “leafy green vegetables” for Chinese (and potato, sweet potato, beans are not really “vegatables”. More like staple.). And they are always cooked. Unlike most European cuisines, Chinese dishes are served at the same time, not presented in different courses. So people can eat meat, vegetable, and staple food at the same time, choosing what they feel like eating.
Another aspect is that vegetables are cooked in many different ways with various condiments. So it is a much happier experience to eat “vegetables”. We are not left with only raw salades to eat. Also there are a wide variety of tofu products. There are also many delicious dishes with a lot of vegetables and a little of meat - meat is often used as a condiment. So in France and Italy I notice “meat” dishes and “vegetable” dishes are totally divided, and to have a decent well-cooked meal means to eat a lot of meat.
While in European cuisine vegetables are either uncooked or overly cooked, in China most vegetables are cooked for a short amount of time. They are either stir-fried or stewed. Here I am talking about the dishes we can cook at home. In restaurants food are often prepared in an unhealthy way (more oily, more fried) to attract customers. But many healthy dishes people cook at home are different. Chinese rarely eat raw food. I think we should eat more because raw food is healthy. But I also think that having such big variety of lightly cooked half-vegetarian dishes help people to live a healthy life without sacrificing much pleasure.
Chinese don’t include desert into the meals. This reduces the in-take of sugar.
Another healthy tip is to eat a big breakfast and lunch, a very small dinner with little meat. It is important to eat regularly, and never too much. I found an Italian or French meal with many courses very unhealthy. It is also very unhealthy to have a late dinner. Dinners are best finished before 8pm. This generally doesn’t happen in Italy or Spain.
Another aspect is that in China we do not have a lot of table manners. At the table we are supposed to enjoy the food so we need to feel relaxed and not worry about other things. Conversations are less intense or serious like I found in Europe.
So the above I talk about some traits of Chinese cuisine without going into the philosophical background. Now I am going to talk about something more general, about the mindset. In China people grow up knowing that everything we eat is actually medicine. And we also know that one should not wait until one gets sick to think about health. Health is something we work on sustaining before we get sick, all the time. That’s why Chinese people watch out what we eat, keeping an eye of the effect of every ingredient of our food all the time. Of course not everyone does that. But the knowledge is available in the tradition, and every mother has some common sense of usage of herbal tea to heal the family members, bordering on witchcraft. I specify this aspect of the culture because I noticed when I talked to Italians about the effect of some food which might cure some ailments they are suffering from, my friends typically reacted defensively: “I am not sick. I do not need prescription.” I also know I am not a doctor. Telling someone to eat something and to avoid something else is not a prescription. It is something we Chinese do for friends, like giving flowers to a friend, maybe just a bit less beautiful, but a bit more practical.
The Italians seem to perceive food as unconditional love from Mother Nature and they can be very jealous about this privilege. They want to feel that the abundance of the Nature is expressed through enjoyable nourishments. But unfortunately life is limited, and everything on earth has conditions, especially our health. Everything we eat has an effect on the body, and to care for the body, having knowledge about the effect, which depends on the temperament of the food and also the type of the body, is very important. Chinese medicine studies the working of the body and uses herbs to influence the condition of the bodily environment so that a certain diseases would be gone. Instead of attacking the diseases directly it works with the immune ability of the body. Many herbs are vegetables and foods we also use to cook or make tea with. So it is common that when we eat or drink, we talk about the effects of these things we put in our body.
In general foods (most meats) that are fried or baked are perceived as “hot”, or containing “fire”, foods that are raw or boil (and most vegetables) are cold. To achieve balance we need to eat balanced amounts of both. How we feel is important indication of balance. When we have too much “fire”, we might have symptoms like small infections in the throat, mouth or sinus area. At these moments we just need to eat more foods that are “cold”. It would help. Certain herbs are stronger and are used as medicines. Lamb is particularly hot meat. Tea, and especially green tea, can be used to clean up the residues in the blood and intestines. These are only a few examples of the most basic common sense.
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