A Short History of Five Phase Dietary
Therapy:The Origins of Five Color Vegetable Combining ©
By Leslie Lee.
The Five Phase Theory originated as a cosmology or philosophical theory to explain the workings of the cosmos, and was associated with the Yin-Yang Five Elements School of Thought. It applied to all aspects of knowledge-history, the rise and fall of ruling dynasties, agriculture, and so on. It was systematized during the Warring States period of Chinese history, (403-221 B.C.), mainly by Tsou Yen.
Then, in the classic medical text known as The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, the theories of yin-yang and the five phases became the foundation of Chinese medicine, called the medicine of systematic correspondences. In it there are rules for cooks on how to balance the diet using foods as medicine. The Yellow Emperor's Classic is the origin of cuisine with medicinal values.
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The point was, and is, that food is the best medicine and that only when food fails to cure should herbs be used. Food as medicine is called dietary therapy. As a primary component of Chinese medicine we can thank Chang Chung-ching (150-219 A.D), the Chinese Hippocrates, who insured that dietary therapy be linked to the five phases and the medical-pharmaceutical tradition. His cinnamon soup recipe is still popular today. |
Five phase dietary therapy matches vegetables to a holistic model of the body consisting of five integrated, interacting organ systems whose health depends on an ongoing supply of nourishment. Vegetables are classified as food herbs.
According to The
Yellow Emperor's Classic, "Herbs come forth in the five colors-green,
red, yellow, white and black; there is nothing beyond the sight of these.
Herbs also come forth in the five flavors-sour, bitter, sweet, pungent
and salty; there is nothing beyond the taste of these." Over the centuries,
chefs trained in the classical tradition have adapted the five flavor/color
classification scheme to include all the colors of the visual spectrum
found in food. 
Color
Vegetable Combining for Eyesight © is one aspect of this legacy.
What’s kept five phase dietary therapy alive and made it work from then until now is the cataloging of the medicinal, and nutritional values of foods and herbs into vast botanical pharmacopoeias or materia medicas according to 1) five phase correspondences and 2) their actual effectiveness as medicines. Getting ahead of the story, when government took over the training of physicians and the publishing of the materia medicas, herbs, vegetables, and formulas were tested and then allowed to be published only if they were proven to be effective, based on clinical experience. For example, if an eye tonic for better vision made the cut, it meant that the doctors and authorities were satisfied that the formula had been shown to actually improve vision in patients.
In the materia medicas (over the centuries they number about 1,000) foods of each season are assigned a flavor that corresponds to a specific color, so that a talented chef can learn to create colorful health dishes by linking flavor to color. The reason there are five phases to the four seasons is that Indian summer, or the transition from summer to autumn is a separate phase.
The key to combining the full spectrum of vegetable colors in a single dish is to match them to five flavors and balance them for taste, flavor, and aroma, carefully choosing only vegetables with a history of combining well with each other and avoiding ones that conflict with each other.
Although the numbers of five phase influenced chefs in the West today is small, they can be found practicing the art to prepare colorful fusion cuisine dishes in restaurants ranging from those of upscale Las Vegas hotel-resorts to neighborhood vegetarian restaurants.
In China, traditional dietary therapy is still practiced in vegetarian restaurants serving what’s known as Chinese restorative cuisine. These restaurants prepare extremely sophisticated vegetarian dishes simulating meat, poultry, pork and fish tastes. Some of them are part of large pharmacies with hundreds of wooden drawers on the wall. In each drawer there is a specific dried herb and when the waiter comes to your table he or she asks how you feel, than prepares dishes with various herbs in it. What always amazes foreigners who visit these restaurants are the number of elderly patrons who appear so spry and healthy.
In each generation, like links in a chain, physicians, through research and clinical experience, applied their own findings to previous materia medicas. According to five phase theory, in addition to color and flavor, foods are classified according to their temperature in the body (cold, cool, warm, hot, neutral), the direction of their movement in the body, which acupuncture meridian or conduit they have an affinity for, and their therapeutic effects.
It’s not as complicated as it sounds! If you’ve ever cooked or eaten Chinese food these principles are second nature because they’re based on balance and harmony. For example, in every day Cantonese cuisine there are a huge variety of medicinal soups that are all classified this way. Any respectable chef of Cantonese cuisine will have an idea of where food lies along a cold-hot spectrum and whether its effect is “moistening,” dry, hot etc..
 Li
Shih-chen 1518-1593.The
physician Li Shih-chen spent about 30 years compiling China’s greatest
botanical encyclopedia/materia medica: The Materia Medica of Li-Shih-chen.
In its 52 chapters all plant species are individually treated and
associated with the five phases. It includes vegetables and has culinary
and dietetic chapters. It has been widely translated in the West and
throughout Asia. |
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The great classical period of the materia medicas and dietary therapy lasted through the end of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.). By the end of the Ming most of the food plants of the New World, with their powerful contents of antioxidant vitamins A and C, had been evaluated and cataloged according to the five phase correspondences linking flavor and color to their healing properties. Especially in Canton (Guangzhou), inventive chefs with the knowledge and understanding of how to link flavor to color were ready for the diversity of the new color pallet, inspired by foods such as tomatoes, corn, multi-colored bell peppers, red chili peppers, squash, green beans, cashews, peanuts, papaya, pineapple, and sweet potatoes.
In the Chinese diaspora that followed, chefs armed with this knowledge applied it in cooking with the local available produce wherever they found themselves. In the western United States, many imported for cultivation their favorite vegetables. In this they were joined by Italian immigrants who imported Mediterranean vegetables. The result was year-round availability of the full color spectrum of produce.
Because of this system, over 60,000 herbs, foods, and formulas; their interactions, medicinal, nutritional, therapeutic values and effectiveness have been carefully recorded. And the tradition continues. Within our generation, the most recent materia medica contains just under 6,000 entries.
Six Dynasties (220-589 A.D.): The Taoist Physicians.
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Ko Hung (281-341A.D.)attempted to develop an elixer made up of all the colors of the rainbow, with the |
| yellow color, today called lutein-zeaxanthin, as the fulcrum or balancing point for the other colors. | ||
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Food for thought. If the rainbow can appear on this rooster’s comb, why can’t it be in the food you eat too? Ko Hung thought the rainbow is in food, do you?
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Both Ko Hung and his contemporary, Tao Hung-ching are closely associated with Shang-ching Taoism, which had its own vision of physiology, related to various visualization techniques sometimes called “inner gazing,” whereby you visualize the colors of the food you eat. Its beliefs can be traced back to the early Han Dynasty and the Prince of Huainan (180-122 B.C), who had a particularly Taoist spin on the Yin-Yang Five Elements School. He was the patron of a coterie of scholars who believed that one aspect of eating involves the internalization of the light in food.
Shang-ching Taoism went a step further, advocating internal visualization of the color associated with each of the five (yin) organs, called the five viscera. According to Shang-ching Taoism, each of the organs is protected against illness by one of the five colors. When they are nourished and healthy, their colors are visualized as strong and vivid, when they are weak, the colors diminish. Eating color-rich vegetables (and fruit) contributes to seeing more intensely radiant color hues.
But closing the eyes and seeing the five colors is just the first step. The real root of health and longevity is to be found in the Taoist physiology expressed in the Yellow Court Scriptures, and another text, known as the Taiping-jing. Here the five colors guard, and are united in the light of central harmony, the color of the Earth phase of the five phases, also called the light of the One, where there is no division between the two forces of yin and yang, where the center inside the body is one with the center outside the body, and the practitioner is IN the center. The text reads:
“In guarding the light of the One, you may see a light entirely yellow. When this develops a greenish tinge, it is the light of central harmony. This is a potent remedy of the Tao.”
There are different techniques to visualize the light of central harmony. According to Taoist chi gung theory [i.e. breathing/meditation exercize then called tao-yin], there are three main internal channels of energy located in the center of the body, two of them pass through the center of the eyes, another (the lower tan t’ien) is located two inches below the navel. For the beginner, breathe from the lower tan t’ien and visualize a golden yellow color, edged or tinged by green in the center of the eyes, or the macula area, where the yellow pigments, lutein and zeaxanthin are concentrated.
Ko Hung was the most famous doctor of his time. He formulated vegetable drugs and other formulas, using five phase correspondences to capture all the colors of the rainbow, primarily with the intention of developing elixirs for longevity. His attempts to find the essence of yellow, the color of the center, reflected a characteristic of this Taoist period of Chinese medicine: a scientist’s determination to select exactly the right drug in the correct dosage.
His experiments led him to believe that the brilliant color of gold could be compounded as a stable yellow color with plus/minus or male/female values. He ultimately failed by resorting to using minerals and gold itself, but his legacy lies in the attempt.
Finding the true color of gold for vegetable blends would have to wait for Columbus’ discovery of corn in the New World. The irony is that Columbus, who was searching for gold, found it in corn. If only Ko Hung could have met the Pueblo Indians, who regarded corn as one of their five elements: corn, earth, air, fire and water!
As a physician, Ko Hung had a profound and practical impact on preventive medicine. His Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergencies put inexpensive, easy-to-find remedies in the hands of the ordinary person, and has been continually revised and used.
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T’ao Hung-ching (425-536 A.D.) Supported by the emperor, T’ao Hung-ching lived in a three story dwelling atop Mao-shan mountain, with a laboratory for dietetic research, and China’s first planetarium on the top floor. |
The ancient saying that “Food and medicine come from the same source,” goes back to the Shen-nung pen-ts’ao ching, the first known Chinese materia medica, circa 3000 B.C. and is attributed to the legendary Father of chinese plants and medicine, Shen Nung.
In it vegetables are classed as food herbs.
Tao Hung-ching’s great contribution was that after collecting all the available materia medicas of past centuries, he published a revised version of the Shen-nung pen-ts’ao ching, doubling the herb entries, and reaffirming the classification of vegetables as an herb category, or food herbs, as well as listing seventy botanical drugs relating to over thirty eye ailments. Of these, forty were for “clearing one’s vision”(ming mu).
Many of his botanical formulas are for nourishing the five viscera, following changes through the seasons, and relate to the internal visualization of the color associated with each organ according to Shang-ching Taoism.
Although they failed to develop an elixer for immortality, the attempts of the Taoist physicians to compound longevity elixirs added links to the five phase chain culminating in five color vegetable dishes that would be based on eye elixirs, or eye tonics. The linking thread was that yellow is the essential color in balancing the five phases in nature, whether in vegetables or medicinal herbs. To the Taoists, balance was an unalterable law of nature. Even today, opthalmological medications containing "the three yellow ingredients" can be found in formulas accompanying five spheres, or five wheel eye treatment.
Sui dynasty 589-618: The Emperor’s Physician
Ch’ao Yuan-fang (550-630
A.D)
The Sui Dynasty laid the foundation for the Tang dynasty, the golden age of China.
By the Sui, ophthalmology had become recognized as a specialized medical field and “Learned medicine of the Chinese upper classes directed its attention almost exclusively to an internal interpretation of ophthalmological problems.”*
Ch’ao Yuan-fang was the emperor’s physician. Under Ch’ao Yuan-fang’s direction a panel of doctors compiled an encyclopedic work, General Treatise on the Etiology and Symptoms of Diseases, that rocked the world of its day.
First, it was the first specialized work in Chinese medical history that dealt with the causes of fifty-one different ophthalmological illnesses, including night blindness and cataracts. Secondly, it influenced generations of physicians, to the present. From this time on the medicine of systematic correspondences was to be the theoretical foundation for any physician diagnosing and treating the eyes.
Ch’ao Yuan-fang also influenced dietary prevention and treatment of eye ailments, by stating that eye health depends on a supply of nourishment from the body, particularly the liver. For example, if the liver is depleted it “cannot nourish the eyes.” This echoes The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine which states that “the liver opens into the eyes,”and that “when the liver is harmonized, the eyes can distinguish the five colors.”
Western trained physicians
usually relate this analysis to the optic nerve’s high demand for glycogen
(about 30% of the glucose available) from the liver. Also, both western
and Chinese
medicine agree that the body’s metabolism is controlled by the liver.
*Paul U.Unshuld,
Chinese Medicine, 1998, p.65.
T’ang dynasty 618-907: The Doctor and the Emperor.
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The T’ang dynasty produced the physician Sun Szu-miao, who since his death has been revered as Yao Wang, the King of Medicine, and China’s outstanding emperor, T’ai Tsung the Great, seen here in a yellow robe. T'ai Tsung conferred honors on the dynasty’s most eminent physician, Sun Szu-miao. Because their paths crossed, future generations were insured that dietary therapy would always be a culinary art form. |  |
In ancient China only the royal family could wear the color yellow. Its symbolism in the five phase system is that of the center, to which all other colors, and forces of nature converge in balance. The emperor in yellow robes symbolizes the center of power and corresponds to the Chinese name for China-the Middle Kingdom.
Sons
of the emperor wore orange, because in the creative sequence of the five
phases, fire (red) generates earth (yellow), so orange- a combination
of red and yellow, was an indication that the son was in line to be emperor.
You’ll see how orange as a food value is a transition from red to yellow
in
Color Vegetable Combining for Eyesight©.
One reason medicine and particularly dietary therapy benefited greatly from association with the emperor, was that T’ai Tsung was descended from Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism. Restaurants in China originated in the T’ang, and outside the capital city, spectacular mountain monasteries often served as places to eat for royalty and the cultural elite of the day. Sun Szu-miao himself represented the tradition of the monk-doctor- sages. He wrote his 30 medical treatises from a mountain retreat.
One of the monasteries preparing cuisine for royalty was the famous Shaolin Temple. When T’ai Tsung, who was a military strategist and swordsman, was fighting to unify China, thirteen monk-fighters from the Temple joined him. Their ability so impressed the future emperor, that after ascending the throne he permitted 500 monks to train there.
Ironically, the five phase theory entered Japan during the T’ang period in a martial arts context, where it was adopted by the Samurai in sword movements called Kamae.
To the vegetable chef, whether in the palace or monastery kitchen, the debt to T’ai Tsung can be summed up in one word: spinach.
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Spinach’s history as a culinary medicine is long and varied. The physician known as the father of holistic healing, who advocated that food is the best medicine, was Moses Maimonides (1135-1204 ), the court physician to Sultan Saladin. He developed a medicinal tonic combining spinach and beets. |
In a vision boosting context, spinach entered the materia medica stream as a culinary medicine for night blindness and (with chrysanthemum flowers) as a remedy for acute conjunctivitis.
Dr. Sun’s legacy for good vision includes: prescriptions using ordinary foods and herbs, prepared properly, for many eye conditions and eye protection, including treating night blindness with foods we now know are highest in vitamin A, a list of opthalmological acupuncture points, and works on the causes of many eye diseases.
Two of his most famous sayings are:
“ A truly good physician first finds out the cause of the illness, and having found that, he first tries to cure it by food. Only when food fails does he prescribe medication,”
and,
“All people older than forty-five years have the feeling of a gradual decrease of vision. After the age of sixty, vision gradually brightens up again.”
How can that be, you ask? Vision getting better? Well, all you skeptics-it happened to him. He must have taken his own advice to heart, as he lived to the age of 102 and is said to have had acute hearing and eyesight at age 95 and, never stopped reading.
Lastly, until recently, historians have credited him with writing the great ophthalmological classic, Essential Subtleties on the Silver Sea. Current scholarship assigns its compilation to the 14th or 15th century with publication in the 16th century. In it Dr. Sun appears with a discourse on the “eye connection” (mu-xi), probably the optic nerve, and the “physical relatedness” of the eye not only with the brain but also with the five viscera (organs) of the five phase theory.*
In 1781, a new edition of Essential Subtleties on the Silver Sea was submitted to the spinach-loving emperor, Ch'ien-lung, and was approved as an official, Medical Text by Imperial Order, with an introductory comment that its prescriptions for the treatment of the eye "are quite useful."**
*Essential
Subtleties on the Silver Sea, The Yin-hai Jing-wei: A Chinese Classic
on Ophthalmology.
Trans by Jurgen Kovacs and Paul U. Unshuld, 1998, pp.24,64.
** Ibid, 122
Sung dynasty 960-1279 A.D. Transitioning from Medicine to Food: The first five color vegetable dishes.
The Sung dynasty was a cosmopolitan, urban culture, whose second capital Hangzhou, was the world’s largest city, housing over a million people. Medicine was now under the authority of an Imperial Medical Bureau. One of its nine specialties was ophthalmology and by the end of the Ming dynasty in 1644 it would reach its maturity under state patronage. The Bureau acted as a drug clearinghouse for formulas and folk remedies from all corners of the empire, which were tested and published at government expense in materia medicas, monographs, and official pharmacopoeias—only if they were proven to be effective.
Herbs and vegetables had always been classified according to the temperatures they generate in the body along a cold-hot continuum. Now, practitioners of the medicine of systematic correspondences were to focus more on the effects of the five flavors in generating specific temperatures called the five energies--cold, hot, warm, cool, and neutral. The goal was to achieve a balance along the lines of what western doctors call homeostasis, "…a dynamic steady state-a delicate balance maintained by the many separate regulatory processes carried out by all organ systems."*
Progress was rapid, and by the end of the Sung dynasty, the medical baton had been passed, or perhaps shared with is a better way to say it- Imperial chefs as well as humble cooks. By the end of the Sung, Chinese cuisine was almost fully evolved, and the goal of China’s physicians--culinary medicine for the ordinary person, was at hand.
The following physicians were two of the masters of the period. Both practiced internal medicine.
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Liu Wan-su (1110-1200).Liu Wan-su associated the five phases with all drugs in determining their actions in the body, believing that unclear vision was due to a surplus of heat and required drugs with cooling effects. His work later influenced the treatment of contagious diseases. |
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Li Gao (1180-1251). Li Gao's contribution to dietary therapy can be summarized as: harmony through digestion. His main thesis was that based on his own clinical experience, poor digestion interfered with the ability of all organs to nourish the eyes, and in the introduction to his medical text, Secrets Stored in the Orchid Chamber, he refers to the Yellow Emperor's Classic with a "Discourse on the Meeting of All Vessels in the Eye." The basic |
A specific eye prescription in Secrets Stored in the Orchid Chamber to improve vision was reputed to be very effective, but Li Gao's enduring reputation rests on his famous ginseng-astragalus energy tonic called "The King of Combinations." It is still the most popular energy tonic used throughout Asia.
Because flavor-temperature classifications for pharmaceutical drugs are the same as for vegetables used for cooking, it was not a difficult step for the best chefs to assume a crucial role in nourishing body and eyes. They did it by balancing the five flavors and colors in single dishes as well as in elaborate banquets, where combinations mattered more than their individual components and the basic principles of color, fragrance, taste and texture were the gold standard. In the process, the gap between food and medicine narrowed.
The invention of movable type in the 1040’s in China four centuries earlier than in the West, was also a contributing factor, providing people access to the various materia medicas and to cookbooks. The first all-vegetable cookbooks were published in the Sung.
During the Sung dynasty chefs of the Imperial court who specialized in preparing vegetables integrated them into 24-course banquets. They developed techniques that linked as many as 20 vegetables of different colors to the five flavors.
In the Sung capital these food combining techniques were widely practiced at all levels of society: “In the streets and markets dishes of rice coloured with the five colours (the colours of the four cardinal points, green, red, white and black, and yellow for the point at the centre of time and space) were auctioned.”**
Restaurants flourished in Hangzhou, but it was the Sung monasteries, of which there were scores in and around Hangzhou, from which today’s five color vegetable dishes originated. During this period monasteries competed in preparing vegetable banquets to satisfy wealthy patrons and to attract converts. Tradition has it that the first five color vegetable dishes originated at Hangzhou’s Lingyin monastery. Today, the Lingyin Temple is still the main attraction in Hangzhou, and five color vegetable dishes can be enjoyed at the vegetarian restaurant neighboring the Temple.
No one knows exactly when five color vegetable combining for eyesight became a specialty its own right. Historically, the techniques passed from chef to chef. Five color vegetable combining for eyesight is generally attributed to have sprung from five color vegetable dishes based on a composite of various classical herbal eye tonics known as eye elixir medications. In particular, the elixir with the three yellow ingredients, elixer of the azure clouds, azure sky elixer, yin elixer, yang elixer, and balanced elixer.
Today, the kinds and variety of vegetables have changed and expanded, and 21st century chefs who use the techniques of five color vegetable combining are creating contemporary fusion cuisine dishes of exquisite taste, delicacy and visual appeal. But they still must rely on the authority of the materia medicas. Respect for the classical tradition can never be forgotten or ignored.
The basic technique
of
Color
Vegetable Combining for Eyesight©
follows the classical model. It classifies the full color spectrum of
vegetables into five color groups, then combines them according to two
cycles ( in Chinese, creative and control/Sheng and Ko).
The two cycles are balanced to the color yellow.
** Jacques Gernet, Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion 1250-1276, 1962, p.186.