What is the principles of selecting food in TCM

Condition analysis:
1. In the spring season, the main foods should be those with sweet taste. Sweet foods have the effects of enhancing Qi, nourishing, replenishing, tonifying or enriching organs, and normalizing the function of stomach and spleen. In spring season, we should eat more sweet taste foods to keep in harmony with growing conditions of natural Qi. Sweet taste foods include honey, sweet fruits, nuts, yams, sweet vegetables such as carrots and potatoes, and sweet cereals such as corn, rice and millet.

2. Eat the proper amount of foods with a pungent taste. Pungent foods can aid perspiration and promote Qi movement upwards and outwards. Pungent foods include scallion, onion, garlic, ginger, radish, daikon, leek and chives.

3. Eat foods in season. Foods produced in season and locally, will mostly meet the body’s needs – as opposed to foods harvested in different seasons; even different months. In Ontario, February foods include potatoes and onions. March foods include leeks and cabbage. April foods include radish, cauliflower and lettuce. May foods include asparagus, celery and spinach.

4. Avoid overeating foods with sour taste and cold nature. Sourness acts as an astringent, attributed to liver. Overeating food with sour taste may impair the liver’s function, resulting in liver Qi stagnation. Many kinds of diseases or illness are related with liver Qi stagnation, such as depression, digestive problems, pain-symptom’s diseases, menstruation problems. Sour taste foods include lemon, pomegranate, black plum, grapefruit, unripe tomatoes, and unripe orange and tangerine fruit. Foods with a cold nature may suppress Yang Qi. Cold foods include watermelon, bamboo sprout, pear.

5. Apply a medicinal diet. People easily get sick during the seasonal change from winter to spring, because the body is still adjusting to the weather change at beginning. When spring is arriving, utilizing a medicated diet to detoxify is a good way to prevent infectious diseases and dermopathy. Later in this article, I will introduce different herb teas for treating and preventing seasonal diseases.

Instructions:
BEST FOOD FOR SPRING
1. Fruits and nuts: Apples, dates, lychees, longans, walnuts, peanuts, chestnuts.

2. Cereals, grains, and legumes: Rice, corn, millet, oatmeal, sorghum, soybeans, black gram, adzuki bean, red kidney bean, broad bean.

3. Meat, poultry and fish: Hen, turkey, rabbit meat, shrimp, crucian carp, eel, chicken egg, goose egg.

4. Vegetables, seaweeds, and mushrooms: Potatoes, onions, carrots, chives, scallions, radishes, daikon, broccoli, asparagus, lettuce, cooked spinach, coriander, cauliflower, garlic, leeks, eggplants, Chinese cabbage, wax gourds, yams, sweet potatoes, celery, common mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, white wood ears, black wood ears.

5. Herbs, spices, condiments, oils: Perilla leaf, peppermint, dandelion, honeysuckle flower, basil, parsley, wolfberry, fleece-flower root, liquorice, astragalus, rhubarb, ginger, pepper, honey, sesame oil.