Another Side of Gourmet Eating--Tonic Foods

Where does the concept of "tonic food" originate? What is it meant to achieve, and how does it work? And what view is taken by those with modern medical training?

"For the first month after a birth, it's our custom in Tainan to feed the mother a sesame-oil chicken hotpot every day," says a Mrs. K'o. And the chicken is always sent over by the mother's family, perhaps because people feared their daughters would suffer from neglect.

"In post-war days, you could tell whether a mother had had a boy or a girl by the kind of chicken she was getting," points out Mrs. Li of Taipei. A cockerel means a girl and a young hen means a boy, because a hen's meat is tender and nourishing, but a cockerel's is much tougher. "One mother-in-law didn't even spare a cockerel for her daughter-in-law because she'd had a girl," Mrs. Li recalls, so the poor thing had to pick her own vegetables to cook in sesame oil.

Today most Western hospitals in Taiwan no longer provide new mothers with traditional tonic foods, but up till two years ago the popular Taipei Municipal Hospital for Women & Children mixed Chinese herbal medicines such as wolfberry fruit and Chinese angelica root into every meal.

"Their mothers and mothers-in-law would never let them eat hospital food," chuckles the hospital's nutrition director Lin Hsiu-chih. They would complain the Chinese cabbage and radish were too "cold, so to humor them and avoid wastage the hospital served "hot" vegetables like a-tsai and spinach, or soups such as "four-drug decoction" sparerib soup and red date chicken soup. "The general reaction was highly favorable."

Men don't have babies but they need their tonic foods too. With bevies of concubines at their disposal, emperors, noblemen and wealthy grandees used to "boost their masculinity," and today men are equally concerned to "improve their performance." The idea that "you eat what you want to reach" determines which are men's most popular tonic foods.

Once four famous writers went for a meal of beef noodles. After ordering, one of them called the waiter back and discreetly asked for something else, whereupon the waiter turned and yelled out: "One bowl of bull penis soup!" The author blushed bright red with embarrassment while the rest did their best to spare his feelings.

Another popular tonic besides bull penis soup is medicinal potions to drink with wine. Examples are stag's penis and turtle carapace, highly expensive items at Chinese herbal pharmacies.

Other common tonics are perch soup to help recovery after an operation, and pig's brain soup to boost the mental powers of schoolchildren burning the midnight oil.

Traditionally, Chinese people actually take tonics at every stage of their lives.

Even before their child is born, mothers think "I must eat to nourish two, for a healthy mother means a strong baby," and eat extra tonic food accordingly: For instance, sago ensures a soft white skin, while chicken with ginseng gives a strong physique.

　Following the birth, mothers eat sesame-oil chicken, pig's liver and pig's trotter with peanuts, which the baby vicariously "savors" in its mother's milk.

Adolescents, especially those from families with short stature or who are physically puny, are often fed chicken spiced up with Chinese herbal medicines to give their development a boost at this important time. Girls often eat "four drugs decoction" soup with added motherwort and other herbs to "open up the body's conduits" and stimulate the secretion of growth hormones. Boys are given herbal decoctions designed to stimulate adrenaline secretion.

Older people need tonic foods once failing sight and thinning hair signal that their bodily organs are aging. Perhaps this is what Mencius had in mind when he said people shouldn't eat meat until they reach 70.

Tonic foods are taken with the onset of winter, when recuperating from illness, by women who fail to become pregnant, and by men who "can't get it up". . . . Herbal decoctions of ten, eight and four ingredients, Chinese angelica root, wolfberry and ginseng are taken, while simple chicken broth and pig's liver also have a tonic effect.

Tonic foods and tonic remedies have been around for thousands of years, but how did the Chinese derive the basic idea?

"Tonifying is one of the eight methods of treatment in Chinese herbal medicine," points out Professor Yang Ling-ling of Taipei Medical College, an expert on Chinese materia medica. "We speak of 'coordination between vital energy and blood', and tonifying is a way of treating consumptive disease or deficiencies in the body's vital energy and blood or bodily organs."

Chinese medicine holds that the blood gives rise to the body's vital energy, which falls into five categories--named after the Five Elements of metal, wood, water, fire and earth--which have a growth-promoting or growth-inhibiting effect on one another. Balancing these types of energy is the key to physical health, and tonifying requires that you first know which type is deficient. Chinese medicine doctors examine the patient and enquire carefully to determine his physical state before suggesting what tonic decoctions or foods he should take.

In Chinese medicine, people's physical nature is classified as "cold" or "hot," and foods are similarly classified too. For example, goat's meat is "hot", pork is "warm" and duck is "cool." Interestingly, where vegetables and fruit come on this scale is largely determined by their color: Pale food like radish and Chinese cabbage are "cool," while high-colored food such as red beans, spinach and apples are "hot."

People who are "hot-natured" should eat "cool" foods, and vice-versa, to achieve a proper balance. Many common eating habits and practices of the Chinese can be explained in terms of Chinese medicinal theory.

For instance, the main reason why people take tonic food in winter but not in summer is that tonics are mostly "hot." If taken in the summer or autumn people would have no appetite for them, and since the body is meant to retain the tonic's heat, any benefit would be lost in the summer as the excess heat would just be sweated off.

And why are the Chinese so fond of dark chicken and pork from black-bristled pigs? Under the Five Elements the kidneys are classified as black, and as the kidneys represent the entire immune system you do your whole body good by eating black foods.

Of course there are some tonic foods which are milder in nature and suit the majority of people, just as multi-vitamins in Western medicine are safe for the average constitution. Common winter tonics such as decoctions of "eight precious ingredients" and "ten ingredients," astragali and Chinese angelica root are all of this kind.

The first day of winter sees the whole population taking tonic foods as if at a given signal.

Ancient texts offer no confirmation that tonic foods were taken on the first day of winter in antiquity, but in the illustrated compilation Ku-chin t'u-shu chi-ch'eng it is stated that on that day the emperor travelled north with his ministers to welcome the god of winter, after which he took a hot bath in water steeped in aromatic herbs, chry-santhemums and gold and silver flowers. In some parts of the country red bean rice congee is eaten, not as a tonic but to ward off the demon of pestilence. According to legend this demon is the ghost of a son of Kung Kung, supervisor of works under the sage emperor Yao, who died one winter. He disliked red beans and so these are eaten to deter him.

Despite the lack of textual evidence, scholars of Chinese medicine believe the custom of taking tonic foods on the first day of winter may derive from a passage in the Canon of Internal Medicine which says: "Unless vital essences are built up in the winter, sickness is inevitable in the spring."

"They used to say if you took tonic food on winter's day it would set you up for the whole winter ahead," recalls Mrs. Ts'ao, 70. On winter's day in Hunan we ate chicken with herbal decoctions and ground glutinous rice "to make the soil soft and easy to plough the next year."

Mr. Fan of the same province insists he never heard of such a thing. Evidently taking tonic food was only for those who could afford it. In Taiwan the most popular tonic food is chicken soup with a ten-drug decoction, "but the Hakka people prefer to save money by making their soup with a less expensive decoction of four drugs," points out herbal medicine doctor Wei K'ai-yu of the T'ung Te T'ang.

"In the old days ours was an agrarian society," Wei explains. Exhausted from the labors of the spring, summer and autumn, farmers ate something nourishing at the start of winter and then rested to build up their strength for the year ahead.

Taking tonic food is part of indigenous Chinese culture, but today many young intellectuals have no time for such ideas, and their refusal to eat it has given rise to a generation gap with their parents.

"We Chinese have been taking tonic food for thousands of years but our average life expectancy is lower than the West, so what use is it?" asks a student at one medical institute.

Others prefer the simplicity of a healthy diet along the lines of Western nutritional theory with its balance between vegetables, fruit, cereals, fats and a choice of fish, meat, legumes, eggs and milk.

"Western medicine also has its tonifying methods," points out Dr. Chang Lo-ch'i of the nutrition department at Veterans General Hospital. Patients with difficulty swallowing or loss of appetite are fed a balanced mixture of proteins and fats according to their calorific requirements and condition. "It sometimes looks like milk, but one drink has all the calories you need for one day," chuckles Dr. Chang. Some patients even ask if it could be made to taste a little nicer!

By contrast, Chinese herbal tonics are as tasty and appetizing as possible. "Tonic decoctions are usually made with some sparerib or chicken," points out herbal doctor Wei K'ai-yu. This enhances the flavor and stimulates the patient's appetite.

"Western medicine takes a direct approach, Chinese medicine an indirect one," Wei explains. Under the Western system a weak patient is injected with glucose, which takes effect immediately. Chinese medicine has a regulatory function which is doesn't make itself felt straight away but is more comprehensive. "It's like helping a poor person not by giving them money directly but by introducing them to work and letting them earn their own money," volunteers Wei.

Most tonic foods can be made into gruel, liquidized, fried with vegetables or steeped in wine, and if herbal medicines are added too they must be warmed through for the properties of the drug to be released.

Actually some Chinese theories about tonic foods parallel Western theories, as if taking different paths towards the same goal.

In the case of the sesame-oil chicken eaten by new mothers, for example, the sesame oil is described in Chinese pharmacopeias as benefitting the muscles, stifling pain and lubricating the bowel for easier passage of stools. Of the other ingredients, ginger and wine, the former stimulates sweating and warms the body, while the latter promotes the circulation. As Chang Lo-ch'i explains, sesame oil promotes contraction of the womb and is high in calories, while chicken meat is rich in protein, so a nourishing and delicious dish of sesame-oil chicken is really just the thing to aid recovery after childbirth.

Who needs tonic food most? First and foremost the elderly, weak, mothers and children.

"Elderly people's have weak organs and they feel the cold," Dr. Ch'en Chao-hui of K'ang T'ai Chinese Medicine Clinic points out, old people usually take "warm" tonics, but people who suffer from dryness in the mouth, ringing in the ears and sleeplessness should take "cool" tonics and avoid extremes of "cold" or "hot." Wei K'ai-yu suggests eating more sea cucumber, phytin, cordyceps, fish soup and sparerib soup to increase the colloid within the bones. Where economic circumstances permit, substances such as deer antler, bird's nest and toad oil (extracted from the ovaries of female toads) can be beneficial too. Presidential Adviser Chiu Chuang-huan is said to owe his youthful looks to toad oil, which imparts a healthy glow to the cheeks.

Specifically, the above categories of "the weak, women and children" actually refer to sickness, menstruation, post-partum mothers and underdeveloped children.

"Before prescribing any tonic, a doctor must first read the patient's pulse and vary the quantities of drugs according to the individual, otherwise it will be ineffective or even produce adverse effects." Dr. Ch'en Chao-hui emphasizes that if a person is too weak the quantity of Chinese angelica root must be lessened or it will cause diarrhea.

"People with colds must not take tonics," stresses Wei K'ai-yu. If someone with a cold takes ginseng, "it's like a battlefield where in the confusion the enemy seizes your ammunition and makes off with it."

People whose constitution is already "hot" enough should not fortify themselves any further with "hot" foods such as dog or goat meat, which can bring on nosebleeds.

"These days mothers don't usually breast-feed so they only need a normally nutritious diet. If they overfeed the surplus fat can easily give rise to chronic disease," cautions Lin Hsiu-chih of Taipei Municipal Hospital for Women & Children.

In the past people Chinese used to be undernourished, "but now we eat too well in Taiwan--most of us shouldn't just steer clear of tonic food, we should go on a diet!" quips Wei K'ai-yu.

[Picture Caption]

Tonic foods are a "trademark of the Chinese." Traditionally the Chinese took tonic foods from infancy to old age.

These days we usually derive enough nourishment from our food to dispense with taking fortifying tonic foods.

Winter is the busiest time for the tonic medicaments trade.

Tonifying is a branch of Chinese herbal medicine; for best results always follow a doctor's advice. (photo from Sinorama files)

Piping hot tonic soup is popular in the night market.

Chinese tonic food can be taken as a main meal as well as soup, becoming part and parcel of everyday life.

Some restaurants these days add Chinese herbal medicines such as wolfberry fruit to their dishes to attract customers from office workers in need of a modest pick-me-up.

(Below and right) Just as facial features betray a person's character, so the color of vegetables and fruit gives away their "nature." A whitish color indicates a "cool-natured" food, while red is a sign of "hot-natured" food.

(photo by Arthur Cheng)

These days we usually derive enough nourishment from our food to dispense with taking fortifying tonic foods.

Winter is the busiest time for the tonic medicaments trade.

Tonifying is a branch of Chinese herbal medicine; for best results always follow a doctor's advice. （photo from Sinorama files）

Piping hot tonic soup is popular in the night market.

Chinese tonic food can be taken as a main meal as well as soup, becoming part and parcel of everyday life.

Some restaurants these days add Chinese herbal medicines such as wolfberry fruit to their dishes to attract customers from office workers in need of a modest pick-me-up.

Below and right） Just as facial features betray a person's character, so the color of vegetables and fruit gives away their "nature." A whitish color indicates a "cool-natured" food, while red is a sign of "hot-natured" food.

Below and right） Just as facial features betray a person's character, so the color of vegetables and fruit gives away their "nature." A whitish color indicates a "cool-natured" food, while red is a sign of "hot-natured" food.