Feng Shui and Food

Feng Shui and food are closely related. Applying Feng Shui principles to buying, preparing, and serving your food can help you improve health, attract wealth, and enhance household harmony. The ability to feed people with sumptuous, balanced meals represents wealth in Feng Shui. You can achieve this balance by varying color, aroma, and opposites in your foods.

Balancing Color
The Five Elements are the way Feng Shui represents colors. Each of the Elements (Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, Wood) is represented by a color, and you balance these Elements through the use of a variety of color in your food choices. You don't have to eat every color at every meal, but the more colors you vary in your meal, the more you bring good Feng Shui harmony to your table.

For example, if you start with a chicken breast and add mashed potatoes and cauliflower, you end up with a plate of all-white food and a pretty bland looking meal without any Feng Shui presence. However, add a colorful stir-fry of red, orange, and green bell peppers, red tomatoes, and purple eggplant to the chicken breast and you have a much better Feng Shui choice. Plus, you have created a healthier and much better tasting meal.

Balancing Aromas
Doesn’t it feel great when you smell your favorite food cooking in the kitchen? Aromatic seasonings are also an important part of Feng Shui and food because they help address all of our senses. Seasonings and spices like garlic, scallions, cayenne pepper, sage, dill, and ginger lend their flavors to the main ingredients, as well as their scents to the kitchen. Plus, these flavorful scents release negative energy from a home and fill everything with positive energy.

Balancing Opposites
Balance is a critical component of Feng Shui, and the principle of "yin and yang" in Feng Shui refer to balancing the opposites around you to create harmony. You apply this principle to your meals by mixing foods that are yin (cooling) and yang (warming). Yin foods and flavors are cool, mild, or bland. Yang foods and flavors are warm, bold, and spicy.

You naturally find this balance in many Chinese recipes, including sweet and sour, hot and sour, and strong flavored dishes paired with plain rice. The principle of yin and yang can also be used to explain why most of us love dishes that mix soft or tender foods with crisp and crunchy textures.

But you don't have to cook only Asian style to bring the benefits of Feng Shui and food to your table. The following are some of the common yin and yang foods that you can combine to create Feng Shui balance in your meals.

Yin Foods
Yin foods are aromatic, juicy, and soft. They include bean sprouts, boiled foods, cabbage, carrots, celery, cucumber, duck, some fish and fruits, greens, honey, melons, milk, pears, pork, potatoes, seaweed and soybean products, white turnips, water, watercress, winter squash, white foods.

Yang Foods
Yang foods are hard, salty, and sour. They include beef, broiled meats, catfish, chicken and chicken soup, red chiles, eggs, eggplant, fatty meats, fried foods, garlic, ginger, green peppers, hot and spicy foods, leeks, onions, liquor, mushrooms, peanuts, persimmons, beans, peppers, tomatoes, sesame oil, shellfish, sour foods, tangerines, vinegar, wine.

Keep in mind that how you serve your food on can also increase your abundance. The best way to serve up a meal that symbolizes prosperity is to set up your table with all of that china and crystal that has been hiding in your cabinets. What are you saving it for? You can make every day a special day when you give some thought to Feng Shui and food.