Understanding Food's Four Natures and Five Tastes
Chinese people traditionally choose food based on four natures and five tastes, reflecting unique principles of daily life science.
The four natures refer to cold, hot, warm, and cool; the five tastes are sweet, sour, bitter, spicy, and salty. In TCM, these are collectively called "nature and taste." Different food natures and tastes lead to varied functions. When selecting food—especially for dietary supplementation—one must rationally choose based on food properties and tailor intake to individual constitution.
Food properties are generally categorized into three types: balanced nourishment, cooling nourishment, and warming nourishment.
• Balanced nourishment (neutral nature): Foods with mild, stable properties suitable for all, regardless of health status or whether one has cold or heat conditions, yin deficiency or yang deficiency. Examples include glutinous rice, soybeans, corn, sweet potatoes, millet, broad beans, peas, taro, carrots, lotus seeds, lilies, peanuts, sesame, grapes, plums, tangerines, pork, duck meat, blackfish, yellow croaker, silver fish, crucian carp, jellyfish, loaches.
• Cooling nourishment (cold nature): Can clear heat, calm the heart, moisten dryness, quench thirst, and generate body fluids. Suitable for those with yin deficiency and internal heat, but contraindicated for those with yin deficiency and cold sensitivity. Examples include millet, mung beans, buckwheat, bean sprouts, tofu, barley, pears, sugarcane, apples, bananas, winter melon, eggplants, sweet potatoes, watermelons, cucumbers, honeydew melons, bitter gourds, water chestnuts, lotus roots, seaweed, purple laver, rapeseed oil, rabbit meat, duck eggs, freshwater snails, pork rib soup, pig kidneys, frog meat.
• Warming nourishment (warm nature): Can generate warmth, warm the stomach, boost yang energy, strengthen qi, resist cold, and maintain body heat. Ideal for those with yang deficiency and cold sensitivity, but contraindicated for those with yin deficiency and internal heat, as it may worsen internal heat and cause symptoms like dry throat, bitter tongue, toothache, bloody stools, and constipation. Examples include wheat flour, soybean oil, glutinous rice, alcohol, vinegar, chili peppers, ginger, lettuce, scallions, longan, walnuts, lychees, jujubes, peaches, rooster meat, dog meat, lamb, shrimp, carp.
TCM follows the principle: “Cold conditions treated with warmth, heat conditions treated with coldness; deficiency treated with tonification, excess treated with purgation.” Once people understand food natures and tastes, they can rationally select foods according to this principle.