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In order to keep the right ''yin-yang'' balance in your body, you need, naturally, to follow a well-balanced diet. We can classify all foodstuffs in two ways; first, there are some with a warming quality, which increase ''yang'', other are cooling and increasing ''yin'', while other still are neutral. From the point of view of humoral dietetics, this is nothing new. But, secondly, different foodstuffs affect different internal organs with various strength, so we can assign to each food the movement which corresponds to the organs it affects the most. Alright, but how can you tell, in everyday life, which food belongs to which movement? I suppose you already know that. That's right, by the taste! For example, sour foods, which tend to pull ''qi'' downwards and inwards, have the strongest effect on the liver and the gallbladder, so they belong to the tree movement (even though, as we remember, it channels ''qi'' upwards and outwards). Sour foods are typically cooling or, at most, slightly warming. Green herbs and veggies belong to the tree movement as well, even if they're no really sour. The bitter taste belongs to the fire movement and usually corresponds to the warming quality. Anything that is sweet or just mildly tasting (such as dairy and eggs) belongs to earth; pungent, to metal; and anything that is salty or comes from water (including fresh water), to the water movement.
Every meal should contain a little of each taste, but the proportion of tastes in what you eat should take into account your constitution, age, your current maladies, and season. In the spring, the tree (that is, sour foods) should dominatesdominate; in the summer, fire (bitter – but, preferably, not too warming – foods); in the autumn, metal (pungent); and in the winter, water (salty, but not too cooling either). The earth movement has been assigned to transition periods in between the seasons, but in any case, sweets are what your body needs the most throughout the year.
And now a few words about five-movement cooking. The best way to cook is by doing it in accordance with the natural cycle of movements. The sequence goes like this: the tree is consumed by fire; the fire leaves ash, that is, earth; earth is where you can find metal; a metal bucket carries water; water helps the tree grow; and so on, and so forth. You can arrange the movements in other cycles too, but this one is enough for our purposes: tree, fire, earth, metal, water. You don't have to always start with the tree; just keep the same sequence.
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As you can see, despite some obvious differences, there is also much that humoral, Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medical theories have in common. People used to find connection connections between elements and seasons, human temperaments and stages of life, internal organs and bodily fluids, diseases, tastes and warming or cooling qualities of foods and drinks in most diverse civilizations. And in all civilizations, these ideas influenced what people ate and how they cooked it.
And in the next post we shall return to Europe, to investigate a certain puzzle which will takes us to Poland, Austria, France and Britain.