Origins A number of ancient Chinese cookbooks and treatises on food (now lost) display an early Chinese interest in food, but no known focus on its medical value. The literature on "nourishing life" () integrated advice on food within broader advice on how to attain immortality. Such books, however, are only precursors of "dietary therapy", because they did not systematically describe the effect of individual food items. In the volume on "Fermentations and Food Science" of Joseph Needham's Science and Civilization in China, H. T. Huang considers the Recipes for Fifty-Two Ailments (c. 200 BCE) and the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon as precursors of the "dietary therapy" tradition, the former because it recommends food products as remedies for various illnesses, the latter because it discusses the impact of food on health. The materia medica literature, exemplified by the Shennong Bencao Jing (1st century CE), also discussed food products, but without specializing on them.
Origins A number of ancient Chinese cookbooks and treatises on food (now lost) display an early Chinese interest in food, but no known focus on its medical value. The literature on "nourishing life" () integrated advice on food within broader advice on how to attain immortality. Such books, however, are only precursors of "dietary therapy", because they did not systematically describe the effect of individual food items. In the volume on "Fermentations and Food Science" of Joseph Needham's Science and Civilization in China, H. T. Huang considers the Recipes for Fifty-Two Ailments (c. 200 BCE) and the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon as precursors of the "dietary therapy" tradition, the former because it recommends food products as remedies for various illnesses, the latter because it discusses the impact of food on health. The materia medica literature exemplified by the Shennong Bencao Jing (1st century CE), also discussed food products, but without specializing on them.