We left off last month describing the way in which Eastern Nutrition sees food. Let us now bring this to bear on the way modern societies actually eat, as compared to more traditional cultures.
Americans, in particular, tend to feast mostly on intensely sweet, rich, and thermally warming food. Foremost is an overemphasis on animal products. While these provide rich nutrition if they are of good quality, the domestication and processing practices of modern animal “farms” yield a poor quality product at best. Furthermore, preparation methods often leave the meat dry, tasteless, and difficult to digest, while the milk is often drunk cold and unspiced, leading directly to phlegm. In contrast to this, traditional cultures rely on vegetal sources of richness, like legumes, roots, and seeds/nuts. Where flesh and milk are consumed, it is preferred fresh and prepared in easily digested ways.
Of vegetal matter, Americans tend to eat the soft sweet parts and discard the rest. For example, a whole-wheat berry is separated into the white fruiting part (white flour), and the seed (germ) and skin (bran). We generally eat only the fruit, and a lot of it- from pasta to bread to pastry- and toss the seed and skin, which add a more complex taste, texture, and substance to the experience of eating wheat. Next up are fresh fruit, and fruit products like juices and jams. Of them, we typically don’t eat the skins/rinds, seeds, or even pulp, all of which add essential bitter and pungent qualities that balance the rather intense sweetness of the fruity part itself. Following in line is the wide consumption of refined sugar, a substance divorced from the pulp and highly nutritious molasses part of the plant.
Other plant parts sorely missing include dark leafy greens, like parsley, spinach, chard, kale, escarole, and romaine, not to forget the aerial parts of carrots, beets, turnips, and most other roots. These typically have complex tastes quite different from iceberg lettuce, which is mostly sweet and pale in color and nutrition. In addition, they lend themselves to steaming, sautéing, and stewing, which gently release their flavor and substance to us. And, of course, no food would be complete without being properly dressed and spiced. For this purpose, nature makes available some marvelous things, from licorice /root/ to cinnamon /bark/ to vanilla /bean/ to basil /leaves/ to pepper /seeds/ to /fruit /and /grain /vinegars. These “spices” (which are spicy, yet also bitter, sweet, and sour, and not necessarily “hot”), step up and round out the flavor and character of a dish. It is no small wonder that the frozen, bland, overcooked and dry “vegetables” so often served as “sides” end up staying on the fringe, if eaten at all.
Finally, of minerals we consume large quantities of refined salt. This “pure” substance plays havoc with our fluid and blood metabolism, while whole unrefined salt, which is by a rule /moist/ and /grayish/, provides well-balanced mineral nutrition and will not be craved in excess.
Traditional cuisine, on the other hand, is balanced relative to the people and climate it serves, be it Asian, Indian, European, African, Latin, or Native American. The common themes are the use of a variety of fresh local produce, and balancing tastes, natures, and thermal qualities.
A quick way to appreciate a well-rounded meal is to visit a truly ethnic restaurant and order traditional fare. Ultimately, though, you will want to frequent local stores or farms that sell fresh produce, and begin to experiment with cooking these things. You may wish to use an ethnic cookbook, rely on recipes from others, or invent your own meals based on the universal principles briefly outlined in these articles. Also, practitioners skilled in Eastern Nutrition will be able to help, especially where the intent is to improve one’s health through the diet.