Wang Anshi's own erudition and talent, the many diseases of the body after middle age, the influence of friends, the Song Dynasty society's respect for health preservation, and the integration of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism all played an important role in the formation of Wang Anshi's health care system.
Nourishment of food
Food is a necessity for the survival of the human body, and it is also the essential desire of human beings. Since the pre-Qin period, people have recognized the importance of diet to the human body. It is recorded in the Book of Rites and Rites:
"Men and women eat and drink, and the great desires of people exist. ”
The important role of diet in the human body is irreplaceable, and health practitioners take the importance of diet maintenance as an important way for them to maintain their bodies and prolong their lives. "The Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon" contains:
The ancients, those who know, the law is in yin and yang, and in the number of techniques, eating and drinking modestly, living regularly, and not working in vain, so they can form and fear the gods, and end their days and live a hundred years old.
When summarizing the important characteristics of long-lived people, the Yellow Emperor's Neijing regards diet and maintenance as an important method to prolong life. Tao Hongjing also emphasized the importance of diet and health to the maintenance of the human body in "The Record of Maintaining Shape and Extending Life":
Born with more milk than food, long and insufficient taste, strong and temperate, strong and long-lived.
Wang Anshi inherited the previous generation's view of the importance of diet to human body maintenance, and proposed: "Food, drink and eat are ashamed to nourish the body." ”
It can be seen that Wang Anshi attaches great importance to diet and takes diet and health preservation as an important part of health preservation. The main contents of Wang Anshi's diet and health preservation are: ingredient selection, ingredient processing, food supplement, tea drinking, drinking, etc.
Choice of ingredients
Wang Anshi proposed that diet and health preservation are an important method for the human body to maintain its shape. The choice of ingredients is the foundation of the diet. Therefore, he attaches great importance to the choice of ingredients. In terms of ingredient selection, he proposed to pay attention to the five flavors of ingredients, select fresh ingredients, choose light ingredients, comprehensive ingredients, and reasonable ingredient combinations.
(1) Pay attention to the five flavors of ingredients
The five flavors refer to the characteristics of food or medicine itself, including sour, sweet, bitter, salty, and pungent flavors. Wang Anshi believes that the five flavors play an important role in the human body:
If the qi is strong, so bitterness can nourish qi; if the pulse is old, it will be harmonious, so it can nourish the vein; if the bone is strong, so it can nourish the bones; if the tendons are scattered, it will not spasm, so the bitterness can nourish the tendons; if the meat is slow, it will not be strong, so it can be sweet and can nourish the meat. If you want to slow down, you can use sweetness, and if you don't want it, you can use it.
Wang Anshi discussed the different effects of the five flavors on the human body, emphasizing that the five flavors have the effect of nourishing the human body. Therefore, in the selection of ingredients, Wang Anshi attaches great importance to the role of the five flavors and proposes:
The spring lord is divergent, and it is advisable to harvest it with more acid; the summer lord is relieved, and it is advisable to be more bitter to be firm; the autumn lord is sluggish, and it is advisable to scatter it with more hardship; the winter lord is stiff, and it is appropriate to be salty and rich; slippery is so beneficial, sweet is so slow, and slow is beneficial, so it is adjusted.
Wang Anshi emphasized that the choice of the five flavors of ingredients should be determined according to the nature of the four seasons, and proposed different choices of ingredients for the four seasons:
In spring, more acidic ingredients should be chosen, because the seasonal nature of spring is scattered, and it is necessary to harvest by eating acidic ingredients to achieve a balance between the body and the outside world; in summer, choose more bitter ingredients, because the summer is mainly slow, and it is necessary to guard the shade through bitter ingredients; in autumn, it is advisable to choose spicy ingredients, because in autumn, the main harvest is that you need to eat hairy ingredients; in winter, you need to choose salty ingredients, because winter is hard, and salty is soft, so choose salty ingredients. In addition, Wang Anshi realized that if the five flavors are eaten too much or too little, and cannot be balanced with the outside world, it is advisable to choose sweet flavors to achieve balance.
It can be seen that Wang Anshi pays attention to the five flavors of ingredients in the selection of ingredients, emphasizing the adjustment of the five flavors of ingredients according to the changes of the seasons, and at the same time choosing sweet flavors to achieve a balance between the body and nature.
(2) Select fresh ingredients
In addition to paying attention to the five flavors in the selection of ingredients, Wang Anshi also pays attention to the selection of fresh ingredients. Wang Anshi believes:
Inside, it is used as a stalk, and its smell is evil, and the sand is full of birds, and its smell is like it. Although the text is different, its meaning is the same. The first to distinguish the inedible, and then to say that the sheep is spicy and the flesh, the dog is red and irritable, and the pig is blind and the eyelashes are fishy, then the so-called fishy and inedible are also.
Wang Anshi distinguishes the freshness of food from the taste of food, and believes that the three flavors of "fishy soup" in the ingredients represent that the ingredients are not fresh and inedible.
In the selection of ingredients, Confucius proposed: "If the fish is hungry and the meat is defeated, do not eat." Lust is evil, and he does not eat. Stink, don't eat. Confucius identified ingredients from their color, taste, etc., and when the color of the ingredients changed and the taste changed, Confucius considered them inedible. Wang Anshi is consistent with Confucius's thought in the selection of ingredients, and both believe that ingredients that change taste cannot be selected.
(3) The ingredients should be light
The "Yellow Emperor's Neijing" in the Qin and Han dynasties recorded: "The change of the anointing beam is full of great ding". It can be seen that people from the Qin and Han dynasties
We have realized that health requires light food selection. The Song Dynasty also advocated that ingredients should be light, which is conducive to longevity. It is recorded in the notes of the Song people:
The chamberlain Zhang Mao can't eat more than a little coarse rice every time, and the greasy things will never be in the mouth. Old and peaceful, he died in his eighties.
Wang Anshi agrees with the idea of choosing light ingredients for health. This idea is embodied in Wang Anshi's poems, which are written: "Always soup and quinoa, wok is difficult to fight in ancient times"; Brewed into Wu Miye oil bladder, but love to talk about the smell of long";" More than five acres of barren grass and bamboo, and the life of mountain ferns and spring fish". It can be seen from Wang Anshi's poems that Wang Anshi pays attention to eating light food in daily life.
The notes of the Song people also reflect Wang Anshi's health preservation idea that the taste is not heavy and the ingredients are light. "Shang Cai Quotations" contains:
If you don't use it, you can save it, and you can go freely.
Wang Gong of the Song Dynasty recorded Wang Anshi's daily diet when he retired to Jinling:
Hold more than a dozen cakes in a bag, and eat them publicly, that is, they will be left behind...... or those who take food and drink in the field, they also eat.
The above historical data can be seen that Wang Anshi pays attention to light ingredients, and his daily diet is mainly light.
(4) The ingredients are comprehensive, and no partial food should be eaten
Although Wang Anshi pays attention to a light diet, he also advocates that the selection of ingredients should be comprehensive, and meat ingredients should also be selected. In a letter to his relatives, Wang Anshi wrote:
Seeing Huang Ji's father, he said that the fourth sister was very thin and haggard, and she was afraid that she would eat vegetables for a long time, so she had to weigh it and not make it sick. Everything is like a dream, and it does not need to be deeply conceived, but it is carefully prayed for, and it is not necessary to be constantly cut off.
It can be seen that Wang Anshi advocates that the choice of ingredients should not be vegan, and meat should be chosen, otherwise it is easy to get sick.
In the choice of ingredients, Wang Anshi not only chooses meat, but also advocates the choice of fruits and vegetables. In terms of selecting vegetables, Wang Anshi Zengyun:
He ate the lotus root in the new city and carried relatives and friends on the boat. This year, I went to the meridian office and sat alone in the smoke and danced willows. Sweet and sour to the mouth at a loss, firmly down the plate of food and bottle of wine. The ice house jade festival is self-respecting, and wants to return to the rest of the tears.
In terms of fruits, Wang Anshi's poems can be seen to eat pears, poems: "Huaipu Xinyin is cool for a hundred acres, and every sweet has to help autumn taste." In addition to pears, there are also dates. Wang Anshiyun:
Plant peach shakes, plant dates to do what you want. It is really a beautiful fruit, and the material is good. Yu Gan entered the neighbor's house, but he was still chased away by greedy women. In the autumn plate, quickly take the decoration.
It can be seen that Wang Anshi's comprehensive selection of ingredients includes not only meat, but also vegetables and fruits, which is not partial to eating, which is conducive to Wang Anshi's health.
(5) The combination of ingredients is reasonable
The combination of ingredients is reasonable, that is, the nature of the selected ingredients is consistent. Wang Anshi believes that the selection of ingredients should pay attention to the nature of the ingredients, and the collocation should be reasonable:
Those who know how to eat should be eaten, cattle should be cropped, sheep should be millet, pigs should be grassy, dogs should be Liang, geese should be wheat, fish should be barley, and the food is suitable. What is appropriate is not the only thing, and if there is something appropriate, there is also something to fear, on the contrary, it should be avoided...... It is said that what he often eats, and it can be inferred to know.
Wang Anshi illustrates from the typical examples of cattle suitable for millet, sheep suitable for millet, dogs suitable for millet, geese suitable for wheat, and fish suitable for melons: food selection and matching should be in accordance with the nature of the ingredients themselves, and they are suitable for matching, which violates the essential nature of food, and the nature of matching ingredients is opposite, which is harmful to the human body.
The health practitioners of the Yuan Dynasty agreed with Wang Anshi's idea of suitable ingredients:
Diet is used to maintain health, and do not know that the physical nature is suitable and taboo, even if it is mixed, it will cause disharmony in the five internal discord at the lightest, and cause disaster at the worst.
It can be seen that the concept of food matching of future generations of health care is the same as that of Wang Anshi's food matching concept, and they all believe that food matching needs to be suitable for physical properties, which is the inheritance of Wang Anshi's food matching ideas.
Ingredients Processing
Wang Anshi attaches great importance to food processing, which is an important part of Wang Anshi's diet and health, including not eating raw food, adding ointment according to the season, and paying attention to the appropriate cold and temperature of food.
(1) Prohibition of raw food
Wang Anshi advocated eating cooked food, believing that eating raw food can lead to illness and even death:
Unknown cremation is not so healthy, and the benefit of fire is to prevent death.
It can be seen that Wang Anshi believes that food needs to be heated at high temperature before it can be eaten, and eating food that is not heated at high temperature can lead to the occurrence of diseases.
(2) Make good use of ointments of different natures
Wang Anshi believes that in the processing of food, it is necessary to add ointments with different properties according to different seasons to achieve the purpose of health preservation:
Those who eat and ointment incense should also use cattle ointment, and cattle, native animals, and Fang Chunmu should help to nourish the spleen. Dogs, golden animals, when Fang Xia Huo is used, it is advisable to help nourish the lungs. Chickens, wood animals, when Fang Qiujin is used, it is advisable to nourish the liver. Sheep and fire animals should also be used for food, and when the water is used in the winter, it is advisable to nourish the heart.
Wang Anshi added paste to food processing, using the idea of the five elements of mutual restraint. The Five Elements thought believes that the world is formed by the five elements of mutual restraint, and the internal organs of the human body correspond to the corresponding five elements, and the activities of the organs in the human body are also the operation of the five elements, and the five elements within the body are related to the five elements in the outside world, and only when the internal and external five elements are balanced, the internal organs can function normally, and the human body can remain healthy.
Therefore, it is necessary to add bovine paste in the spring. In order to achieve the balance of the five elements within the human body, it is necessary to add earthy paste to the processing of ingredients, and the ox nature belongs to the earth, which is conducive to nourishing the spleen. Similarly, dog paste needs to be added to the processing of ingredients in the summer.
In summer, the fire is strong, and the gold is weak, which corresponds to the weak lungs in the human body, and the dog is gold, and the dog paste is added to the processing of ingredients, which is beneficial to nourishing the lungs. In autumn, chicken paste is added to the processing of ingredients. Because the autumn is golden, the wood is weak, that is, the liver is weak, and the chicken nature belongs to the wood, adding chicken paste in the processing of ingredients is beneficial to the liver. In winter, sheep paste needs to be added to the processing of food ingredients. Because the water is abundant in winter, the fire is weak, that is, the heart is weak, and the sheep belongs to the fire, so the sheep paste is added to replenish the heart.
It can be seen that Wang Anshi believes that in the processing of food ingredients, it is necessary to add ointment according to the season: beef paste needs to be added in spring to nourish the spleen, dog paste needs to be added in food processing in summer to nourish the lungs, chicken paste needs to be added in food processing in autumn to nourish the liver, and sheep paste needs to be added in food processing in winter to nourish the heart. Through this, the purpose of health preservation is achieved.
(3) Pay attention to the four qi of food and the season
The four qi of food are "cold, hot, warm, and cool". Wang Anshi believes that when processing ingredients, it is necessary to pay attention to the four qi and the season:
Those who eat Qi in spring, soup in summer, sauce in autumn, and drink in winter, the temperature and cold should be so.
It can be seen that in the processing of food ingredients, Wang Anshi pays attention to the connection between the season and the "warm, hot and cold" four qi of food: spring is warm, eat warm food, summer is hot, need to eat hot food, autumn is cool, need to eat cold food, and winter is cold, need to eat cold food. In this way, the temperature of the food is in line with the temperature of the season, and through this, the health is maintained.
Pay attention to food supplements
In the Song Dynasty, due to the attention of the imperial court, a large number of medical books were published, so that the understanding of medicine among scholars at that time was generally improved, and it was reflected in the understanding of the efficacy of food in terms of diet. Such as Su Shi Zengyun:
Calamus, pungent and warm, non-toxic, happy, replenishes the five organs, passes through the nine orifices, and brightens the ears and eyes. Don't forget to wear light clothes for a long time, prolong your life and benefit your mind, and your ambition will not grow old.
Wang Anshi is familiar with medical books and also has a deep understanding of the curative effect of food, and he summarizes the curative effect of food as follows:
Taste, the essence of the nourishing also, the grain, the shape of the nourishing, medicine, the healer. Nourishment is the foundation, nourishment is secondary, treatment is the end, and the order of this treatment is also.
It can be seen from the above that Wang Anshi believes that the order of treatment and recuperation is food and five flavors to replenish essence and qi, five grains to nourish the body, and finally medicine to cure diseases. Among them, grains are food, and Wang Anshi emphasized the efficacy of food on the human body in the treatment of diseases, which shows that he attaches great importance to the efficacy of food.