The latest proof of this is the production of hors-sol-vegetables, it is claimed. A new trend is called vertical farming. Can it be trusted? And do vegan meat substitutes really contain everything we need to stay healthy? One hopes so, but there is still scepticism. If you examine the eating behaviour of people in the West, you will find that in everyday life they actually make a very narrow selection from what nature has to offer in terms of food. Out of hundreds of possible valuable things from nature, we have cherry-picked very few and believe that this is enough to live on. But it is not. Deficiency diseases of all kinds occur. Despite (or perhaps because of) excessive milk consumption, for example, we have a calcium problem. Apparently this disappears from the bones and women in particular suffer from osteoporosis, or bone loss, in old age. In China (at least in the south), no dairy products are consumed and yet, if some surveys are to be believed, people hardly have an osteoporosis problem.

Let's take a look at what is on offer in the major food markets: 95% of the products are not intended by nature. If we look at the remaining 5%, namely in the vegetable section, we find a few products, not even a few dozen. More vegetables grow in my vegetable garden than are on offer in the large-scale distributors. The fact that these few products are themselves largely artificial products, inflated with fertiliser or other tricks, makes things even worse. Even organic vegetables are not spared the artificial tricks.

It would be nice if people would at least make use of the narrow range of products on offer, but this is not the case. The range continues to be reduced. The vegetable section often receives no attention at all or is just a side dish. You often hear landlords in restaurants where the working world meets complaining that people only eat the meat and pasta, while the vegetables go back to the kitchen and end up in the pig bucket. One of my sons was in civil defence for a week in 2022. He had meat with chips or pasta for lunch, but no vegetables, no salad.

If you go to the market, things don't look much better. The The majority of vendors are no longer genuine market traders or farmers, but traders. Even at the organic stall, the goods come from all over the the world. The range is only minimally increased by a few products. A few a few salads are added, dandelion, purslane, watercress. A few teas are also added. But that is by no means what life absolutely and absolutely needs.

Let's give an example, because it's clear that nobody can really imagine what else is out there:

All of the following are edible and used to be consumed regularly:

Nettle, red dead nettle, white dead nettle, woodruff, wild garlic, wild hops, violets, daisies, chickweed, cowslip, field mustard, honeysuckle, shepherd's purse, barbara herb, coltsfoot leaves, plantain, mugwort, ground ivy, parsnip, yarrow, quendel, dost, goutweed, meadow hogweed, comfrey, common viper's bugloss common viper's bugloss, common ox-tongue, meadow hogweed, sorrel, great burdock burdock, donkey thistle, white melde, good Henry, meadow knotweed, elderflowers and berries, rosehip, brooktongue, brunelle, true angelica, bellflower angelica, bellflower, meadow knapweed, rock wall pepper, heather, garlic rocket, chicory, meadow foamwort, spoonwort, buttonweed, evening primrose, narrow-leaved willowherb, lesser celandine, wood spinach, arum.

Most of the plants mentioned can provide real meals and are not just intended as a sparse decoration on a salad.

And who else knows about the uses of our trees?

• Rowan berries, the berries of the mountain ash (Sorbus aucuparia) are by no means poisonous, but have a variety of effects and can be used dried, fresh or as jelly. The bitter species requires a debittering technique or the cultivation of appropriate varieties.
• Vinegar is made from beech wood shavings, young beech leaves can be used to make salads or liqueurs, beech nuts have a very high oil content (50%).
• The young leaf shoots of pear and apple trees can be enjoyed as well as the fruit.
• Maple provides the syrup and the young leaves a salad and the older ones are crushed and used for poultices.
• Birch leaves, chopped when young, can be eaten as a salad, the bark reduces fever and the sap is also drunk. Birch is also used in shampoos and hair tonics.
• Swiss stone pine nuts are very tasty.
• Not only the lime blossom, but also the young leaves, the buds, the bast of the bark and the ashes of the wood are used from the lime tree.

The fact that we are still surviving today is not the result of our modern diet, but the good fortune that our ancestors enjoyed a much wider range of resources and stored a considerable supply of them in their jing (essence, sometimes genome) for future generations. We are still benefiting from this today - but not for long. The next generations will be even sicker than we are and healthcare costs will become even more unaffordable.

In China, hardly anyone goes to the doctor for back pain because everyone knows that this is often caused by a poor diet. A few days of herbs help and the back has received its specific nourishment. It can easily be assumed that for every little mole, for every gland, for every pore, for every fibre in the body, there is a specific herb with a specific substance that is designed to nourish that particular cell.
If you calculate how many millions of francs are spent on back pain, physiotherapy and disabling operations, the tragedy of the situation is glaring. When Chinese families go on a Sunday outing because the weather is so nice, they go somewhere that offers good food. The experience of nature plays only a subordinate role. The restaurant doesn't even need to have windows, the important thing is the food on offer. If everyone is happy with it, then it was a successful outing. Anyone who ever invites someone from China should remember this truth. If there is no decent Chinese restaurant on the Jungfraujoch, then most of the guest's enthusiasm is nothing but hypocrisy. The Chinese judge us in the West by our food culture and hardly have a smile to spare for our leisure activities.

Designer drugs

A large proportion of the products come from the food industry, which no longer puts things on the market as they were grown. It designs practically all products. It takes things away and adds others. For example, it no longer sells milk as it comes from the cow, but first removes at least some of the cream, centrifuges it, heats it, adds chemical substances, vitamins, minerals, foreign substances such as fruit extracts, flavourings and enzymes.

In Chinese medicine and dietetics, this means the following: A considerable potential of moisture-forming agents is added and the working process itself promotes the introduction of 'slags' even more. This is one side of the issue. The other is that by taking away the freshness of the food, you reduce its Qi (energy). As a result, the end product is often nothing more than dead matter, an indigestible lump of paste.

Meat, vegetarianism and ecology

The Chinese are hardly vegetarians. They think that a vegetarian diet suits monks, who lead a contemplative life. However, everyday life in China is a struggle for survival and a meat-based diet is exactly what they need. Everything that nature provides is primarily judged according to whether it is edible. So if a beautiful pheasant jumps across the road in front of the car on a journey through the countryside, our European TCM teacher is delighted by the beauty of the animal, while the Chinese observer exclaims: 'Look what a nice meal is jumping across the road!

This makes it understandable that conservationists and vegetarians have a difficult time in China. Nevertheless, the idea of sustainable use of resources is slowly germinating there too. At the same time, however, our attention is discreetly drawn to the fact that the world's environmental problems are mainly the result of Western culture and civilisation. This civilisation has bred up technology and transport and established an economic system based on growth and exploitation. Today, China is part of this machinery.

According to Chinese nutritional theory, meat is healthy if produced correctly and used in the right situation, and it is savoured in all its variety. There is no taboo, no sentimentality regarding the utilisation of the various species. The dog is spared just as little as the sea cucumber and insects. In contrast to our ideas about a good piece of meat, the Chinese have completely different quality criteria. A lean piece of meat, a fillet or a chicken breast are rather worthless parts of the animal and can therefore be bought cheaply. The meat 'around the bone', tendons, small muscles, everything around the joint, the veins, the innards and the fish skin are prized. A fish head in the mouth is sucked out with the same relish, neatly skeletonised like a tail fin. If you have read the above about the plant world, it is clear that the idea that every tissue in the animal also has its tropism in the human body is an absolute principle and it seems that the calculation works out. The most expensive animal tissues are often the bones and other tissues containing the jing (essence), i.e. testicles etc. Bone soup is particularly rich in valuable substances. It is often cooked for several hours and frequently serves as the basis for other dishes. Bones are often cooked in rice congee (shi fan). These can be pork vertebrae sawn lengthways or chicken bones. Meat (e.g. duck or chicken) is served in an unusual way in China: The dissection is not carried out along the anatomical structures, but often across them. The result is a pile of pieces of meat that often seems almost unappetising to us, completely interspersed with bones and knuckles. However, this type of preparation makes perfect sense after what has been described above. The Chinese even emphasise that the bones must be broken down. A heavy butcher's knife, with which the bones can be chopped through in one go, should therefore be part of every household.

Last but not least, it must also be emphasised that a meal does not necessarily meat in a meal. There can only be a very small amount be very little. That is enough.

The fact that animals in Asia are not kept in a species-appropriate manner is another matter. Another issue is that some are threatened with extinction. catastrophe. The fight for better conditions for defenceless animals must be waged worldwide. Vegetarianism and vegan nutrition are part of these endeavours.

Raw food, cooking, steaming, roasting, grilling

In many parts of China, all food is cooked. This This basic rule obviously has positive consequences: On the one hand, people in China has fewer problems with bacterial and other pathogens than elsewhere in climatically similar areas and human population centres. Secondly, the body needs warm food, because it can digest particularly well digest particularly well when it is pre-digested or broken down. It It seems that the modern Western view of this circumstance supports this rule: Although a certain amount of vitamins is destroyed during cooking of vitamins is destroyed during cooking, the body can absorb the remaining vitamins better better than if it were to absorb them from raw food, so that the final balance is even in favour of cooked food.
There is no doubt that there are people who thrive on raw food. However, this requires an inner cooking pot (Chinese: spleen-stomach, three-warmers) that works well. There must be a good constitutional fire burning underneath it so that it is able to cook cold things such as raw food to 'boil' within a useful period of time without producing a without producing a slag-rich paste instead of an appetising soup.
Boiling and steaming are the mildest methods of Chinese cooking. Frying and grilling, on the other hand, generate a lot of heat, which in turn Chinese nutritional theory leads to 'slag' (deposits) and toxin formation. toxin formation.
If you eat pizza twice in a row, you are/will become ill, a former teacher of Chinese medicine told us. a former teacher of Chinese medicine told us. Too much heat, too fire, both real (oven) and due to the energetic nature of many ingredients. character of many ingredients.
If rice is left over from the last meal and later becomes fried rice fried rice is prepared from it later, the adults are given it. adults. New white rice is cooked for the children because otherwise they will get too much heat. Children are particularly sensitive to heat and other stimuli.
If a small child coughs once, the menu plan is changed. changed. And you immediately have two thoughts: was it exposed to the wind or has it eaten something wrong (hot?).
Spring rolls almost inevitably lead to a health problem if something heat-clearing is not given immediately or on the same or next day. something heat-clearing is given. This can be a tea that removes the heat and waste products.
Loss of appetite in children is often the result of malnutrition. The earlier nutritional errors are corrected, the the milder the remedies and measures required. If children are fed by grandmothers, aunts and divorced parents at weekends or on holiday, they often or on holiday, they often come home ill. Their their desires for these and those treats and unhealthy foods are indulged. are indulged. It then takes a few days for them to regain their composure sleep well, have a good appetite, no longer cough, no longer have blue circles under their eyes, no longer have to go to the toilet at night, no more bedwetting etc. We in the West often blame such situations primarily psychological factors for such situations, whereas the Chinese dietary errors.

My body already tells me what's good for me

A deceptive opinion! Especially for small children. Spaghetti bolognese at the beginning. At some point, some children don't like it them any more. Then it's just spaghetti with tomato sauce, but even that is too much for some too much for some and eventually they only eat white spaghetti. spaghetti. You can even order it like this on children's menus in restaurants! order them like this! Has your child's body told them what's good for them? Parents often give in to their children's wishes. A plate of fries in the restaurant. Just that. You see that more often than a full menu, or do I have a selectively negative view on this subject? Just fries even often for mum and dad.

What is done differently in a Chinese household, if it is connected to tradition? tradition: the child is not asked what he or she would like to eat what it would like to eat, but is fed what is perceived as healthy. healthy. This begins as soon as a baby is able to take in more than just breast milk. breast milk. It is fed all available foods, naturally in reasonable quantities. If the child spits it out the first times, this is not regarded as a sign that the food in question is not food is not good for him. Taste can be trained without ifs and buts be trained. I myself hardly ever ate fish during my childhood and so I only like fish when it doesn't smell and taste like fish. tastes and smells like fish. There's nothing left to save. If I had been given fish given to me the way my four boys were given it by their Chinese mother, I would probably eat fish today, even if it smelled or tasted no matter how strong it smells or tastes. It never ceases to amaze me, how the boys, who have now grown up, eat food that others others might trigger a gag reflex in extreme cases. Practise everything as early as possible as early as possible and don't let up, then you'll retain the sensitivity later on for the foods that the body really needs. Then then it's true that your body tells you what's good for you. My boys also like to eat burgers and Dürüm when they go out, of course also under the peer pressure from their colleagues, but at home they cook themselves a a hot meal with lots of vegetables for breakfast. The bakery bakery is just round the corner and they occasionally pick up bread from there and and there is a very communal Swiss breakfast with jam, honey, cheese and eggs. Something that hasn't been on the table for a long time: Yoghurt and Bircher muesli. The body says no, it rebels with flatulence, acid regurgitation and fatigue.

Tradition versus fashion

Chinese nutrition is always based on the fundamental the basic knowledge conveyed by Chinese medical theory. theory. Most Chinese men and women know how and when and what and what to cook and what is healthy and what is not. They categorise all foods according to their specific energetic content. They know which foods have a warming or cooling effect, which are hot or cold and which organ or functional circuit (element) they benefit. They have, so to speak, internalised the five internalised, so to speak, and no special mention of these basics. They seem to be present almost unconsciously.

In Chinese monasteries, this teaching was brought to perfection. And because we in the West do not have the basic knowledge of Chinese dietetics from childhood and through tradition, we like the most precise and plausible instructions possible. This is how This is how the five-element teachings in all their rigour have in some circles in the West. Because we have lost our own traditions, we are dependent on this type of knowledge transfer of knowledge and willingly and voluntarily allow ourselves to be and voluntarily, to be told how to fulfil the cycle of the five always be fulfilled exactly. Monks in monasteries have enough time to adhere to such rules exactly. rules exactly. In our often hectic everyday lives probably not possible for everyone to cook like this. But even with the few basic elements of the Chinese dietary Chinese nutritional theory, such as the categorisation of hot and cold hot and cold, moisturising or drying, depending on your individual constitution and situation. Nutrition should not lead to a lead to a narrow corset of beliefs. Pleasure must also be satisfied and people should also enjoy cooking. If this becomes a compulsion, it's not right either. not right.