In the primitive society, people took everything edible as food. After a long time, people found that some food can be used as medicine, and then there is a medicine, dietary points. In fact, medicine and food have the same origin, and food and treatment have the same function.
On the medicinal diet, the Zhou Dynasty has been recorded in the medicinal diet system. During the Warring States period, the famous doctor Bian Magpie attached importance to dietary therapy, he put forward more than two thousand years ago, "the first food cure, after the drug cure" insight.
Chen Zhi in the "Shou pro-aging book" said: "The main body of God, the essence of the gas, the essence of the gas, the capital gas of the food. Food, the day of the living people, living people also. Therefore, the diet into the grain gas full, grain gas full of gas and blood, gas and blood is full of strong muscle ...... If there is a disease, and first detailed food medicine method, review its disease, to food therapy, food therapy is not healed, and then ordered medicine, expensive not to injure their internal organs, but also to good treatment of disease is not as good as prudent disease, good treatment of medicine is not as good as good treatment of food." Chen straight of this medicine and dietary complement each other, prevention and treatment of the combination of the correct point of view, for China's health care for the middle-aged and elderly provides insightful theory.
By the Ming and Qing dynasties, the medicinal diet has been further developed. Li Shizhen in the "Compendium of Materia Medica" contained medicinal wine, medicinal porridge, medicinal soup, medicinal dishes, medicinal liquid, medicinal cake ...... varieties of unprecedented. Qing Dynasty from the early Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong three dynasties to the late Guangxu era, the production of medicinal food is more refined, the process is more elaborate, both rare and expensive palace dishes, but also simple and cheap general snacks.
For a long time, the folk also circulated a lot of therapeutic diet of the single formula, prescription, recipe, and rich therapeutic literature, for China's medicinal diets and therapeutic medicine Mo fixed the foundation.