Foods mainly include five flavors, sour, bitter, sweet, pungent and salty as well as four natures of cold, hot, warm and cool. Foods of different natures and flavors vary from one to another in their actions. So, food preference inevitably gives rise to diseases or is not beneficial to the treatment of and recovery from diseases if it lasts long.

For instance, the patients with yin deficiency or diseases due to yin deficiency should select sweet and moist-natured foods or sweet and cool-natured food to nourish yin and clear away heat. If they eat or addict to warm-natured tonic foods, this not only makes it difficult to restore the balance among qi, blood, yin and yang, but also promotes the internal generation of heat to further consume yin and essence and aggravate the original state of diseases; on the contrary, the patients with yang deficiency or diseases due to yang deficiency should select sweet, warm-natured and tonic food while addiction to cold-and cool-natured foods unavoidably makes yang deficient and cold even more severe, and the diseases worsened. Learn more about Chinese medicine, please continue to read Four Natures and Five Flavors.

The same is true of flavor preference. For example, overeating pungent foods may cause fire to consume yin; overeating sweet foods may stagnate the functional activities of qi; overeating salty foods may injure the bone and consume qi; overeating bitter foods may dry and consume gastric fluid; overeating sour and astringent foods may make the liver qi stagnated and the spleen qi consumed, etc. Therefore, TCM has been advocating "the balance of the five flavors″ since ancient times. Only by balancing the five flavors can the human body take in nutrients in an all-round way and health be enhanced. This is beneficial to the treatment of diseases and the rehabilitation of the body. Learn more about Chinese medicine, please continue to read Meridian tropism of Chinese Medicinal Herbs.